How did you discover BZ2?

[Warfreak]

My dad was introduced to Battlezone by a friend at work and saw it as a masterpiece (He still thinks of it as such to this very day) and grabbed Battlezone II right off the shelves when it released. As far as I can tell he only ever played the campaigns and so never played online let alone worried about getting a better modem. When he was deployed to Iraq the first time (2003?) he had basically left everything out to be discovered, Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun, Heavy Gear II and Battlezone II.

I started playing and feel in love with it. About 4 or so years later we got a competent provider, I joined the forums and here we are.
I think I started modding after I downloaded Forgotten Enemies and realized that the .odf were basically text scripts that were relatively easy to edit.

[RubiconAlpha]

I was a huge fan of the arcade game Battlezone. So much so I even had an arcade machine in my record store back in the early '80's. So when I saw Battlezone (FPS/RTS) released for the PC I got it day one. This was my first taste of PC gaming. I had always been more of an arcade and console junkie till Battlezone and Freespace were released for PC.

I had high hopes for Battlezone 2 when I heard they were releasing a sequel. I played the demo and bought it right after the release but was majorly disappointed. Hated the story line and online play was a mess till a few patches came out. Overall it felt rushed and incomplete. But once I saw all the work going into Forgotten Enemies and how many of the community's best mod creators all teamed up to release some really fun and amazing stuff I gave BZ2 another chance. I began beta testing for many BZ2 projects and even began doing testing work for other PC games and with Sony for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3.

Since Forgotten Enemies I have been interested in creating a mod of my own with a whole new universe to play in but BZ2 has now for many years been a moving target both with patch updates (with available modding capabilities) and community attitudes.

So for the time being my BZ2 mod project is on hold. But BZ2 was what got me into being more than a passive gamer.

[PowerB]

I got BattleZone 1 for my 11th(?) birthday one year (I think It came with one of my joysticks). My parents just couldn't get me off the computer! Then for Christmas two years later, I received BattleZone 2. My life was complete.

It's thanks to this game that I'm pretty smart with computers and such (because of the people I met), and I'm pretty sure it inspired one of those people to be a visual effects animator or something.

This is true for me too. I think, If BZ had never come to me, I'd be like all the other boys, playing footy and getting all the hot chicks..... (Damn you BZ!)

[Zax]

You have to search the net for forums like this one. I was lucky to find a patch for Forsaken, because it was such an old game. But because I searched it wasn't hard to find. Finding a patch for Outwars was harder but was eventually found. I became a tester after people noticed I was online everyday practically, fighting the forces of evil.

Project X!

Yes!

Another human mentioned that old gem.

GOLDEN POWUH PODZ

back to on topic:

PC gamer mag CD: I still have it downstairs. It might actually be a different CD, I forget. Will have to dig it up and get pics. I played that demo so much that I could deconstruct the scipts of the missions and do really weird stuff (Like being able to fight the endless waves of czars in the second mission).

The bz1 community was the harshest critic of BZ2, so everything I heard of it was negative, so I was biased negative going in. I knew a guy, a little black magic happened, and bz2 happened. The first time I tried to run the bz2 demo on an old P3 with like 2mb of graphics memory was a sad sight. Everything was transparent polygons and it took 30 minutes to load. Strange how far we've come

I utterly hated the demo of it. Probably for the reason I mentioned. Oh well, I got older and so did my taste in games and the hardware I had to run them. My old P133 gaming rig eventually was succeeded and bz1 ran much faster! Heh. I gave bz2 a shot on that and I can say it was pretty interesting. Whoever mentioned the tons of training missions was right, though. That was a bias I had that actually panned out.

BZ1 still has that magic feel I don't think will ever come to me again. BZ2 didn't capture that magic and I find myself feeling nostalgic. Gotta find that cd

Found!


