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ADG Episode 227 - Secret Agent
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- Опубліковано 15 сер 2024
- If you were expecting a lot of awesome spy gadgets and espionage, well... this isn't gonna be your game. :P
In today's episode of Ancient DOS Games, Gemini's taking a look at Secret Agent, an old Apogee platformer from 1992 which precariously rides the line between being fun versus being frustrating and which also tried to sell itself as being more than it really is. Definitely not Apogee's best work but at the same time not their worst work either.
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Additional Information and Corrections:
* There is now an HD remake of this game! Similar to how Crystal Caves was given an update, this game has received the same treatment! You can find the new HD version over on Steam ( store.steampow... ) or on GOG ( www.gog.com/ga... )
* If you do want to buy a digital download here's a link to the game on the 3D Realms website, which also includes GOG and Steam links: 3drealms.com/c...
* Yes, I'm aware that the reason the south-facing beaches are impassable is because those tiles in particular are more-so water than land compared to the others. Doesn't make it any less awkward. :P
* This is more something that came up in the comments than in the video, but technically, Duke Nukem came out four months before Secret Agent and is using an earlier version of the engine, which is odd considering Duke Nukem has way fewer issues. :o
* OK, the graphics aren't 100% identical between the different episodes, but it's still like 98% identical. You have to pretty much be paying very close attention to notice the differences. :P
* There's also technically a screen flash whenever you take out a radar dish in this game, but it doesn't emulate very well under DOSBox, so most of the time you'll miss it.
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The "shots on the screen" limit was put there for gameplay/balance reasons. Enemies would be way too easy if you could shoot entire volleys of bullets at them. That's why that permanent powerup is so valuable.
Same thing applies to Crystal Caves's shot per screen limit.
I grew up with this game and the sound effects are etched into my mind, haha! My sister went crazy for the teleporter sound effect, she always kept spamming the teleporter. Some guy who was called to reinstall Windows 95 on one of our first PCs put this on. Never heard of Crystal Caves until recently.
In Australia this game had a kind physical release as part of a boxed set containing the licensed versions of a bunch of Apogee platformers, including Duke I and II, BioMenace and Monster Bash.
it makes my day to see a new ADG episode is out :P
I played this game when I was 8 or 9 years old, no much memories about that I still remember this is one of my fav. Thanks a lot you find it out for me
I played the shareware version of this game as a kid, but I always assumed that it was an older game that I was just discovering a couple of years late. Hard to believe this came out the same year as Wolfenstein 3D.
I really love that game. Ok, it can be frustrating but the game is solid and makes a lot of fun.
Love this game, classic Apogee platformer
I loved this game and Crystal Caves when I was a kid! :D
Secret Agent I think was my first Apogee game, so the game holds special meaning for me. I played SA, Crystal Caves, and Duke Nukem 1 and 2 a lot when I was a child. Interestingly, because I played Crystal Caves after SA, I thought CC was a successor to SA, not the other way around. CC does feel a little more advanced than SA, but I still love both games.
However, I do agree that the level design is SA is flawed and frustrating. The sad thing is that the controls and mechanics are not at fault: it's just that Apogee easily fell for cheap design mistakes, most particularly in the levels of the other episodes. The latter episodes make it particularly hard to complete levels with a perfect score and perfect health, not to mention conserve ammo.
I think SA's mechanics would have shone better if the level design was fairer and more cleverly done. Admittedly, I play both SA and CC on God Mode, because it makes them more relaxing and less frustrating to play. However, I've seen playthroughs of SA where the players beat all the levels perfectly, so may just go down to how much skill, patience, and memorization you have in beating the levels. And there are some levels I can play with no problem without God Mode, which shows SA could benefit from more consistent level design.
It's also a shame that Dr. No Body isn't a boss fight. The question is how the boss battle would've been executed with SA's engine and mechanics.
But even with SA's problems, I would never call it forgettable. I'd even want it to be a template for another DOS-inspired game, with better level design and a few gameplay enhancements.
It's one of those games that my parents also enjoyed and played back in the day. We only had the shareware episode, though.
This is one of my favorite Apogee games! I like it more than Crystal Caves. And... you're very predictable. I really expected you to not like this game and it turns out I was right. Too bad you didn't liked it though :(...
