ADG Episode 211 - Pickle Wars (Revised)
251(Revised to address concerns brought up with a particular segment in the initial release. Episode is otherwise 95% identical to the original upload.)
Usually developers get better with each release, not the other way around...
Today on Ancient DOS Games Gemini's taking a look at Pickle Wars, a non-educational platformer developed by Redwood Games after Word Rescue and Math Rescue, being published in 1994 by MVP Software instead of Apogee.
This game... geeze... I mean, back when I first played it in 1994, because I did indeed play this when it was brand new, even back then I knew it was awful and that was at a time when I was usually a lot more forgiving as to the quality of a game, as that same year I also played Skunny Kart for my first time and actually enjoyed it... so if the younger me who liked Skunny Kart didn't even like this thing, then you just KNOW its gonna be bad! :o
------------------------------------------
Additional Information and Corrections:
* If you want to download the shareware version or pay $12 for a registered copy (in case you're morbidly curious), head to this page on the Redwood Games website: http://www.redwoodgames.com/pickle.php
* I had a link to the "freeware" copy on the MVP Software website listed here, but it turns out they may not have actually had permission to release a freeware copy of Pickle Wars. It's actually not hard to find, but because it may not've been legal I can't encourage downloading it, thus the only way to be sure you're getting a legit copy of the registered game is to purchase it from Redwood Games.
* There's actually a difficulty selector for Easy, Medium and Hard, but short of adjusting how many SaladShooter shots you start the game with I'm not entirely certain what it's affecting.
* A couple mechanics the game has which I didn't elaborate on are Keys and Carrots. Carrots are basically your health and if you run out, you die and restart the level. You can stockpile tons of carrots if you can avoid taking hits as there's no limit as far as I can tell. As for keys, they come in four colours and some levels also have you collect multiple keys of the same colour, though this isn't properly shown anywhere so you can only keep track of if you have at least one key of a particular colour or not.
------------------------------------------
Pixelmusement Website: http://www.pixelships.com
ADG on Pixelmusement: http://www.pixelships.com/adg
Alphabetical Index of ADG Episodes: http://www.pixelships.com/adg/index2.html