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[Denton]

I played MDK, Messiah, Enter the Matrix and Path of Neo. But only one I actually finished was Enter the Matrix (which was awesome, but more due to its connection to movies than the actual gameplay, although the combat was pretty awesome).

MDK had pretty awesome weird vibe and atmosphere, I remember playing it on my Pentium 100.

 

[SirKicksalot]

Matrix Resurrections does that funny Path of Neo meta stuff. The modern Wachowski editing style started there too.

Also this lmao

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

MDK had amazing gameplay for its time. So did MDK2.
Then there was Sacrifice, and similar games from that time like Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, Armed and Dangerous, Startopia. They don't make those kind of weird games anymore.

Everything today has you playing as a human in a realistic world with a mostly realistic premise. Gaming could use a healthy dose of surrealism.

 

[RagnarokIV]

Yeah… David Perry and Tommy Tallarico. Some of the best times of my life.

 

[//DEVIL//]

I must be one of those very few people that matrix game. i was into bullet time games.

Earth Worm Jim was one of my fav games when I was a kid. but I never finished it. was too hard for me lol.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

That David perry fellow was held in such high regard back in the days. Kinda reminds me of how people hold kojima on a pedestal nowadays.

I think Perry deserved praise back then for combining amazing animations with tight gameplay. Aladdin and Earthworm Jim were transformative for this, IMO.

 

[TexMex]

Yep. Loved Earthworm Jim as a kid. But, by far, Wild 9 is their best game. I just recently bought a PSone copy. Really, really great game.

 

[RagnarokIV]

I think Perry deserved praise back then for combining amazing animations with tight gameplay. Aladdin and Earthworm Jim were transformative for this, IMO.

100%
Earthworm Jim blew my mind, it wasn't animated sprites - it was playing a cartoon.

Interacting with a cartoon with the MegaDrive blasting out the most amazing music.

After that (and unrelated to Shiny) The Terminator on Mega CD changed my life.

 

[Krathoon]

Messiah is kind of a pain in the ass to setup on modern computers. The gog version does not have the latest patch and the patcher no longer works in Win10.

Also, if you do get it patched, it asks for the audio cd. Fortunatley, I still have my cd.

gog needs to update the game. Also, there is a game breaking bug if you don't have the patch.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

100%
Earthworm Jim blew my mind, it wasn't animated sprites - it was playing a cartoon.

Interacting with a cartoon with the MegaDrive blasting out the most amazing music.

After that (and unrelated to Shiny) The Terminator on Mega CD changed my life.

Terminator was extremely related to Shiny. Those Virgin Games releases are all inspired by Perry.

 

[Puscifer]

I wish Enter the Matrix got a proper development time. It was on the edge of greatness and needed more balancing because half way through the game the best way to finish it was slow down and disarms.

 

[WitchHunter]

Not much has changed since the 90s and early 2000s regards to gameplay in modern games.

 

[Krathoon]

Also, you might as well run the 3dfx version of Messiah. The Direct3D version does not play the cutscenes right. It does not fit them to the screen.

 

[Bodom78]

This thread gave me those nostalgia feels

 

[Scotty W]

David Perry really made some greats back in the day.

David Perry (game developer) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I can't speak for his PS1 era out put, but on the contrary, he never made a single great game. He always came close, but steered away at the last moment.

Cool Spot and Aladdin are wonderfully engineered games that rely too heavily on difficulty spikes and rental gates.

EWJ is similar. Great design and aestheitics, horribly unfun. The Psycrow levels are a drain on your resources, Heck is cramped, Down the Tubes has one of the worst sections in all of gaming, bungee jumping is beyond frustrating, and Peter Puppy is the worst thing in all gaming.

 

[Krathoon]

Getting Messiah patched and working did royally piss me off today. I had to patch it in a WinXP VM to get it to work. Then, the damn thing now needs the music cd because the patch replaced the executables. Also, my mounting program does not support music cds for some stupid reason.

It was like a chain reaction of bullshit.

 

[Neon Xenon]

Of the Shiny games that I played, Earthworm Jim 1 + 2, MDK, and Sacrifice were some of my favorites. Of course I gravitated towards Earthworm Jim as a kid, given my sense of humor. Same thing with MDK, but that's when I was older, and I do like the overall visual style and gameplay of MDK more.

Sacrifice would be my top game from Shiny if only for how unique the game is. Never played it on release, but when I bought it from GOG (might be the very first GOG game I bought), I played it and was blown away as I've never played an RTS (or any game) like that before. I should go back and really get into it, but I know it'll take some work to get it running on modern systems.

Also, the voice cast for Sacrifice is stacked, which gives the game a lot of personality.

