View Full Version : Trying to ID an old game.
stephenrh
08-10-2009, 04:14 PM
My 92 y.o. father enjoys living in a retirement home and I recently gave him a Thinkpad to use to play games. He likes to play the pinball game but recently remembered a game he once played in hospital. He remembers that it had numbered "golf balls" of various colors that you tried to match and they would cancel. He also remembers that you could "cheat" on it somehow. He can't remember the name of the game but would love to get it again. I hope someone will identify it so I can try to track it down.
thanks awfully,
stephen
skaar
08-10-2009, 06:49 PM
Bingo?
Baloo
08-10-2009, 06:53 PM
Hmm, can your father remember what system the game was on, or what type of controller he used to play the game? Or what year it was even?
Going on some wild leaps of logic....
Since your father remembered playing it in a hospital then I am going to guess it was on a handheld system. There aren't many stand up arcade games in hospitals and consoles tend to have too many cords that can serve as a safety (ie. tripping) hazard. If it was on a handheld then it was most likely on a Gameboy, and since he remembers colored balls then I am going to have to lean towards the Gameboy Color (maybe GBA, depending on when he remembers playing it last).
Anyhow, all this is moot and I apologize for wasting your time because all I can come up with is Trouballs, which is a Gameboy Color game that involves matching and eliminating colored golf ball sized balls, but they are definitely not numbered. Screen shot below.
http://www.consoleclassix.com/info_img/Trouballs_GBC_ScreenShot2.gif
mobiusclimber
08-10-2009, 10:00 PM
Going on some wild leaps of logic....
Since your father remembered playing it in a hospital then I am going to guess it was on a handheld system. There aren't many stand up arcade games in hospitals and consoles tend to have too many cords that can serve as a safety (ie. tripping) hazard. If it was on a handheld then it was most likely on a Gameboy, and since he remembers colored balls then I am going to have to lean towards the Gameboy Color (maybe GBA, depending on when he remembers playing it last).
Nice use of logic, however, it could have been on a Game Gear, Nomad, Turbo Express, Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket Color, etc etc. More likely is that it was on a laptop, which means it could have been ANYTHING if he was into emulation. Barring that, tho, I'd guess it WAS on a laptop and it was a computer game (or even more likely, on a CD w/ lots of other games of the same caliber, if you see where I'm going). No, I don't have a candidate in mind, since I'm not much of a PC gamer and certainly not a casual gamer, but hopefully someone more knowledgable in that realm can be of assistance.
That is, if it's not, in fact, Trouballs.
Hospitals, airplanes, and other hubs of temporary stay often have games of the knockoff variety to entertain their patrons. The have these sets of games created or pay low fees to copy them across the entirety of their facilities so they don't have to pay the higher price of licensing the real deals.
I reckon that your father played some variety of Bejeweled (http://www.popcap.com/gamepopup.php?theGame=diamondmine). Have him play the original Bejeweled or something that implements its gameplay such as the excellent and free Monsterz (http://sam.zoy.org/monsterz/) or Puzzle Quest to find out if that is it.
Diatribal Deity
08-10-2009, 10:08 PM
This may have been NUMBER TWINS but it's just a guess...
http://www.icaniq.com/games/number-twins
Kid Ice
08-10-2009, 10:13 PM
Zuma/Magnetica?
stephenrh
08-11-2009, 07:33 AM
Thanks for taking the time to reply: as it turns out the hospital visit was only two or three years ago and the game was played with a mouse on an old desktop computer that had been donated by a former patient. There were around 16 balls; the object was to match pairs which canceled them and the whole game took just a few minutes to complete.
Atarileaf
08-11-2009, 08:12 AM
Sounds like one of those old Win 95/98 (possibly Win 3.1) games that came in a package of shareware games. Could be anything. Doesn't sound familiar.
NoahsMyBro
08-11-2009, 09:26 AM
The Windows Entertainment Pack collection came to my mind. These were a couple of packages Microsoft released for Win 3.1, and had games like Jezzball, Chip's Challenge, Tetris, and others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_Microsoft_Entertainment_Pack
I wouldn't be surprised if the mystery game was something on one of those packages.