How bz1 arrived to my conscience

Info in the BZ folder on cd:

BattleZone
Activision

Activision has resurrected its pioneering 3D shooter, BattleZone, and possibly spawned an entire new genre of computer gaming in the process. Remember the scenario? A certain meteor shower over the Bering Strait in the early 60's leads both the Americans and the Russians to discover alien biometals powerful enough to tip the balance of the Cold War. And before you know it, they're battling in outer space for the weapons that will ensure victory. BattleZone created such a sensation after its release that the U.S. Army began using modified versions for its own training. Now this great classic is back and better than ever! The gameplay is a superb hybrid of action and real-time strategy. From a first-person perspective, you control the production of and direct new units. You can jump into a vehicle and use it to fight if need be. Keyboard shortcuts let you give complex commands with just a few keystrokes, freeing you to fight and command at the same time. And that's good, because although you'll need to be sure you have enough units to defend yourself, you'll have to get in there and fight when the time comes. This demo includes four combat exercises and two missions. This update contains all the final game design code. If you're lucky enough to own a Voodoo2 card, you'll see some special 3D enhancements as well.

System Requirements: 3Dfx card (optional), Microsoft DirectX Drivers, 100 MB HD, 32MB RAM, Pentium 120, and Windows 95 or Windows 98

Demo

Can't get the installer to run, it's 16 bit, heh. Sad. I wanted pics of the CD splash screen. BZ demo installer is 32 bit though. (Also on the cd is ancient conquest and the golden fleece. If you know where to get a full version of this in English, I will pay you !!!! /offtopic)

Actually, here is a splash BMP off the CD.



Glorious 3D! How funny, everyone markets 3D nowadays but in a different light. I like how it says under forsaken "one of the best looking games around." It clearly is not, and it is right underneath BZ. BZ STAMPED that game graphically.

Oh well, that's all for my trip down memory lane.

[Commando]

I started playing bz1 in and within six months hears bz2 was in production. I purchased bz2 within the first week it was out, but wasn't really able to play it since I was running it on a 366 MHz Celeron machine with a Voodoo 2 and an ATI Rage 3. I've been playing off and on since release, more consistently during the beta periods until the last year.

[Zax]

ATI Rage sucked, just putting it out there, I had one so I know heh.

[Josiah]

my dad got bz1 with a few other games he was given by his bro when he got a new computer. Bz was the only game that actually worked, so he kept it. I wasn't allowed to play it because I would start shaking from excitement whenever he turned it on, so I could only watch him play it, if I was able to control myself. He like the game so much he bought 4 copies of the game, 3 for his bros, and 1 one for him(I still have the box packed away somewhere). I think a bz2 demo came with it, not sure, but somehow, he got the bz2 demo, didn't like it, and deleted it. I thought it was meh, so I didn't care about it. My dad had a rule, that I was only allowed to play bz every 6 months or so, because I was so obsessed with it. Around the time the 1.4k 'patch' came out, he started letting me play it more often, and I started modding it nonstop. Previously, whenever he and I played, he would totally kick my butt; after a few months of modding, he couldn't, and much to his annoyance, still can't touch me the slightest, in strat or dm. Not to say I'm amazing or something, he just never plays it.

A little before the 1.3ta5 patch came out, I illegally acquired bz2, and loved it straight off because of it's moddability; I even bought the disk. What's really funny is that I didn't even think about any patches that might of existed, so I modded 1.0 to my hearts content. Now I don't know how this happened, but whenever mr spock started releasing 'patches', my dad actually thought they were the real thing, so I hung around his forum for awhile, not knowing about any other bz1/2 forums. I'm sorry to say this, but I think I actually believed the crap about the bz1 club, and always shied away from it. I think it was when ta5 was released that I found out about bzu, and I more or less became disillusioned with the entirety of bz1.net. I think. Anyways, when I discovered that there were actually patches for bz2, and the mods, I just about died from excitement.

You know the rest, from n00b to average modder, I was on bzu...

