ROM CHECK FAIL

March 25, 2008 11:53 PM

ROM CHECK FAILis a goofy little PC game, in the classic 1980's arcade/home console genre of ... err ... Use the space bar to fire your blaster. Or sword. (Or jump.) Use the arrow keys to control your ... guy as if you were playing ... that ... classic game. Eliminate all the enemy, well, things in the expected way, and go on to the next maze/planet/cave/highway. Look, just play it, OK? It's fun!
posted by CrunchyFrog (16 comments total)

grumblegrumbleNOMACVERSIONgrumblegrumble
posted by brundlefly at 12:23 AM on March 26, 2008

(sounds fun)
posted by brundlefly at 12:24 AM on March 26, 2008

This is totally great. But man, it sucks when you become Space Invaders guy. Link and Pacman are the best.
posted by painquale at 12:26 AM on March 26, 2008

Okay, that was fun and I see that the ADDness is part of the joke, but it would be about 1000x more fun and 1000x less "they think they're so smart, har har..." if they gave you some actual time to play around before going all ADD on you... At least on the early levels. At the very least, the time between switching ROMs should occassionally be random and give you some free whomping time when you're lucky. (Or make you sweat bullets as Space Invaders' ship vs. Qix Sparx) Speeaking of, there's not equal representation here... Is a little Qix diamond physics too hard to code up? No Octoroks love? Tetris? Bub and Bob?
posted by Skwirl at 12:54 AM on March 26, 2008

grumblegrumbleNOMACVERSIONgrumblegrumble

grumblegrumblePARALLELS/BOOTCAMPgrumblegrumble?
posted by juv3nal at 2:28 AM on March 26, 2008

Alt+Enter to go fullscreen, if it's not already obvious.
posted by Tzarius at 3:03 AM on March 26, 2008

Can anyone finish the game a second time through (on "the princess is in another faster" mode)? I got up to level 12 on the second time around, but it's really luck dependent. This is a fun little time waster.
posted by painquale at 5:43 AM on March 26, 2008

I'm afraid I'm with Skwirl on this one -- actually playing any of those sub-games would be fun if they ran a bit longer, or if there were "switch conditions" or something, but as it is I didn't really enjoy it. Although I do appreciate the ambition and creativity involved.
posted by Shepherd at 6:18 AM on March 26, 2008

This is fun, aggravatingly addicting, too.

Although I admit this answers the question of "who would win in a fight between video game characters", the answer being the Defender ship.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 8:12 AM on March 26, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

the irony... 2.8 megabytes of compressed executable to emulate a 64k RAM machine...
posted by nielm at 8:35 AM on March 26, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

IS ROM CHECK FAIL an embedded MAME ROM, or a native C/C++ Windows game? If the former, is it possible to get it running with MAME on a non-Windows machine?

-- another person who's to cheap to buy a copy of Windows
posted by acb at 8:43 AM on March 26, 2008

grumblegrumblePARALLELS/BOOTCAMPgrumblegrumble?

grumblegrumblePOWERPCgrumblegrumble
posted by King Bee at 9:30 AM on March 26, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Actually, looking at it, it appears to be largely written in Python (though the source is not included). I wonder whether the author could be persuaded to make it available for non-Windows users.
posted by acb at 9:33 AM on March 26, 2008

Seems to run fine in WINE. Ha, I'm going to try out some of the other entries in the VGNG competition. Corporate Moped Horde! It's an actual game!
posted by LogicalDash at 10:40 AM on March 26, 2008

Huh. Kind of interesting, but some of the levels make play kind of hit or miss with various game/enemy combinations. The Space Invaders base is worthless in anything but a clear field, likewise the Spy Hunter car is kind of limited. And what the hell is Mario's attack supposed to be. Kind of cute for the download and five spare minutes...
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:44 PM on March 26, 2008

Although I admit this answers the question of "who would win in a fight between video game characters", the answer being the Defender ship.

What, was this ever in doubt?
posted by JHarris at 4:42 AM on March 27, 2008