Post here! weird, rares or at least unkow DOS Games :)
>>3025184
Do virii count as games?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgPMgMPDq7E
>>3025192
it's nice to watch that, but I'm talking about something like this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO_8qqJe0BA
>>3025184
why do people seek 'weird' and 'obscure' games in a system? wouldn't you rather play games generally considered good? i mean i understand diamonds in the rough, but humans don't even have enough time to play all the generally popular videogames
There's a whole lot of weird DOS games. I didn't play this but it looks cool.
I played this one, it's pretty nice (has spartan in-game graphics, but I don't mind).
Some of them are pretty damn weird.
Save the forest and houses...
Yep, just like the title says.
>>3026365
wtf is that for a dvorak keyboard or what?
Iron Blood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ngWb7Y2qDo
Creature Shock by Argonaut Games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhuc_tLnPRk
>>3026368
It looks like traditional Unix roguelike keys, which are based on vi keys (at least the horizontal & vertical motion), which themselves were the de-factor "arrow" keys on terminals (before they invented separate arrow keys, I guess).
Here's an arcade game where you have to navigate maze and avoid the walls.
This one is supposed to be a pretty good shoot'em up game.
This one's for all the poor kids who never got NES. Now you can play the game on your dank 286 with PC speaker.
Ario Bros is basically the same story...
But if you're feeling brave, the dankest of dank games were made by Tommy's Toys. He made dozens of them. Some were just simple card games, but the others.... well he must have been smoking some good shit.
http://www.mobygames.com/company/tommys-toys
>>3026428
They should make this into 4chan banner.
All you're posting is ZZT and MegaZeux bullshit, even the most popular of that is weird and obscure.
Post something good like fottifoh's Crystal Pixels, pic related.
Or Janitor Joe.
>>3026352
Because that's where you find creativity. Most popular games are just rehashes of old games, you get tired of playing those games once you have gone through an entire console's library worth of them.
Also it's not my objective to play every video game, only those I would have fun with, popular or not, so time is not really a concern.
>>3026356
Reminds me of a DOS text mode platform game I made. It was just called The Game. The action was on a single 80x50 char screen and you had to make your own level before playing it. Was gash really.
I've never encountered another person who has even heard of this. Shitty Pac Man clone called Poke Man.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/poke-man/screenshots
Had this with my first (Amstrad PC1512) PC - didn't even know it was a colour game as I had the monochrome display.
It was hard to Google too, kept coming up with Pokemon shit. Lucky I remembered the author's name.
>>3026541
not under that name, but the layout of the grid, the smiley and the card suites as ghosts are very familiar. I also don't remember it being shitty.
>>3026523
>The Game
God dammit.
>>3026523
Do you have it still? Or have you lost The Game?
>>3026552
Pac Gal?
I remember trying to search Poke Man years ago and this was the closest thing I found. It was the same game by the same author, but with a different start music and in monochrome.
>>3026557
yes, that rings a bell. Pac Gal it is. Thanks.
>>3026361
Loved this! Hard, tho, unless the wind worked with you.
>>3026583
>Hard, tho, unless the wind worked with you.
welcome to firefighting
A not so great Metroid clone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdBrN5XuikQ
>>3026560
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,416944/
The life's work of Al J. Jimenez.
>>3026556
Keck
>>3026616
His name was Al.
>>3026472
Nah, the games i posted are coded with their own custom engines and don't use any such toolkits. I mean hell, you can write you own games in GW-BASIC or QBASIC without those toolkits (and you'll learn more that way too).
>>3026583
If you liked that one, give Pyro II a shot. It's basically the opposite idea...
All the good DOS games run on dank 286 with EGA card, or earlier. That's when PC gaming really peaked.
>>3026597
>y cant talos crawl
>>3026597
Jesus, this is the kind of garbage that should be on Ross's Game Dungeon.
Did any Britfags here used to buy mail order shareware? In the mid 90s I used to regularly order games, images, apps, etc usually for less than £1 from this outfit called A1 Shareware.
The order came on 1 or more floppy discs, along with a catalogue application (which generated an order form from your selection).
