Having gone through… so much of Nitrome’s back catalogue over… oh wow it’s been a year at this point? time fucking flies, man. But anyway what strikes me is how little I stuck with a bunch of these games — and, in particular how little I played of their… pre-2008 output. In hindsight, it makes sense: my ability to access the internet pre-the-age-of-ten was limited to whenever I’d completed my work early in the computer lab, or whenever we went through the back fence to my aunt’s place every Friday afternoon. Oftentimes I’d go full weeks in between playing games — not to mention how different computers would mean different save files, resetting my progress to the beginning each time — and oftentimes those gaps often meant I had some new toy that took precedence over the Nitrome game I’d already gone through: a new Poptropica island, maybe, or some new website like Crazymonkey.com or the Bubblegum Arcade. My impression is, a lot of times, I’d pick something up, give it my best shot, then never play it again, save for a couple I’d return to, a couple (like Frost Bite or Hot Air 2 or Off The Rails) that stuck around my memory. But even then, there was nothing here I was super gung-ho about beating, nothing here I’d super try to revisit.
Until this one: Dirk Valentine. I can’t begin to tell you just why this game was what kid me latched onto, why this one was what truly began the process of making him a Nitromehead — iirc my family didn’t get access to home internet until, like, January 2009 at the earliest — but god it got its claws in me. It was my first exposure to steampunk, and with no Horrible Histories to tell me otherwise, this was just what I assumed the Victorian era was like. It was my first exposure to the Wilhelm Scream, and even back then eight-year-old-me knew that was the funniest shit ever — he’d shoot enemies that weren’t even in his way just so he had a chance to hear that soundbyte again. He loved the core gameplay conceit: how the chaingun you wield is both your main way of fighting enemies and your main method of getting through the level. He loved bouncing shots off the walls, he loved making those weird webs of ricocheted chains that he could jump up and climb. He loved all the mechanics the game kept introducing, all the enemies, all the ways they impacted the chaingun. It gave me the brainworms, long, long before that word even entered my vernacular… yet I was never able to beat it. I made it far, near the end, but there was always one level I couldn’t beat. I was eight, I was nine, I was ten, and I’d keep coming back, keep thinking maybe this would be the moment I was good enough of a gamer to get through my plateau, but it never came to be. I’d reach whatever level it was that walled me (I can’t quite remember but it was probably Control Room 1) and I wouldn’t be able to beat the game before computer time was over, before next week gave me something else to fixate on. It was… certainly important in the context of my history with flash games, yet I never actually beat it. I never actually saved Queen Victoria from the evil Baron Battenburg.
At least, not until today.
…Playing the game again, in 2024, with whatever wisdom the past sixteen years have or haven't given me, what I’ve realized is that this is a fairly major step forward, at least in the context of Nitrome’s progression as a studio. This is their first game to have a proper story — or at least, more of a story than a ‘congratulations, you beat the game!’ screen and maybe a quick intro cutscene — your mission control’s consistent chiming in doing a lot to lend a sense of context and gravitas to your actions, even if, perhaps, his dialogue could’ve used some commas. I like, too, that the background changes as you go outside the fortress to inside then back to outside again: it’s baby steps compared to some of Nitrome’s later stuff (simply adding a filter to the outside background and then taking it out again), but it helps lend a sense of overall progression as you fight through the titular Fortress of Steam. Beyond that, a lot of what kid me found fun about it still applies today: how cool it is that your gun makes this both a shooter and a platformer, all the cool things the game explores with that mechanic, and how… frenetic the game grows to be, especially near the end (kid me’s dreams to beat this would’ve been absolutely doomed, lmao). I’m still fond of all the sounds you make as you do things: the screams the enemies make when they die, the extremely bitcrushed voicelines as you get a game over or pick up a healing item, they all lend so much character. I think perhaps the boss battles felt rather basic (and a bit of a crapshoot as to whether you get hit upon entering the arena or not), and in general it’s… easier to softlock yourself in a bunch of levels than I feel it maybe should be, but as a whole this was a blast. Perhaps it’s not fully polished to the point where I could call it one of the best Nitrome games nowadays — moving the mouse to move the camera was… rather rough, the recording quality of the music wasn’t that great and there were a non-zero amount of points where shooting the chaingun didn’t feel like it maybe should — but if any game has done enough to earn the right of pet favourite, it’s this one. God knows how much past me loved this. And I reckon he would've been happy to know that I eventually got good enough to finally clear this, even if it, uh, took a good bit longer than he presumed it would.
