GayBlade
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RJ Best |
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RJ Best |
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GayBlade_Folder_by_Ryan_Best.zip (8.54 MB)
MD5: 4b8bf6cd89a9606e5a56a87961889071 For System 6.x - Mac OS 9
GayBlade-v2x.sit (1.40 MB)
MD5: 9e55eb8b9cf8cc0758e20c77215bcd1f For System 6.x - Mac OS 9
GayBlade_Source_Restored.hqx (2.66 MB)
MD5: fe6cd4ba0931bdf8d74d5980d532f9de For System 6.x - Mac OS 9
GayBlade is "the world's first computer fantasy role-playing game for gay and lesbian adventurers." It offered similar gameplay to DragonBlade, but with satirically modern trappings.
SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -- Egads! Empress Nelda has been captured by the forces of homophobia and is being held deep in a dungeon by an evil lord. Only you and your ragtag collection of gays, drag queens, lesbians and muses can save the empress from the motley crew of evil televangelists, rednecks, neo-Nazis, FBI probes and jocks roaming the dungeon's corridors.
Welcome to the world of GayBlade, billed as the world's first computer fantasy role-playing game for gay and lesbian adventurers.
GayBlade is the cornerstone product of the fledgling RJBest company, which has begun shipping out the first editions of the Macintosh game to selected stores in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington.
"This game gives lesbians and gays -- and straight people -- a chance to strike back at homophobia from behind our computer screen," said Ryan Best, the 30-year-old developer of the game.
Best and its creative director, John Theurer, modeled the Macintosh game after Dungeons & Dragons board and computer programs that require players to form a rescue party and enter a fantasy world in search of adventure and worldly riches.
But GayBlade puts a decidedly new twist on the fantasy world. Players enter the GB Tavern to put together a team that can include gays, drag queens, lesbians or muses, each with their own unique powers.
Along with the normal arsenal of magic spells and mystical items for sale at the game's Magic Boutique and general store, GayBlade characters also can purchase a variety of unique weapons to save Empress Nelda, such as press-on nails, mace, blow-dryers and purses. Protection is afforded by buying aprons, leather jackets, tiaras and, of course, condoms.
The litany of evil characters roaming the 13 levels and 1,300 rooms of the dungeon include Evil Popes, Queer Bashers, Crazed Zealots and Homophobic Cops.
They are led by Lord Nanahcub, which spells Buchanan backwards: a not-so-subtle jab at at conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan, who was a Republican candidate in the 1992 presidential race and has been an outspoken critic of homosexual rights.
Since the game takes a decidedly political tone, the company said it will donate a portion of the proceeds from each sale to an as-yet-undecided gay and lesbian charity.
While GayBlade is the company's first product, RJBest is not waiting to analyze the impact of its game. Best said the company is in the process of developing two more mainstream computer games that will include lesbian and gay characters but not be geared to the homosexual community.
"We hope to infiltrate the mainstream game market and subliminally educate people that it's OK to be different and OK to be unusual," Best said.
Suggestions from the author, Ryan Best:
- Roll characters by going into the Gay & Lesbian "Nursery"; Roll four different types and name them. They'll appear on your buttons;
- Once you have your characters rolled, go to the store and buy Lighters so you can see where you're going;
- Click on the center Dungeon door to go down;
- Double-clicking on an Item name equips or activates the item (so you can use offensive/defensive weapons and shields);
- Double-click a Lighter and the dungeon will appear;
- Walk around using the Arrow keys. You'll encounter monsters;
- Each character takes a turn Fighting or Evading;
- Return to where you went down and the door up to the castle will appear. You can then go to the Medic and heal your characters after fighting.
The original upload can be found on the Internet Archive.
- DL #1: Zipped archive containing GayBlade v2.5* for Mac and Windows plus source code. The Macintosh resource fork data was stripped from this archive when created. The game itself is recoverable and able to be installed. The .SEA installer of GayBlade is named "GayBlade.SEA", located in the top level of the extracted zip file. Drag its icon over onto StuffIt Expander's icon to extract this game to some location on your HD.
- DL #2: This is GayBlade v2.5* (1994) for Macintosh as a Disk Copy 4.2 image in a StuffIt v2 .sit archive. Suitable for mounting on Systems 6 and 7 or writing back to floppy media prior to installing onto classic Mac systems. This image is also located on the above zip archive, but has been restored to its original Disk Copy 4.2 format and with Macintosh resource forks intact.
- A few of the features of the game include:
- Exciting 256-color graphics.