It also came with this "free sample" - Danny's First Program. Some shitty edutainment thing for kids, written with the Borland graphics library.
I remember "hacking" it with a hex editor to change the text to rude words. Including changing the title to "Danny's First Orgasm".
But yeah I got some cool programs from A1. A cool image processor called Graphic Workshop, Moraff's Superblast and Stones, etc.
>>3026476
Janitor Joe?
Janitor Joe.
JANITOR Joe.
Holy sh** anon, thank you, I've been trying to remember the name of this game for literal years.
>>3027164
"SOUND TOOLS" by
>Nels Anderson
From Framingham, Massachussetts I believe. I liked his DOS games too.
>>3026352
if you are on a board dedicated to retro vidya you have probably played all the classics and want something different
koreans man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vugzCKrnjA
>>3028761
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W17ifDtTSuY
>>3027347
It should be a double feature together with the programmer's earlier work, Sinaria:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBn6U_yBMLE
>>3025192
I wonder if old virii devs ever commented on his videos.
>>3026352
>why do people seek out 'weird' and 'obscure' music? Just listen to top 40 and movie soundtracks like everyone else, goy!
This is what you sound like.
Dank CGA games is what it's all about.
>>3025184
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4hJf2RCEk
>>3026368
standard movement keys for a roguelike
you get used to it
>>3031802
ugh. At least the C64 has a sensible pallet.
I read a couple chapters as a kid, and my dad never got to finish it because it wouldn't read on our 1541 because it was too trashed from playing copy protected games.
Hilarious because it was like the only game he bought and it was the only one that wouldn't play.
I got him the book version for a Christmas present a few years ago.
>>3026360
>>3033734
Well there's always the Hercules option.
>>3026597
>think this looks interesting
>get a "demo"
>get to the first boss
>the boss is kinda messy, so I grind for health and ammo downstairs
>accidentally discover a bug that warps me behind the boss's back and into the level exit
>start level 2
>think this is cheating, so I go back to the boss
>finally beat him
>game doesn't let me enter the exit, and throws me back to the menu, because it's a "demo"
hilarious
This game "Dank Century" is some of the weirdest shit ever. I can't even tell wtf is going on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srYqjw0e0TU
>>3035270
Just looks like a low-tech "check out our mode 7 in DOS" game.
"Rodge Rock in Retro Active" or "What if Serious Sam was a DOS game"
- dozens of enemies on screen at once on the highest difficulty setting
- full range of movement due to the main character having jet boots
- some surprisingly elaborate gore effects where blood and organs would splatter onto walls, slowly slide downwards and then rot away
- large areas with a pretty neat pseudo 3D-effect
Sadly, the full version is considered lost and even the guy who progammed it doesn't have it anymore but the shareware level is still widely available.
Probably everyone and their mother remembers Mystic Towers while the first game "Baron Baldric - a Grave Adventure" has fallen into obscurity.
>>3027384
Um, OK. Any others you're looking for?
>>3036029
Well that's news to me. I thought it was just the dank Amiga version of Mystic Towers or something.
Here's another obscure platform game.
>>3036102
Actually this is the game I wanted to post.
Heros: The Sanguine Seven
I used to play canasta in dos
This thread seems to consider anything EGA or CGA to be obscure. Captain Comic was not obscure, it was really well known in its day.
McMurphy's Mansion. I've never seen anyone talk about this, even on /vr/.
Castle Adventure by Kevin Bales
Wonderland. Despite the appearance this is actually a DOS game.
3-Demon. If this is well known, it's only because it's the first game you see on Abandonware sites which sort alphabetically. It was like Pacman but FPS.
Star Goose. Never seen anyone talk about this either.
Superspeed Deluxe.
Ford Simulator 1. The older EGA/VGA ones are moderately well known, but the first CGA one is largely forgotten.
Dracula in London. Have actually met a few people on /vr/ who played this, and introduced a few others to it as well. You play through the novel, more or less. Has multiple endings. Easy to finish but hard to win.
>>3036121
>an interactive fiction game by magnetic scrolls (the british infocom)
How weird!
