[typing]
Ever have one of those
games that you play as a kid
that you come across it and you're instantly intrigued,
even though you have
absolutely no idea
what's going on, like,
this world makes no sense.
Everything is weird.
You're not entirely sure what your objectives are
and yet you keep playing it.
Well,
I've got one of those games today.
And that is...
Corncob 3D,
developed by Pie in the Sky Software
and published as shareware in 1991.
This particular release comes from
one of many various distributors from back then,
this one being Software Solutions.
It didn't do a great job, to be honest,
with its ambiguous 3D flight simulator title
and generic aircraft artwork misrepresenting the game.
But its developer, Kevin Stokes, was just psyched
to have a game available for sale in stores
since just a few years prior
he was still getting his start making screensavers.
The first of these was known as Inner Mission,
a shareware TSR program
that simulated flying through space.
Sure, it was your basic starfield simulator,
but it came out years before Windows made these more popular
and provided some vital experience in programming.
After some success with this screensaver,
he was fueled by subLOGIC's Flight Simulator
and his own master's degree in physics,
and Kevin got to work on coding the game
using 16-bit 8086 assembly language,
using an old book he found on flight mathematics
as a physics reference guide.
When this was combined with help from college friend George Welch,
the result was a 3D game that ran on a 286
with little memory and an EGA video card.
Corncob 3D
was originally released online through bulletin board systems
before catching the eye of publisher MVP Software.
Through them, the game saw promotion and retail sales
and found quite the audience for its time.
This success eventually led to Pie in the Sky
making the game creation system
which allowed users to make their own 3D games.
This was the company's real claim to fame
and resulted in a plethora of fascinating stuff.
But that, my friend, is a tale for another day.
We'll be looking at several versions throughout this video,
but the main one will be Corncob Deluxe,
which is the full version of Corncob 3D.
This was released under MVP Software
through Personal Companion Software,
a company known for distributing registered versions
of shareware games on floppy disks,
inside of a neat little orange and green package.
Otherwise, the game was available through MVP
as a direct mail-order game.
"Cob of Corn in the Third Dimension"
begins with a simple text screen
letting you know the game you've just started up and who created it.
Or at least it did in the earlier versions.
The one I had as a kid began with this intro story
filled with digitized photographs.
The story being that there was no World War II
and the Nazis never even happened.
Instead, aliens attacked,
destroying most of the planet
and enslaving almost everyone else.
By 1949, a resistance had built up,
and humanity is getting cocky.
And you play one of the gung-ho pilots,
striking back against the alien menace.
This version also added some other intro animations,
as well as an awesome AdLib soundtrack by James Collymore.
♪♪
No matter which version you choose, though,
you'll eventually reach the main menu program.
And, yes, it's an entirely separate text mode program,
which then exits and configures the main executable to play the game.
But, yeah, it's got all the stuff you'd expect from a menu and then some,
including a spoof option,
which randomly jumbles a new title for the game
in a parody of other popular flight games from the time period.
You can also get some registration information in the shareware version
letting you know just how lame your game is compared to the full one,
as well as the available quote-unquote "sequel."
This was the "Other Worlds" campaign,
which added six alien planets to fly around in addition to Earth.
And, what do you know, I have a copy.
So, we'll be taking a look at this as well.
Start the game by entering the Duty Roster,
which allows you to create a new pilot,
view your accomplishments
and bring them back from the dead,
if and when they fall in battle.
After this, you can either jump straight into the game's campaign
through combat missions,
or you can fly a training mission.
This is a–
[soulful voice] "Practice Mode..."
And here, you can fine tune the game's enemies
and fly an invulnerable plane,
so you can mess around without risking your pilot's life.
It also provides a step-by-step tutorial,
which is pretty cool for 1991
and even cooler for a shareware game.
Once you're ready to meet the aliens and die,
just choose a location and mission from the theater of operations
and prepare for takeoff.
Hopefully, you've got a joystick plugged in
because while you certainly *can* play it with a keyboard,
it's infinitely better with a good stick in your hands.
Though the difficulty in physics realism can be tweaked
to make it more challenging,
overall the game is very simple to play.
Push the throttle forward,
reach 150 miles per hour,
pull back on the stick and take off.
Corncob simulates a plane known as the Corncob,
which is based on the F4U Corsair,
and its Pratt & Whitney "corncob" engine, as it was known.
It's on par with other World War II era flight games of the time
and is surprisingly good for a game
that was given away largely for free.