+Roobar I gave it a fair chance though and did identify that the game's not terrible and that there's going to be people who enjoy it. If you could jump down and if the one-block-tall gaps weren't so picky about how to jump into them (or didn't exist) I'd probably have liked it enough to see it through to the end. :B
@@Pixelmusement Secret Agent got a HD remake like Crystal Caves, and it came out this year :) you should do another filler ep and revisit it!
@@timixretroplays Dangerous Dave as well and System Shock is on the horizon. I may or may not get to them; depends on how things go, but rest assured, I am aware they exist! ;)
@@Pixelmusement Give me a shout on Twitter when you get up to it - I beta-tested the HD version, and I'm sure the dev would love to chat too :)
@@timixretroplays Don't count on it; I have a MASSIVE amount of stuff on my plate, but it's good that the HD versions are coming out as well as they are! :)
Used to play this with my younger sister when she wanted to hang out with me. Good memories.
No bugs, just need to be good at platformers.
+Torgrim Well, no bugs until you try playing with a joystick... :P
This game has been remade, just like Crystal Caves.
That "dada da da da" has been stuck in my head down through the years.
i remember this game! this was some the best action gaming on PC for a while
Played this a lot as a kid and I'm pretty sure I finished it. My persistence was fueled by game scarcity.
I played this a lot as a kid, like some people here I actually liked Secret Agent more than Crystal Caves but even then I thought there were a ton of really strange design decisions Apogee had made when creating it
The sounds of joy
The Ninja Master, who I presume spent decades mastering the art of the ninja to rise above his peers, uses a handgun as their weapon of choice. That's like a Navy Seal Sniper deciding to use a kitchen knife to kill someone. I never understood that
+Blaskowitz993 Speaking as a game designer, I can say without a doubt that this was a situation where the word "Ninja" was used only because it sounded cool and NO OTHER REASON. :P
This was the first commercial game series I bought. Secret agent 1-3 and Monster Bash 1-3 back in the mid 1990s in a value pack. So many memories
I probably won't be able to guess on games consistently, so...
[suddenly a bearded man falls from the sky]
"Pictures taken instantaneously! I'm a photographic genius, if I do say so myself. Now, get ready for an instant memory! Look at the camera, smile, say 'Fuzzy Pickles'!"
I hope to see this get a remaster treatment like Crystal Caves, but with the addition of Adlib music rather than NES music. They should also use that opportunity to add the option of Adlib music in Crystal Caves in an update around that time if possible.
well you were right on the remaster on secret agent
One of my favorite puzzle platformers by Apogee along with Crystal Caves. Out of the 2, I prefer Secret Agent.
When will you do Filler with Secret Agent HD
The info windows in this look a lot like the ones in Duke1. I wonder if they built it using the same engine
I haven't seen any of your Ancient DOS Games videos in a while, so I decided to go see what games you had done recently. I just finished recording my last videos for a Let's Play series of Secret Agent earlier today.
So now I'm sure there's about five or six people on UA-cam who have ever heard of this damned game. =P
+White
Rhino PSO Fun Fact: This game was high on my requests list. Not Top 3, but Top 10 for sure. ;)
Your review was WAY more fun than this game. Ever since I was a kid, I could NEVER have fun with this game, for some reason.
But hey, great review, as usual. :)
Great review as always, makes me sad to see your subs number isn't higher... I found about you trough Pushing up Rose's channell.
You, Roses and LGR should make a few collaborations in videos, so they can promote you. I love your reviews plus the dosbox settings for each game, keep up the good work!
+Majmun X Collabs are always a ton more work and arranging them can be a trip and a half, though I was recently in one on LGR's side of things! Roses and I haven't done any yet but I'm hoping we can figure out one to do together someday! :)
Heh, i played through this thing just a week ago. :)
One of my most played shareware games together with Crystal Caves (that I completed only last year thanks to Gog) and Duke Nukem.
Man I love this game but it's so damn hard
Wow, those episode names. "Hunt For Red Rock Rover" is at least a parody of something espionage-related kinda, as is "Dr. No Body", but "Kill Again Island?" That's named after a stupid sitcom! It could've been called, like, Moonbreaker or Octopushy or something.