Mixed up Mother Goose. Sierra-like adventure game where you give items back to nursery rhyme characters. This is the old lady who lived in a shoe. I also remember giving a steak to Jack Spratt and his wife.
Welltris. Weird 3D tetris clone. That guy wtf.
Total Eclipse. Real 3D game where you run around a pyramid solving puzzles before a timer runs out. Hard as balls.
Charlie Chaplin. Really odd game, you direct black and white silent comedy films starring Charlie, your films are graded on how "funny" they are. I don't know how that was decided, I was 5 at the time so who knows. I think there was a management aspect where if your films weren't funny enough your film company went bust. This came out the same year as Police Quest 2 and Space Quest 2 so you can see why it faded into nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im50AG5mbK0
CHRISTMAS CARNAGE, the hottest thing to download during Christmas on your favorite BBS
If you want more weird shit like this, check out Ancient DOS Games by Kris Asick (aka Pixelmusement). He's a fat brony kissless virgin manchild who lives with his mom and thinks writing a few things in QBasic makes him "a game developer" but the games he reviews for his show are not the usual mainstream stuff.
>>3036108
Those colors, it's just what the dankter ordered!
>>3036106
Amazing game, really. But quite difficult. I played the Shareware when I was younger. The real deal is nice
>>3036223
>>3036225
>>3036253
What the fuck, no one cares.
Get out.
>>3036148
>that guy
presumably Alexey Pajitnov. Not allowed to get rich but at least you can try for fame instead.
>>3036162
In his dad's basement akshually...
And his videos are horribly annoying because of the use of "Well...", you can almost make a drinking game out of it. But he does cover some non mainstream stuff.
>>3036148
I had that shit. My dad got it for free on some magazine or something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNFK8dfTx0c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3zDNDKK3hU
>>3037736
Even back then as a kid I knew that game sucked ass.
Speaking of German DOS games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9bYLes0iBw
>>3036148
There's a similar game called Blockout.
Don't know which one comes first.
Megatron VGA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekgbv3VDN2w
>>3038230
omg that was terrible. Vaporwave MW2 ripoff, maze level, beeper sound, clunky tank controls, 3D in a tiny window. Could he have made it any worse?
>>3038230
I like that the beep sound is the same as the one the PC98 gives you at startup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1RkvlB_wNc
>>3038230
WOW THANK YOU
total flashback
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLX-7XmeOto
It's like Dune but different
all these games look like shit
>>3040819
Are you perhaps in the wrong thread?
>>3038930
surreal
>>3039615
How much like Dune?
>>3026541
I tried this one. Looks ok, but something's not quite right with how the game plays.
>>3027164
>All the good DOS games run on dank 286 with EGA card, or earlier. That's when PC gaming really peaked.
PC gaming wasn't worth squat until Doom; before that time Commodore 64 and Amiga ruled all.
>>3040859
Looks like some RTS game. Here's review of Amiga version. Seems like an interesting game (if you're patient).
>>3040973
Well I started out with Amstrad CPC, then Amiga 500. And I really like the stuff that came before Doom a lot more. Even the DOS versions with EGA and Adlib sound are fine. I mean so long as they were designed that way from the beginning, not just halfass degraded port of VGA game with poor color choices. Amiga also got hit by that kind of bad conversion, the later Sierra SCI games are a prime example (those awful colors in KQ5 and SQ4).
Anyway I'm the kind of guy who prefers earlier Sierra AGI games in all their EGA glory, instead of later "upgraded" versions or modern "HD" remake.
>>3040973
I'd argue even those weren't good.
Most of the old 8-bits consisted almost entirely of shitty ports (which were more like the programmer desperately trying to recreate a game by simply watching VHS tapes of a playthrough) or rip-offs of popular arcade games at the time.
PC gaming didn't really find its voice, its originality, until the early to mid 90's, when they started giving us stuff you couldn't do on arcades AND consoles.
>>3041079
Nah, PC gaming started to suck starting in mid 90's, when it all went almost entirely to Doom clones and RTS.
Also 8-bit systems actually *started* entire series like Wizardry and Ultima. If you can only poor arcade clones, you're blind.
>>3041107
Those were the exception rather than the norm, though.