There just weren't many, if any, other shareware flight sims,
so the fact that this one flies so well
and feels so balanced is just awesome.
You've got an absolute ton of controls
spread out all over the keyboard, though,
and it goes beyond just flying planes.
You can fly, use your rudders,
look around, shoot machine guns and missiles,
drop bombs, engage boosters,
toggle autopilot and flaps,
and even eject from your plane,
but more on that later.
For the most part, you'll be taking off from various airstrips,
making your way to objectives,
doing something to them that usually involves destruction and mayhem,
and make your way back to base.
Of course, about a million things can go wrong along the way,
and that's what makes games like this so fun.
First off, your opponents are freakin' aliens and UFOs and stuff,
so you don't get the typical World War II dogfighting.
Instead, you're constantly being bombarded
by anti-aircraft artillery,
KLA death ball homing missiles,
barrage balloons,
bee swarms,
mind benders and freakin' UFOs.
Any time you reach enemy territory, you'd better have your guard up,
because there's almost never a moment's rest.
You're nearly always having to deal with four or five things at once,
many of which are trying to kill you, like the mortars and death balls,
or trying to make you hallucinate and disorient you,
like the mind benders and power generators.
All this can be outmaneuvered,
or indeed destroyed with enough fire power,
but, man, this game is great at making you feel completely outgunned!
Not to mention weirded out,
especially when playing this as a kid.
Everything looks and sounds so...
well, alien!
Truthfully, Corncob freaked me out a bit
because it just seemed that nothing was right in this world at all
and all the alien structures and weaponry looked bizarre,
foreboding,
deadly.
Which is precisely how it should be,
so I have to commend Pie in the Sky on that front.
The filled-in, low polygon graphics
definitely lend to that weirdness,
and there's something about this generation of 3D games
that I still find absolutely captivating.
This vaguely-detailed aesthetic
makes things seem like they are truly horrible
and can inflict serious pain,
and I love that.
The images you get when you fail add to this even more,
with a surreal and final quality about them.
Sometimes you'll just straight up die,
other times you'll be captured
by aliens to clean their toilets.
I also love that when you're shot down,
or flying in is too dangerous,
the mission doesn't have to be over.
When you eject from your plane in the air,
obviously you'll go flailing around
and will totally splat on the ground before long,
but just pull your chute and you can just glide in a parachute
safely to the ground.
Once you're there, you can continue your mission on foot,
and wow,
this was just entirely too cool once I first experienced it.
You've got a pistol with a limited number of shots,
and a single assassin's bomb
that you can remote detonate to complete a final objective.
You'll even get to do things like land in an enemy base,
jump out to steal some intelligence
and then hop back in to make your escape.
Or even remote control your plane
to use it as a distraction and a weapon
while you're on the ground
poppin' caps in alien skulls.
While on the ground, you'll definitely have to contend with aliens and robots,
as well as those same pesky UFOs and homing missiles shooting down at you,
but if you can make it through everything, there's still a chance you can win.
Of course, getting back to base after this isn't so simple,
and while you can call for an emergency recovery van to come pick you up,
there's no guarantee you'll both make it back alive.
And if you manage to leave your plane near your airstrip,
you can even waltz around the airport grounds,
go inside the air traffic control tower, and, uh...
um... [chuckles]
make a new friend, I guess.
That's what that gesture means, right?
Let's be friends?
Anyway, Corncob is an impressive DOS game,
at least to the expectations of most
free shareware games of its day.
Not only is it a genre that was seldom seen in that way,
but it featured real-time 3D graphics,
a truly unnerving atmosphere,
and intriguing gameplay,
both in the air and on the ground.
And when you were done with the main game,
you could make your own missions in the mission builder
and even customize your own sound effects
through messing with FM synthesis programming right through the main menu.
Stick all of this in a blender
and add some totally subjective
but intoxicatingly nostalgic childhood memories,
and this here is a game that found a way to stand out
and earned its spot in my brain.
Even if you don't look at it in the context of its contemporaries,
Corncob is still an important game
because of what it meant to Pie in the Sky
and their subsequent business.
And it's arguably interesting from an artistic standpoint
because these minimalist graphics
are baffling appealing nowadays, if you ask me.
It may not have anything to do with the central core of an ear of maize,
but it has everything to do with old DOS games being awesome,
and for that, I salute it.
♪♪
And if you appreciate my appreciation
of this game with a silly name,
then you may find that the other things I cover are appreciable as well.
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