Somewhere in there I finally overcame my super adrenaline rush whenever I saw the game. Not completely, like the other day when I played bz1 with my sister and dad, when he sneaked 5 rocket tanks with comets behind my base while I was off toying with his base. Thankfully they just used their shadowers, much to his irritation, and my elation.

It's thanks to this game that I'm pretty smart with computers and such (because of the people I met), and I'm pretty sure it inspired one of those people to be a visual effects animator or something.

this is true for me too, maybe to a lesser extent, but still true.

ATI Rage sucked, just putting it out there, I had one so I know heh.

same

[Red Devil]

i was browsing through an 'Electronic Boutique' (seriously???) and spotted a lone Battlezone Gold frantically waving at me from the bottom shelf. i remember standing there, frozen in my tracks, staring at it, as if i had just spotted a not-extinct mastodon staring at me while i was walking through the woods. after that, it was inevitable getting BZ2.

[index]

i started playing when i was 12, in 2000 or near that. there were a ton of people if i remember right. i believe my dad got bz1 for me, and i just played singleplayer until i got bz2, which i looked up in 2002 or something. sadly multiplayer wouldnt work on both of them, or bz1 if im wrong. i found 1.2 googling "battlezone 2 patch" and whalla i found it. then someone told me of a 1.3, but at that point i was long gone from bz. gave my cd to a friend, and in the spring he gave it back to me. the end

[Red Spot]

As I have been doing since (still no succes) I was looking for some naval game that allows me to control an entire fleet (navy 'family' here), failed at it but my eyes were drawn to that green box with a nice looking hovering tank on it.
Bought it cheap and loved it.

Bit later I again returned, remember, looking for a naval game. Now I say a similair thing as before, but now it was an orangy box, with more than just a hovering tank on it.
Bought it cheap and loved it.
Since then I have lost/broken 3 copies and now have 2 copies that each costed me more than the first 3 combined (I just realised that this is the only game I bought that costed me over € 100,-.)

[Ded10c]

€100? That's nasty. All three of my copies (one BZ, two BZ2) were less than £2.50

[HitchcockGreen]

I rarely check the BZ2 threads but noticed this topic....

Eagerly awaited BZ2 to come out after playing the demo on the BZ Gold disk.

Bought the game when it came out.

Immediately after bought a new video card.

Ultimately, i was disappointed with the sequel but I played it regularly for several years.

[Zax]

I rarely check the BZ2 threads but noticed this topic....

Eagerly awaited BZ2 to come out after playing the demo on the BZ Gold disk.

Bought the game when it came out.

Immediately after bought a new video card.

Ultimately, i was disappointed with the sequel but I played it regularly for several years.

Undeniably it's because the strat component was so defined. It turned the tedium of BZ1 strat into a lightning speed power struggle and just made bz1 strats feel boring by comparison, not to mention with the large teams and all.

Take bz1 physics and put it in bz2 strat and we'd be onto something.

[Ded10c]

Somebody get Avatar down here.

[PCG-Oldfart]

Well back in 98 or 99 I was building a computer and bought my first PCI sound card by Turtlebeach called the Daytona and with BZ1 light. The was the first game I ever played on a PC other than the crap race game called mega racer that came with my 1994 Packard Bell system. I fell in love with BZ1 and while shopping at Sam's Club one day I found the full version of BZ1 bundled with a Thrust Master Top Gun joy stick so I bought 2 of them.

Later that year I bought a Awe 64 Gold sound card that came with NFS High Stakes so I started playing that and BZ1. From there I both Sports Car GT, NFS Porsche Unleashed and BZ 2.

I would play BZ2 for a month or so then switch back to NFS HS for month and would switch back and forth a few years until I started playing NFS Hot Pursuit 2. Since 2004 I've rarely played BZ2 online because of the lack of time and ability to sit for long period of time.

I still like BZ2 and appreciate all the work people have done to make new things for the game.