>>3041110
There was also plenty of good 8-bit games. I had a lot of fun with Boulder Dash, Bruce Lee, Conan, Barbarian, Winter Games, Gauntlet, Arkanoid, Gryzor, Ikari Warriors, Nemesis, Sorcery+, Spy vs. Spy, Paperboy, Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Knight Lore, and many others on 8-bit systems. Even 8-bit arcade ports could be good. For that matter, a lot of arcade ports to Amiga could be bad. It depends entirely on who did the port and how much time & effort they put into it.
The Amiga Castlevania is a prime example, it's unplayable. The EGA DOS version is way better.
>>3041138
This looks really cool! where can i find it for DOS?
>>3041164
http://robotfindskitten.org/download/DOS/
>>3026523
Damn it you made me lose The Game.
>>3037762
I remember seing ads for this game in my gaming mags, never played it though
sharky´s pool.
Me and dad played the shit out of this one.
Triplane Turmoil. I don't know how obscure this really is, it used to be pretty popular on freeware sites.
Interesting in that your plane's fuel, bombs, and bullets all add weight, so your plane becomes lighter and more maneuverable over time.
>>3041662
This reminds me of a similar looking game, except it was in pinkish CGA. Your plane started on a carrier, and then you could fly both left and right. The screen didn't scroll, instead it just changed when you flew to the edge. Does anyone recognize what game it was?
>>3036152
Is that a Freescape engine game? I used to play Castle Master.
>>3040963
I hated the way the tune played at the start didn't appear to have a time sig.
>>3041714
Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freescape
>>3041709
This one maybe?
>>3042009
Not that guy but Christ I remember this too. And another crap CGA game called Bouncing Babies. It ran too fast to play on anything over a 286, as I recall.
>>3042009
>>3042014
Sopwith and Bouncing Babies were very well known in the mid-80s. Pretty much everyone with an IBM-compatible PC had them. There's another called Paratrooper which could be grouped with those too, pic related.
>>3042027
Yeah I had that too, actually. Forgot about that because I was late to the party. I bought it in the late 90s in one of those compilation packages, with 5 or so crummy games on one floppy.
Of course they always showed the Amiga versions on the screenshots on the back...
>>3042009
Nah, it wasn't Sopwith, but I did find it by looking for Sopwith-inspired games. It was Wings of Fury. Not CGA-only, but I remembered playing it in CGA, probably because I was inexperienced and just ran the first executable I could find. Posting the CGA screenshot, for nostalgia's sake. Oh, and the screen does scroll horizontally, so I remembered that wrong too. It doesn't scroll vertically, that's where it switches screens.
>>3042130
>>3042240
Very early Pac-Man clone from 1982. The programmer (Greg Kuperberg) was a high school kid who wrote two other games; Paratrooper and J-Bird (Q*Bert clone). Apparently he went on to become a math professor at some CA university.
So basically Pac-Man with the maze flipped on its side and worse AI (the ghosts have no programming except to just run after you).
>>3042260
Yes, yes, I can edit screencaps in MS Paint too.
>>3042261
There was an earlier PC-Man with ASCII characters instead of graphics. It has more options to customize the game and also different music. It's also completely unplayable on anything faster than 8Mhz.
1983 fighting game "Bushido": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgvYHO4EiS4
![Final_Conflict_-_1990_-_Impressions_Games[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/EtNePZD.jpg "Final_Conflict_-_1990_-_Impressions_Games[1].jpg")
>>3025184
Final Conflict, had it on my first computer
only ever figured out maybe 2/3 of what I was doing
great fun getting tanks from Europe to America by way of Iceland and Greenland
>>3041079
>Most of the old 8-bits consisted almost entirely of shitty ports (which were more like the programmer desperately trying to recreate a game by simply watching VHS tapes of a playthrough) or rip-offs of popular arcade games at the time.
You forgot the obscene amount of Ultima clones. Seriously, what the fuck. Those things were a dime-a-dozen in the late 80s-early 90s.
>>3041107
Is full of shit. There were a lot of Doom clones in the late 90s sure, but the late 80s had as many Ultima clones.