Until this one: Dirk Valentine. I can’t begin to tell you just why this game was what kid me latched onto, why this one was what truly began the process of making him a Nitromehead — iirc my family didn’t get access to home internet until, like, January 2009 at the earliest — but god it got its claws in me. It was my first exposure to steampunk, and with no Horrible Histories to tell me otherwise, this was just what I assumed the Victorian era was like. It was my first exposure to the Wilhelm Scream, and even back then eight-year-old-me knew that was the funniest shit ever — he’d shoot enemies that weren’t even in his way just so he had a chance to hear that soundbyte again. He loved the core gameplay conceit: how the chaingun you wield is both your main way of fighting enemies and your main method of getting through the level. He loved bouncing shots off the walls, he loved making those weird webs of ricocheted chains that he could jump up and climb. He loved all the mechanics the game kept introducing, all the enemies, all the ways they impacted the chaingun. It gave me the brainworms, long, long before that word even entered my vernacular… yet I was never able to beat it. I made it far, near the end, but there was always one level I couldn’t beat. I was eight, I was nine, I was ten, and I’d keep coming back, keep thinking maybe this would be the moment I was good enough of a gamer to get through my plateau, but it never came to be. I’d reach whatever level it was that walled me (I can’t quite remember but it was probably Control Room 1) and I wouldn’t be able to beat the game before computer time was over, before next week gave me something else to fixate on. It was… certainly important in the context of my history with flash games, yet I never actually beat it. I never actually saved Queen Victoria from the evil Baron Battenburg.
At least, not until today.
…Playing the game again, in 2024, with whatever wisdom the past sixteen years have or haven't given me, what I’ve realized is that this is a fairly major step forward, at least in the context of Nitrome’s progression as a studio. This is their first game to have a proper story — or at least, more of a story than a ‘congratulations, you beat the game!’ screen and maybe a quick intro cutscene — your mission control’s consistent chiming in doing a lot to lend a sense of context and gravitas to your actions, even if, perhaps, his dialogue could’ve used some commas. I like, too, that the background changes as you go outside the fortress to inside then back to outside again: it’s baby steps compared to some of Nitrome’s later stuff (simply adding a filter to the outside background and then taking it out again), but it helps lend a sense of overall progression as you fight through the titular Fortress of Steam. Beyond that, a lot of what kid me found fun about it still applies today: how cool it is that your gun makes this both a shooter and a platformer, all the cool things the game explores with that mechanic, and how… frenetic the game grows to be, especially near the end (kid me’s dreams to beat this would’ve been absolutely doomed, lmao). I’m still fond of all the sounds you make as you do things: the screams the enemies make when they die, the extremely bitcrushed voicelines as you get a game over or pick up a healing item, they all lend so much character. I think perhaps the boss battles felt rather basic (and a bit of a crapshoot as to whether you get hit upon entering the arena or not), and in general it’s… easier to softlock yourself in a bunch of levels than I feel it maybe should be, but as a whole this was a blast. Perhaps it’s not fully polished to the point where I could call it one of the best Nitrome games nowadays — moving the mouse to move the camera was… rather rough, the recording quality of the music wasn’t that great and there were a non-zero amount of points where shooting the chaingun didn’t feel like it maybe should — but if any game has done enough to earn the right of pet favourite, it’s this one. God knows how much past me loved this. And I reckon he would've been happy to know that I eventually got good enough to finally clear this, even if it, uh, took a good bit longer than he presumed it would.