Castle of the Winds

There's nothing that stirs my innermost geek like Freeware and Shareware from the 90s. Nothing made me happier as a kid sitting on an old Gateway 2000 with a bad sound card and a blown Video card (Both thanks to me and my "Creative" ways of forcing my PC to run hot ALL THE TIME) and playing games with graphics straight from good old MS Paint.

So anyway, I'm sitting here looking at my Zelda Classic review and thinking "Wow, I should start reviewing old Shareware, like at all these Freeware sites on the net nowadays." Hell, it used to take aeons to get CDs of these kinda games, now I can download them with my Cable Internet in like two seconds. It's a good trip down memory lane (Bad hairdo, crappy t-shirts, Tortilla-chips eating Kirk), plus kinda funny in it's own way.

Anyway, on to the game. Castle of the Winds is what happens when you take Dungeons and Dragons and translate it literally into PC form. 2D completely flat characters (Reminiscint of Final Fantasy 1, but with tile-like graphics) with little definition basically acting as a graphical window of what you could completely play in a text box. Wonderful! No actually, I'm not being sarcastic.



Yes kids, that's an OLDSCHOOL character creation sheet. Sheets from Dungeons and Dragons are more complex nowadays. The little meter on the far left is your available point pool, per se. You appoint them to your different attributes (Yes, that's all of the attributes there are: 4), and go on with your "CUSTOMIZED" character. You know how people attack Final Fantasy 11 for having a simplistic character creation system? Compared to this, that is a literal library of complexity. God.

The game plays a lot like just about any other shoddy Win32 Paint game. You run your rear around some simplistic dungeons killing enemies, gaining gold, and all the other stuff that's characteristic of RPGs. Except somewhat simplistic. Yes, this game is somewhat turn based, as it breaks it down into "Movements" (EG: One step is a movement, one attack is a movement, healing is a few movements, you get my drift.). It's amazing that for a freeware game created by some (supposedly) 17 year old D&D geek in his basement, it has some complexity.



Deux, the shop. See a lot of patterns we see in modern RPGs? This is oldschool, my friend. Just like most MMORPGs of today, the EQUIP section is broken down into different sections of the body. However, this game is very lenient on what you do so far as the "Free Hand" slot, going so far as letting me hold money, hammers, or even scrolls in it. Not very logical when I fight, but still possible. As well, the equipment is nice and plentiful, but I will note that the equipment is pretty standard fare for oldschool RPGs, beginning with leather and proceeding with metal, you get the idea.

As well, an interesting thing that I wish modern RPGs would do is the cursing of certain items. For example, you're running your ass through a maze and get this sweet +400000 armor. Put it on? WHOOPS! CURSED! YOU CAN'T TAKE IT OFF. You have to go to a preist to bless it and make it normal, or else it won't be as powerful or as useful as normal stuff.



This game's graphics make the PS3 cry.



As a kid, I used to get pissed at this game. See why? You die like a mofo, and there is no easy save function. For example, I'll be trekking through the first level of a dungeon and some god d*** monster, a Goblin as you can see, GOES AGGRO AND I DIE. Of course, I forgot to save.

Still, this game is a great trip down memory lane for all of you oldschool gamers who didn't cut their teeth on the Gamecube. For us "Oldbies" of gaming, games like these were GAMES- games you sat down and played while listening to the new Nirvana CD while talking about the latest SNES games.

Man, I miss Windows 95.

4 star(s) out of 5

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