Oh, I remember this "Commander Keen clone"!
I was about to ask, why this game looks so much like Commander Keen! :D
Um you realise Apogee made Commander Keen and this game so how can it be a clone? It was just using the same engine. It's like you saying a developer making a game with the same game engine is making a clone. That's just dumb.
Sure, that's why I used quotes. Back in the day, first-person shooters were often simply called "Doom clones". Commander Keen was also revolutionary in its side-scrolling nature, so it is the same pattern to call this its "clone", even though technically it has a different engine (one based on Crystal Caves).
I always thought the shots were aging the enemies, hence why they slow down and such
Grab the letters S P Y in that order for extra bonus points.
+DookNookim Except just like in "Who's Line is It Anyway?" the points don't matter. :P
Maybe Double Simons was a hint to the next game, "Double Dragon"?!
I just loved this when I was a kid but why I can't play the second and the third missions? Do I have to pay for them? After the first it starts again...
+Graziele
S R Yeah, if all you downloaded was the shareware version then all you get is the first part. You need to purchase the game to get the other two parts.
@@Pixelmusement tks for the answer
:D SECRET AGENT MAC!!! I LUV that game!
I only knew of this game thanks to the catalog.exe that came with so many of the Apogee shareware games. As others have mentioned, how many times did Apogee milk that engine? Keen 1-3, Crystal Caves, Duke Nukum, the list goes on. I'd love to see an insider's perspective on those heady days when Apogee ruled the PC game world.
+ofmanynicknames Commander Keen does not use the same engine. :P
Huh, I stand corrected. Completely different, or similar but with significant changes?
+ofmanynicknames The engine used in Commander Keen was written by the guys who formed Id Software and is capable of super-smooth scrolling at a high-framerate. This engine eventually became the one used to make the original Duke Nukem and here in Secret Agent, it only runs at 17.5 FPS (One quarter of the 70 Hz the 320x200 mode would normally run at.)
+Pixelmusement Err... I didn't word that very well. The engine in Commander Keen and the one in Secret Agent are unrelated and perform way differently. :P
Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure might also be on the same engine as the Duke games. It also scrolls in 8 pixel steps but looks a bit smoother. Probably thanks to the parallax scrolling.
never heard of this one, but it looks and play similar to crystal caves also done by them. it looks like they re-skin one to make the other one
Even with 3 health points, this game has always been too difficult for me. I could never beat any of the levels to which you have initial access. Those one gap jumps were part of it, but the platforming in general requires too much precision, and the level design has too many areas where you need to be in nearly constant motion to avoid getting hit, often while needing to make those precise jumps.
I'm going to guess the "HD" remake will have those control issues ironed out a bit, as I believe it's using the same engine as the remake of Crystal Caves which is WAY easier to control than the original Crystal Caves. :B
And the next game is.....Rise of the Dragon by Dynamix (Sierra). One of my favourite Bladerunneresque game ;)
15:13 - It's a feature!
+SEGAClownboss Doesn't make it a GOOD feature. :P
I'm going to need to start recording my let's play for this game now. :P
+DFuxa
Plays 48 levels of doing the exact same things over and over again... Better have some good commentary to keep people interested the whole way through! :B
Nice game.
Might I suggest you start talking a bit sooner into the video: I was right about to click it away when I thought it was just a let's play.
great games i brought it long time ago on 3drealms
I liked playing it at a friend's house, but our PC at home hated this game and wouldn't run it.
The "pc master race" in 1992 must have had a hard time to defend this "gem" against Super Mario World :D But I guess back then people were cool about using any platform (no matter the hardware specs) as long as good games were available.
+PumpkinStrikesBack You pretty much can't. Platformers were inherently better on consoles just due to the optimizations in place for sprite-based graphics. That said, since PCs had a lot more raw power and RAM to go around, not to mention usually a mouse from the early 90s onwards, they tended to have the best strategy games and the best 3D games. :B
If you had a 486 and Windows 3.1 with WinG you could run Pasofami and play the NES Mario games on PC. Was an amazing feat for the early 90s. iNES came out later and ran a lot better under DOS though.
Still SNES was pretty great for its time. PC had Prince of Persia at that time. I know because we played that a my place while my pal had Super Mario World to play at his.