Sacrifice (Video Game 2000) - IMDb

Sacrifice (Video Game 2000) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.

www.imdb.com

 

[Schmendrick]

Now that is a name I haven't heard on a looooong time.
Now I want to revisit the old Bullfrog and Westwood games, too.......

 

[Krathoon]

Now that is a name I haven't heard on a looooong time.
Now I want to revisit the old Bullfrog and Westwood games, too.......

DO IT!

 

[Krathoon]

I will make a Westwood Studios thread. I think Lands of Lore 3 had a memorial to a guy that died while making it. I will check into that.

 

[Dirk Benedict]

Remember Shiny? They made such weird games.
Here they are:

1994 Earthworm Jim
1995 Earthworm Jim 2
1997 MDK
1998 Wild 9
1999 R/C Stunt Copter
2000 Messiah, Sacrifice
2003 Enter the Matrix
2005 The Matrix: Path of Neo
2007 The Golden Compass

Of course, who could forget Earthworm Jim? The game in which you launch a cow.


Or Sacrifice. A game where you play a wizard fighting for dieties.


Or MDK. Murder Death Kill.


Or Messiah. A game where you play a cherub that possesses and horribly kills people.


I think the only companies that were similar to Shiny are Double Fine and Planet Moon.

Please share your experiences with Shiny games.

This makes me want to play Messiah again.

 

[Sleepwalker]

I liked enter the matrix on gamecube. Although I remember being pissed off you couldnt play as Neo and I didnt have a PS2

 

[thismeinteil]

Yea, they were great. Path of Neo was also a good Matrix game. Wish someone would do a full on remake of that game.

 

[Apocryphon]

My uncle had Earthworm Jim and my friends would talk about it at school, but I didn't care for it at the time. I was much more interested in Flashback, Castlevania, and the Shinobi games on the Mega Drive.

By 1995 I had a PC and when 1997 came around MDK was one of the games I would show to friends when they came over, along with the Quake games, Duke3D, and Blood. MDK had a lasting impact on me in much the same way the original Quake did. It had a very unusual artstyle, massive open areas with cool skyboxes, sniping with a massive zoom range, weird bombing and surfing bits, the strange quasi-parachute that let you glide. It was complete batshit and I really liked the alien world (which was actually huge minecrawlers) and the sense of isolation. I loved pretty much everything about MDK. The sequel had more platforming which was good and I enjoyed that too but something was lost in the transition to full 3D.

I played Messiah too. Possession, platforming, a futuristic world, and scantily clad prostitutes… what's not to love? I don't know if I completed it though. I think I got sidetracked with the Dreamcast and Omnikron, Soul Reaver (I would really like a Tomb Raider Trilogy style remaster of Soul Reaver and its sequel), and the Nightmare Creatures games.

I did play Enter the Matrix at some point but I didn't think I owned it. I remember thinking it had some cool stuff in it but that Mac Payne 2 was a far better game.

 

[Balducci30]

They were the company that got me into gaming. MDK specifically when I was a little kid. Wish they were still around

 

[Ozzie666]

Not enough credit here for pre-Shinny. They did amazing things with Cool Spot and of course Aladdin. Their technology and skills would power Virgin games and Disney games for many years until the 16 bit market fell apart. All those games owe it all to Dave Perry and crew. I assume they get the most credit for digi-cell. I think their genesis work is better than anything that came later. Yes they weren't Shinny by name, but those core people to form it and continue down the same path.

 

[GymWolf]

I loved ej2, mdk and wild9 when i was little, enter the matrix was also good.

Never played messiah tho.

 

[Hudo]

I actually liked Enter The Matrix as a kid. I thought the fights were cool as fuck. That being said, MDK is still their best work.

 

[TheDarkPhantom]

Earthworm Jim, so good. I remember the lead up to the release of MDK, so many gaming magazines hyping it up like it was the 2nd coming of Christ. Overall it ended up being a cool game, just not the earth-shattering release many hoped/expected it to be. Enter the Matrix was pretty dope too.

 

[Terenty]

Played MDK and Messiah for the first time a couple years ago, it's amazing how these games still hold up today and feel like such a breath of fresh air compared to today's stifled game design norms

 

[Neon Xenon]

Was browsing YouTube and this Interplay Promotional VHS from 1997 popped up.


I always liked these promotional VHS tapes. I should look for more.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Wasn't MDK the first game with a sniper zoom?

It sure is the first game I remember having sniper zoom.
I was in awe of that feature when I was a kid.

Also, Earthworm Jim was amazing. Loved playing it on Sega MegaCD. It was pretty much the only game I kept playing over and over for quite a while.
Even loved the cartoon.

