Ports of open-source game engines have been showing up for the PSVita since the day it was hacked. Now, the Vita received its own port of the game engine for the Blake Stone games called BStone.
What’s BStone? What are the Blake Stone games?
BStone, by Boris Bendovsky, is a source port for the Blake Stone first-person shooter games that were originally in 1993. The Blake Stone series includes two titles called “Aliens of Gold” and “Planet Strike” which are based on the Wolfenstein 3D engine with some extra features such as interactive map elements and textured floors/ceilings. They were published by Apogee in 1993 and 1994 respectively.
The game has a striking resemblance to Wolfenstein 3D but it has quite a bit more to offer!
The first game in the series, called Aliens of Gold, is set in 2140 and features Blake Stone, a British intelligence agent, who goes on a space ship to stop Dr Pyrus Goldfire from conquering the world with his modified alien and human species. The second game, Planet Strike, takes place after the first game in which Goldfire was able to escape. However, in 2149, Goldfire was spotted again and now, the protagonist has to get rid of him once and for all!
As the games are based on the Wolf 3D engine, the gameplay and graphics are quite similar but they still have a nice space-y look to them which allows the Blake Stone games to feel distinct from the game they’re based on. Furthermore, the game has a nice HUD, informants that you shouldn’t shoot and some type of currency system which allows you to buy food for HP.
What about the PSVita version?
The PSVita version of BStone was ported by developer “01y” and runs on all hacked PSVita consoles. This port has the following features:
- Audio support
- A nicely mapped button configuration that also uses the touch screen for floor and weapon selection
- Menus in 4:3 but the game itself is in 16:9 so you don’t have to deal with black bars on the sides of the screen
- Good performance as “Aliens of Gold” ran quite smoothly for me
- A nice LiveArea screen and icon
You may also try the first mission of the game without taking your credit card out!
It must be noted that this game requires you to provide game files yourself as the game itself isn’t free. That being said, the games are still available for a few bucks on both Steam and GOG so you don’t have an excuse for pirating them! If you don’t wish to spend money now, you may grab the shareware files for “Aliens of Gold” included in the link below which give access to the first mission.
While writing this article, the game was also updated to version 0.1 (2nd Vita pre-release) which brings the codebase to the latest version of the BStone.
Conclusion
To get this game, simply follow the link below to grab the VPK and data files. It must be noted that data files should be placed in ux0:/data/bstone. You may also get the game, along with its shareware data files, off VHBB as it’s available on VitaDB!
BStone for the PSVita GitHub page (the shareware files are only available in the initial pre-release entry): https://github.com/01y/bstone-vita/releases/
VitaDB download link: http://vitadb.rinnegatamante.it/#/info/393
Wololo /talk thread (further info): http://wololo.net/talk/viewtopic.php?p=423280#p423280
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