- Cool digitized sound effects.
- Dozens of magic & cleric spells to work with.
- Over 75 different weapons, equipment and accessories to find.
- Over 100 different & horrifying creatures to do battle with.
- And more…
- Version 2.5's new features:
- GayBlade now also runs on 16 gray scale and multi-monitor systems.
- You can now equip items in the Castle before entering the Dungeon!
- More animation for spells, and creatures.
- Item icons now make an identifying sound when equipped.
- Windows are now centered on monitors.
- Interface improvements make the game easier to play.
- DL #3: This is the source code from the original zipped archive, with the missing resource forks and Think C projects recreated, so the game and editors can be built from the source.
*Note: The documentation that comes with the .SEA and the disk image installers states that this is GayBlade v2.5, however, the Get Info on the game itself returns version 2.0 - I believe that the game is actually version 2.5, because it has the new features also outlined above and in the included documentation.
See also in this series: Citadel of the Dead
CompatibilityArchitecture: 68k
Requirements:
- 2MB of RAM or more
- 256 color/gray monitor
- Color QuickDraw
- System 6.0.5 or above
Comments
Excellent! Hopefully RJ Best comes back to the Garden some day to see this.
I have uploaded a hqx with my restoration of the project files and resource forks that were missing from the source code. The resources for the editors were recreated manually since I have no idea what the original ones looked like, but they should have the same functionality.
Wow, good luck!
I'm trying to recreate the project and resources, I've so far managed to create a Think C project that builds a working game (not all the C files are used, and I recreated GayBlade.rsrc with some resources from the binary).
I'm currently working on the editors, since their resources are not in the binary, I'm trying to recreate something usable by seeing how it's used the source code.
@Franky: YW. Thanks for this upload it's a wee treasure trove of possibilities with some fun thrown in
@Duality: Wow. That's great news , whether it can be fixed or not, it's good to hear of the quick responses from the IA folks. - I have an unrelated request for you regarding the IA, which I've left in your guestbook...
Looks like the people who uploaded this to the IA are fairly close to the Internet Archive. I'll give them a nudge.
FOLLOW UP: Incredibly fast response from Jason! It seems these files are all that Ryan Best had. I guess they will need some fixing up at some point...
ANOTHER FOLLOW UP: They are very kindly pinging the related parties to see if anything else can be done. If I don't relay anything else, I haven't heard anything else.
@lilliputian: YW!
@Duality: As Mike said, I've uploaded exactly the original archive with the sources but without any modification... For decompression, I use "The Unarchiver" before copying and running it inside Basilisk II.
@Mike: Thanks for your intervention and, of course, your modifications.
Nicely done!
I was using StuffIt from the Mac App Store, which might have forgotten how to deal with some other types of stripped, self-extracting archives. I presume that based on the self-extracting archive in that disk image that these were generated by Compact Pro.
It would be nice to have the other files fixed. The level, creature and item editors look neat, though without their resource forks they'll need some jury-rigged UI resources to be usable, at the very least. In this case perhaps it'd be best to hold out some hope that unstripped originals are still out there.
Somewhat buried inside this archive's folder:
GayBlade Folder > GayBlade Source Cplus plus > GB Project > Disk images
is the install floppy disk image for Mac and Windows of the GayBlade v2.5 updated game. The Mac disk image is of course missing it's resource fork but was recoverable.
I've restored it and added it as the 2nd DL, above... Plays well in Mini vMac II (256 colors)
[Edit] The same (Mac resource fork missing) disk image containing the installer for the Mac v2.5 game is also located in the folder labelled "win 3.1 Disk images" in the root level of the "GayBlade Folder" along with the two Win 3.1 disk images. So there's a double-up of those images in this archive too.
@Duality: Franky has included the link where he got this from at the IA. The original uploader had upped it to the IA as ".zip", so I assume this copy we have is untouched from that. Likely the only chance to get a good copy is to try and contact the IA's original uploader... which is the long-shot
[Edit] At least the Mac game proper in the included "GayBlade.SEA" archive is intact, despite the lack of resource fork. The Windows side will also be OK. It's a shame about the rest, tho'.
Just drag the .SEA icon onto a StuffIt Expander icon and release the mouse when StuffIt's icon hi-lights (darkens).
Looks like all the resource forks have been stripped from this archive.
Any chance that we can get those back? Archiving the original folder as a StuffIt archive would be a good start.
The rsrc file among the sources is regrettably useless, and modern versions of StuffIt don't know what to do with the SEA file.
Thank you!