 

[Thabass]

*Remembers Enter the Matrix*

I would like to forget.

 

[_Idea_of_Evil_]

Doubt it holds up, but I remember Enter the Matrix was a blast to play as a kid.

 

[Raonak]

I have literally never heard of this name

 

[Admerer]

Shiny Entertainment was always doing something new, EWJ has some special animation technique, MDK had a "real" zoom function and Messiah had one of the first implementations of LOD on the characters which allowed more detail when you got closer to character models, if I remember correctly.

 

[Team Andromeda]

I remember them for basically just making 2 decent games in MDK and Stunt Cop

 

[calistan]

It sure is the first game I remember having sniper zoom.
I was in awe of that feature when I was a kid.

It beat Goldeneye to the punch by a few months. Back in the days when developers could still invent things nobody had imagined before.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

I think Perry deserved praise back then for combining amazing animations with tight gameplay. Aladdin and Earthworm Jim were transformative for this, IMO.

Tight gameplay, Earthworm Jim?
Floaty jumping, almost every action has a slight delay, completely wonky hitboxes (but extremely convenient for the enemies), hard to tell the background from the platforms if not playing on a CRT, virtually no feedback to know if your shots are actually hitting the target?
Super convenient game design where some walls are solid and others can be traversed just because, with no hint or logic behind it?

If the game just had legit hitboxes, it would be ten times easier. But in the 90s kids would gloss over this because graphics, edge, attitude, and toilet humour.

I can't speak for his PS1 era out put, but on the contrary, he never made a single great game. He always came close, but steered away at the last moment.

Cool Spot and Aladdin are wonderfully engineered games that rely too heavily on difficulty spikes and rental gates.

EWJ is similar. Great design and aestheitics, horribly unfun. The Psycrow levels are a drain on your resources, Heck is cramped, Down the Tubes has one of the worst sections in all of gaming, bungee jumping is beyond frustrating, and Peter Puppy is the worst thing in all gaming.

So. much. THIS.

 

[Scotty W]

I have a theory that because the assets were so high quality, they took up so much space, which meant that the number of levels also had to be limited, which meant that the difficulty had to be artificially inflated so that the game was not too easy to beat.

It is almost like western developers were incapable of a clean, simple and precise design until about 1996.

You can even see this in the 2 versions of Aladdin. The Genesis version gets all the hype due to the superior animation, whereas the SNES is much more precise and… fun.

I wonder if Shiny bribed those gaming mags to give EWJ such high scores.

 

[ManaByte]

Yeah… David Perry and Tommy Tallarico. Some of the best times of my life.

 

[Ivan]

Shiny was really awesome... MDK is one of my all time favourites, but everything they did was very unique and high quality.

MDK always felt like a console game, a bit out of the place on PC, and yet it was so technically advanced, required Pentium and worked perfectly, but DIDN'T require a 3D card. I even liked the PS1 version, a bit strange, but still good. Controls felt right at home on PS1 controller. It was an "inferior version" (that didn't exist back then, you just enjoyed games), but it was full screen and had better sound. THAT soundtrack...

Messiah was Shiny only in the name i think. It was a completely different team that was working on it (they bought them or something). I remember that PS1 version was planned and it was going to be "the most technically advanced ps1 game ever". There are screensots of it in old magazines, but it was canceled eventually. It also felt out of place on PC with the controls, but once you figure them out, it is great. Animation system was something else, really. Just running around looked next gen.

David Perry's work on Aladdin made me feel like I'm playng an actual cartoon before that and not in a Dragon's Lair way.

Just imagine new MDK for modern systems, I can't even try to imagine something like that happening now . third person game that can work everywhere, it's a hot genre and just imagine if original team did it with all possibilities of today's hardware. Man...

 

[MasterDerico]

Enter the Matrix and Path of Neo are awesome!
I still have my ps2 copies!

 

[SEGAvangelist]

Tight gameplay, Earthworm Jim?
Floaty jumping, almost every action has a slight delay, completely wonky hitboxes (but extremely convenient for the enemies), hard to tell the background from the platforms if not playing on a CRT, virtually no feedback to know if your shots are actually hitting the target?
Super convenient game design where some walls are solid and others can be traversed just because, with no hint or logic behind it?

If the game just had legit hitboxes, it would be ten times easier. But in the 90s kids would gloss over this because graphics, edge, attitude, and toilet humour.

You're looking at this with modern eyes. Find me a game at the time of Aladdin and Earthworm Jim that played as well as those 2 games while having such beautiful animations. Closest animations I can think of was maybe Prince of Persia and that controlled like ass.

 

[Krathoon]

Yeah. That is the infamous dog/gun video.