Mining

Heading Underground

I have mentioned Descent before, but I have to say, it still ranks as one of the best gaming experiences ever. It was a dizzying ride, and made full use of some of those fantastic joysticks out there at the time. It was really the online cheating that made me so angry. That coupled with the pathetic follow-up, Descent 3, which seemed to lose touch with what made Descent 1 and 2 so fun to play, put an end to the franchise, at least for me.

Take An Energy Bath

Wild Backgrounds Rock!

Getting Dizzy...

As I mentioned above, one of the things that I liked about Descent 2 in particular was the patches that let you take full advantage of the Microsoft Sidewinder Pro 3D joystick and the Voodoo 2 card. The joystick allowed me to throttle forward and back with no sweat at all, and the buttons let me roll left and right to orient myself. At the very top of all that was the HAT switch, which allowed me to strafe up, down, left and right with such ease and speed, it made the game a total blast. When I had poured the hundreds into the Voodoo 2 SLI system (two 12 meg boards) and found a patch that got the graphics going at 640x480 in awesome clarity (for the time) it gave the game a whole new life for me. I even forked over the extra cash for the Infinite Abyss pack so I could play everything in full-blown Voodoo 2 awesomeness. I tried Descent 3 again the other day when I was prepping this article, and even with the Sidewinder Pro 3D, which I still have and love, it pales in comparison to Descent 2.

Changing Pace

One of the great things about PC gaming has always been the vast selection. When you get all fed-up with online cheating in Descent 2, you can take a detour and try something else. If you wanted something cerebral but still had that urge to take out your frustrations, there was Battle Chess, a fighting Chess game of brain and brawn.

Setting The Standard

An Odd Departure

BC4000 - The Best Yet

As the images above show, the first game was a royal King/Queen type of deal, and the animations were kind of fun for a low-res experience. Battle Chess II was a strange Chinese Chess mix, which I did not care for, but, there was another release called Battle Chess 4000, included in the popular Battle Chess collection, that was the best of breed, without a doubt. Killer 640x480 graphics (VESA driver support was key) and fun sounds made for a very fun experience. Too bad it relied on EMS instead of XMS, because getting it to run was hard at times.