It really amazes me that the game is rather not to your liking. As it was predominantly shareware, it ought to be your staple choice in fact... or is it me that I somehow wish to associate your channel with shareware games? By the way, I loved the game as it was in 1992. Perhaps it's just a matter of nostalgia nowadays.
+azrael1982PL Nostalgia can sometimes blind us as to the actual quality of something. Don't get me wrong, I played a ton of shareware games in my youth, but even back then I would've ranked Dark Ages higher than this game, which ALSO came from Apogee and was released in 1991. There's a ton of factors which go into how good or bad a game is and I try to never let nostalgia be a factor, rather instead, how well the game performs technically and as a game, based on what it would've been competing against when it came out.
Pixelmusement I see. Right, I reckon that nostalgia blinds me. :) I'm just too much into it sometimes.
This game sounds familiar.
So Goldeneye took the story from this and mixed stuff up a bit? The traitor (006) steals Goldeneye(giant space lazer) for $
Why didn't this appear in my feed?
+TreuloseTomate Because UA-cam. At least one person has reported solving this issue by unsubbing and resubbing, so you might try that. :B
Thanks, that worked.
I'm subscribed to almost 100 channels. I wonder how many videos I've already missed thanks to this bug.
This looks like a crappy version of Duke Nukem.
+Herbie Husker Fun Fact: The engine used to make this game would next be used to make Duke Nukem. ;)
Pixelmusement I figured as much. It looks like they made a few improvements though.
This game has pixel perfect scrolling while Duke Nukem scrolls per 8 pixels. The creator of this game wrote an article about pixel panning: www.unz.org/Pub/ProgrammersJournal-1991may-00021
+DookNookim The only trouble with the game engine here is that it runs 17.5 FPS, one quarter of the refresh rate for the 320x200 mode, so when they made Duke Nukem with it they had to increase the step size in order to make things snappy and fast. :P
Yes
Yeah, it gets stale after Episode 1 so I played only that.
Do you rank the games you've covered somewhere? And how can I make one time donations?
+Alianger I really should add some rankings on my website or somewhere, although I rank games based on who they would appeal to and by how much, rather than numerically. As for one-time donations, you can do it from my Twitch stream page, even if the stream isn't live! (I'll read off missed donation alerts next time I go live, which is always on a Sunday.) www.twitch.tv/pixelmusement
It required a streamlabs pro account with a monthly fee apparently. But if you add a paypal link or something I will.
+Alianger Uhh... Oh! No, no, you don't need to sign in to Streamlabs to use that donation thingy! Streamlabs is the service I use for hosting alerts and such. You simply type in your Twitch username, choose an amount, and a message to show up with the alert, then it will immediately take you to a PayPal thing! :B
Made a twitch account and tried again. It still pops up a confirmation prompt to subscribe to streamlabs right after logging into paypal, sorry don't want to take a chance with that.
"By confirming below, You agree to join Streamlabs Pro at $5.99/mo , which you can cancel at any time. Please review our terms of service and privacy policy."
+Alianger That's very bizarre... Let me look into this. :o
Why would anyone stop pushing the movement key when you're desperately trying to jump into a hole in the wall? I mean wouldn't every instinct tell you to "keep pushing and go in there dammit!!" or something? At least that's what I usually do. Also, back then virtually nobody played games with a joystick so it's no wonder it didn't receive that much testing (and nobody noticed the quirks you did ;-)
+Darkstar Well, it's not that you'd stop pushing against the wall, rather, your instincts would tell you to time your jump to fit into the gap as perfectly as possible, but if you do that, you will miss it. You have to hit the wall while still rising up towards the gap so that you get the push into the wall before you reach the gap, otherwise you won't get the push into the wall until you've fallen below the gap and thus won't get into it. :/
hm.. I wonder why I can't remember having any of these problems then... I admit my memory is a bit hazy on stuff so old ;-) Maybe jumping like this was quite common back then in other games as well? Or maybe it just came to me more naturally than others, who knows :) anyways, thanks for the trip down memory lane!
+Darkstar You could always just go grab a shareware copy super-quick and try it out again. ;)
Yikes, another 3d realms/apogee game that stole assets from Turrican.
+frickenmoron I think George just liked that face. ;D