Although
I am, for the most part, alone in my contention that The
Elder Scrolls: Redguard 
is the best game ever, far more people remember it as an excellent
game. When reduced to its individual parts, this is essentially
an adventure game masquerading as a role playing game. And what
a game it was: tons of quests, open-endedness, intrigue, and
pirates! Yes, there was fighting and running and jumping but
90% of the time the game was pure adventure. Some of my best
memories can be traced back to Stros M’kai…

I bought Redguard for
$10.00, buying it more to see what it was like than really expecting
it to grab my attention. The graphics were ugly-beautiful: you
have to play this game to see what I mean. When I started to
play it, I recognized that my system was nowhere near as good
as the optimal one for playing it. However, soon after, I had
a better computer and was able to play it with all the bells
and whistles.

At this time, 3dfx reigned supreme.
They were the Nvidia of their time. They could not put a foot
wrong (until they did). Every game supported glide but the only
cards that supported glide were those from 3dfx. Conclusion?
A Voodoo was the card to own.

From the moment I started playing Redguard until
the time of 3dfx’s bankruptcy, I swore to remain a fully-fledged
member of the 3dfx army. My allegiance remained even to the point
that I purchased a Voodoo 5 last year on eBay so that I could
continue to keep up with newer games as well as play my beloved
Redguard. Of course, you can imagine the size of my devastation
when I found that Redguard was not forward compatible. I experienced
all sorts of glitches and distortions, particularly in the protagonist’s
head, while very funny were soon morale crushing when I realized
I could not fix the errors even with the help boards and forums
online.

Of course, the other option was
to play the game without 3dfx, in software mode. Although all
the textures were in the right place, the game was just too blocky
(think Azrael’s Tear use of the Quake engine)
having been spoiled by more recent 3d games.

One
day, while searching in desperation for some way of getting Redguard (one
of many forays over a 3 month period), I found an interesting
link. I clicked
on it with high hopes, ready to have them smashed to tiny pieces.
You can imagine my sheer joy when I came across Paul Gardiner’s
Glidos.
Here was a guy who recognized the sheer wonderfulness of this
game and devised a way of using
OpenGL code to code 3dfx’s glide drivers into language understood
by modern videocards. In addition, this program supports Tomb
Raider 1 (including Unfinished Business), the hard-to-find Cryo
title Dreams to Reality, and the markedly less
adventurish titles Descent 2, Carmgeddon, Extreme
Assault, Grand Theft Auto 1, Blood
1, and Screamer 2. 

The
file is downloadable as an “.exe” file,
currently version 1.24 that runs and installs. It creates a shortcut
on the desktop that is used start Glidos. From the menu, you
choose the game you are playing (and have already installed,
of course!) and select “adjust” to make any fine-tuning changes
to the graphical display. The display size range option spans
640×480 to 1600×1200, far more detailed than the original games
ran! (See the screenshots courtesy of the Glidos website). The
game runs normally from this point. Easy.

Paul advises downloading the 700-odd
KB program to try before purchasing it. The games all work normally
except for a huge Glidos logo that spins across the entire screen.
If you had a strong constitution, you could play the game like
this but for $10.00 (US), using PayPal, you get codes that remove
the logo and provide a crystal clear display of the game the
way it was meant to be. In some cases the graphics are even better
than what Voodoo had to offer at the time, according to Paul.

On
his website, there are game specific pages that offer recommendations
and requirements that
will make each of the games run as intended. Each game was programmed
differently and setting them up is slightly different for each
of the major operating systems. However, a neophyte should find
almost no difficulty with this as the instructions are simple
and methodical. Should you have any problems with Glidos, contact
Paul. The support
I received was excellent. Paul responded within 48 hours with
practical suggestions and advice. I got the feeling that Paul
has a great deal of pride in ensuring people are happy with his
creation and kudos to him for it. On his site, he illustrates
his interest in customer satisfaction: “Many people have initial
problems setting up Glidos, but get it working perfectly with
help. If you do have problems, IT IS MY FAULT; hassle me about
it. Well, it might be the fault of your sound card or graphics
card drivers, but hassle me anyway”. His site reserves [email protected] for
issues to do with functionality or payment problems.

He also has a links page that
highlights support sites for those people using Windows XP and Tomb
Raider and for getting “very old games on new systems” (VOGONS)
to work.

Monolingual French speakers (would
they be reading this review?) may be interested to know that
this website is in both English and French.

In writing this review, I was
aghast to discover that the Glidos codes no longer worked after
installing a new GeForce4 128MB videocard. Again, Paul returned
my concerned replies explaining that the codes change with certain
changes in hardware configurations. I also discovered that he
has changed the way the codes work, making it an online automated
procedure. Visiting the website (after paying the $10.00), you
paste the Glidos ID into the unlock page. You are then given
four codes to unlock the program. The program is fully functional
after pasting the unlock codes from the clipboard to Glidos.
From there, you run the game from the menu.

The
beauty of the automated code service allows the paid Glidos
user to get the code immediately
should the ID change unexpectedly (and not have to wait 24 hours
for Paul). Paul warns there are a limited number of times a user
is eligible to do this, but most users will only have to access
the site again should they install a new videocard. As noted
above, though, Paul is a flexible, helpful guy, more concerned
with satisfaction of users than whether people have accessed
the codes 2 or 3 times. The automated code service also allows
Paul more time to fine-tune the program’s stability and smoothness.

Be
sure to give Paul some feedback about the program (download
it and try it for free) to encourage
him to keep enhancing the program whether you purchase it or
not. Glidos is worth every penny of the $10.00 charge, however.
For gamers with more diverse tastes and a nostalgic streak there
are ten titles that will finally work stably on any modern videocard.
For the Just Adventure+ reader, Glidos brings four favorites
(counting the Tomb Raider installments as two separate titles)
into the
new millennium. But, for me, Glidos is a ticket back to a place
I dearly love that, like a hazy childhood memory, I thought I
had lost forever. And there is no price you can put on that…