The IBM port of Montezuma's Revenge, which is also unplayable on anything over 8Mhz. Compared to the C64 or Atari 8-bit versions, it's rather poor in terms of color, sound, or fluidity of the animation. Go play those instead.
So yeah, if you think gaming was ever original and 90% of games weren't derivatives of something, you're even stupider than you look.
Q*Bert clone from 1983. A bit wonky compared to the original game, on the plus side it lets you freely select the CGA palette/background colors.
This game is vaguely like Miner 2049er in that you have to walk across all the floors to clear the level, but 100x harder. I can't past the first stage.
Missile Command clone. 'Nuff said.
>>3034529
That game doesn't support Hercules; in fact you can't even use SIMCGA with it because it's a booter, not a DOS game.
>>3041079
>Most of the old 8-bits consisted almost entirely of shitty ports (which were more like the programmer desperately trying to recreate a game by simply watching VHS tapes of a playthrough) or rip-offs of popular arcade games at the time
iknownothingabout80sPCgamingthepost.gif
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFjphxbH6sGtSSAaXeRacPg
>>3042328
Ha, this looks like a similar "not Indiana Jones" puzzle game to Chagunitzu, Paganitzu, Pharaoh's Tomb, Arctic Adventure. I loved these, the humor in them was silly and the puzzles were sometimes really hard.
>>3042374
I remember this from my XT. It was shithouse.
>>3026541
There's three variants of this. Pac-Gal, Pac-Girl, and Poke-Man which appear to be mostly the same game with slight differences.
>>3025192
Wow, this guy is like, just the right amount of autistic to make very interesting videos. Thanks for the post, anon.
Wacky 1992 beat'em up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55nxYkuGggw
There were not a lot of commercial games in the early years of the IBM PC (1981-85). Only after the IBM compatibles became dominant did the trickle become a flood. Even so, it wasn't until the VGA era that PCs decisively took over as a gaming platform.
>weird games
>Text mode versions of perfectly normal games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9qAtVwSIV8
Infogrames - Alpha Waves AKA Continuum.
really interesting 3d platforming puzzle game... and one of the first, if not THE first doing it.
>>3042742
doing what?
>>3042751
3d platforming?
>>3042742
What the hell did I just watch
>>3038930
Coktel Vision had some weird stuff
Pic related is not CV but similar in style and strangeness
>>3042374
That's the very first game I ever played.
Thanks!
is there anybody here who is doing real mode DOS or is everybody emulating DOS through dosbox and the like
>>3042854
I set up a DOS system a few years ago, it was a huge pain in the ass figuring out the combination of config.sys/autoexec.bat/TSRs needed to run anything. Then the sound quality sucks because of the cheap shitty DACs they put on SB16 cards. I would not give up DOSBox for anything.
DOSBox is fine for the vast majority of games that normal people play (ie. 1990-95 VGA stuff).
>>3042860
anything up to and including a sound blaster audigy 1/2/4 can hardware emulate SB16 and roland MIDI in real time DOS (xfi dropped support completely) running alongside Win98 SE
but that's only if you're really dedicated to an authentic "emulator free" experience
but at the same time its also arguable that if you want authenticity you should just build a x586 box with an ISA card and just put normal DOS
>>3042871
I just want to play DOS games with crisp pixels and high quality retro sound and not spend 17 hours trying to free a few KB of conventional memory so I can play a mediocre game. No idea how we put up with this shit back in the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjZ_67Ttznk
>>3042885
People used to have a lot higher threshold for pain. Think even further back to the 80s.
>brutally slow floppy disks
>evil as hell copy protections that could fuck your disk drive up
>accidentally set the game disk on a stereo speaker and pffffffftttttttt...
>need a specially formatted save disk sometimes
>>3043006
>brutally slow floppy disks
modern discs might be faster, but the amount of data required during loading changed. So the time spent is comparable. At the end of the floppy lifecycle the drives were quite speedy. If a game did have excessive initial loading times (they kept in-between loading times in check usually), nobody forced you to stare at the screen during that time. Grab a drink, re-read your game notes, plenty things to do.
>evil as hell copy protections that could fuck your disk drive up
got anything specific on your mind?
>accidentally set the game disk on a stereo speaker and pffffffftttttttt...
about as bad as leaving a disc lie around with the data side up. That's not pain, that's simply taking care of your stuff. Well stored floppies still work fine today.
>need a specially formatted save disk sometimes
like a memory card? If your system could save at all, that is.
That "pain" you and >>3042885 mention is not unlike the inability to track-seek a music casette, or needing to sit the needle just right on a vinyl. Some people argue, and I won't completely disagree with them, that all this upfront work had an effect on how a game is experienced. Back in the days you'd sit down for a lengthy session and get deep into the game. Nowadays people just hit the shortcut, play windowed, watch their browser on the side, got some music running, etc. The "focus" is gone, in part because the work to get the game running is gone.
>>3043020
>evil as hell copy protections that could fuck your disk drive up
>got anything specific on your mind?
Literally all Microprose games but the Amiga port of Gunship was a special level of Hell.
>both disk and doc check
>doesn't even use a special save disk, it required you to save games on the main disk
>the copy protection check on this game was so horrid that it literally made the disk quit working after about 10 uses
>Back in the days you'd sit down for a lengthy session and get deep into the game. Nowadays people just hit the shortcut, play windowed, watch their browser on the side, got some music running, etc. The "focus" is gone, in part because the work to get the game running is gone.
It was a slower world in the 20th century and people had more time on their hands. Nobody would be willing to put up with that shit today.
>>3043035
>people had more time on their hands
We have more time than ever. We just decide to spend it on shallow bullshit
>Nobody would be willing to put up with that shit today
30 min install? Fuck that noise. I'll just go read and reply to tweets for two hours.
>>3043037
>So...Can anyone here, with hand on heart, really say those copy protections did more good than harm?
Um, that applies to every single copy protection in existence. They all do more harm than good, by design.
IBM compatible games could never have that extreme level of copy protection because they used a standard Shugart-type floppy controller. This consists of a controller chip that has a couple of hardwired functions and does not let you do the bizarre custom formats that were possible on Apple and Commodore drives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxUFLqFSOFU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXX-SQuKQCI
>>3043117
That was under Windows.
>>3038930
it actually has a sequel too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avz3UVRVKuk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdZk_pywg6Q
Arguably the worst platformer I ever played.
>>3043142
IBM compatibles failed royally at platformers; even a game like Commander Keen that everyone jerks off to looked painfully outdated by the early 90s compared with something like Streets of Rage.
Ninja: it was amusing to "control C" this game while it was running, as it would partially crash and the men would drop through the bottom of the game screen and continue fighting in a "broken" world. https://archive.org/details/msdos_shareware_fb_NINJA
Sadly, it looks like the archive web emulated version doesn't do this, so you will need to run it on the real thing.
>>3043142
4:29 giant dick monster
wut.
>>3042240
>>3043020
>about as bad as leaving a disc lie around with the data side up.
What do you mean here? Floppies were usually double sided weren't they?
>>3044157
He means a CD.
Like if you put a floppy disk on a speaker and it dies, it's the same thing as leaving a CD data-side up and getting it scratched.
Both can be avoided if you use your brain and look after your things properly. I agree.
>>3044165
Oh. I always put it data side up by choice. I know the aluminium is on the other side but most discs these days have a fairly sturdy lacquer/emulsion coating on the label side. I'd say it was more harmful to accumulate little scratches on the data side by leaving it down.
>>3044170
> not putting the CD back in its case
>>3044172
I do the vast majority of the time but on occasion I find it convenient to place them down temporarily. In which case I choose data side up.
I'm surprised that Helious hasn't been mentioned yet.
Sirius Software's Buzzard Bait which was originally for the Apple II and then ported to the IBM PC, strangely nothing else.
>>3044975
I'm guessing a lot of them did live through it, or enough of it to get a feel, but that doesn't make it much better
>>3045120
Man, pirate/cracker groups back then were heroes. They devoted their time, money, and effort to breaking this stupid protection bullshit so people could actually back up games and play them without destroying their disk drives, and they all did for free without expecting any monetary compensation.
>>3045380
There was a lot less to do in 1987. No Internet or anything like that. Spending hours breaking the protection on Silent Service was just something to pass the time with. I get the feeling too that some of these crackers enjoyed the thrill of breaking the protection more than the game itself.
Microprose were literally some of the worst for copy protection. During the late 80s, they went insane. Games had both disk protection and doc checks. Pirates! for example had, on the Apple II, Commodore 64, and Amiga, a particularly horrible scheme involving a nonstandard disk format, custom DOS, and sync checks. The C64 version of this was known as RapidLok and was tough enough that only the elite cracking groups like EagleSoft could break it. Because among other things, breaking RapidLok required completely removing all disk access code and replacing it with standard CBM DOS calls.
The IBM version of Pirates! did not have quite this extensive level of protection because >>3043109. Instead, the game would check for a bad sector on boot up and then perform random other checks as you played. The idea being that if crackers removed the first check, there would be others and so if they wanted to remove all of them, they'd have to go through the entire code of the game.
>>3038230
omg this freakin game. my idiot 13 year old brain decided this was a better buy than the duke nukem 3d shareware at the local pc store. I still feel the shame
i find your lack of corncob disturbing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfHFbEfd3cE
>>3040998
I know reunion inside and out. Played it to death.
>>3036102
>>3036128
A friend of mine had both these games. Totally forgot about them.
>>3045516
Tell us about Reunion. I'm keen to hear more.
>>3045678
I remember that. It was the shortest beat em up.
"Spacekids - Where's Grandpa?" was some sort of interactive cartoon for children that ended up beinge unintentionally creepy as fuck due to the mix of awkward, cheap early-90s CGI models and a blank, black background.
Surprisingly, a rip of the full version can't be found anywhere and there aren't even any videos of it on Youtube. However, the demo is still available and it seems as if copies of the full version can still be bought on some websites like Amazon.
>>3042596
So that's what happens when Franko: The Crazy Revenge gets developed by Americans.
>>3042238
No I grew up with Amstrad CPC, but later on a roommate had 386SX and I played a lot of the old PC games. There was a lot of creative stuff until mid 90's, when all the shareware started tapering off, and the single bedroom coders got replaced with teams and regular business, until you get to the Hollywood size bugets of today.
Also in the 80's they had cheaper PCs like Amstrad PC1512, Tandy 1000, with improved graphics (not just CGA) that sold quite a bit to home users, and also used for gaming.
So anyway, yeah I love the old 286 and EGA era stuff.
>>3042358
Well in the 80's, microcomputer gaming was a new frontier, so yeah a lot of original stuff was made (even if a lot of clones were made too).
It the machines were simpler, a single dude working alone could make a decent game in a matter of a month or two. So it was less expensive to take risks and explore lots of different things.
Later on the hardware got more complicated and capable, which means they needed more people and more time and a bigger budget. And they couldn't afford to try many different projects and not make enough sales. At this point they didn't have a separate "day job" any longer, so they just couldn't afford to take as much creative freedom as in the 80's. They had to really focus on sales. You can even see that in shops like id software, when they just turned Quake 1 into a generic space shooter, instead of the more interesting fantasy action/adventure game Romero had in mind. More details about that here:
http://www.gamers.org/games/quake/quaketalk.txt
>>3045531
Reunion is a game that combines several genres of games into one. However I will say that all of these 'minigames' are underwhelming seperately.
*The core of the game plays like a sort of adventure game, the downside in it being, that you gradually have to learn all of the steps you need to take in the game, what choices to make, when to take these steps etc. If you make a wrong move you'll eventually lose/get stuck.
*On your planets you build buildings and raise taxes like in sim city, but it's very superficial when you know what they need. For each X amount of people you need to build one of a certain building, for each Y amount of people one of another sort of building etc.
*When you take over other planets it's like a mine version of dune 2, one screen big, 4 types of units. But it's just that each new type of unit totally destroys all the previous types. You need the strongest types and A-move figuratively speaking.
Despite all that stuff I still liked the game, it was unique and sort of a puzzle to figure out how to win, which planets to settle, how get all the inventions etc.When I was younger I didn't really see the flaws and now I can still play it because of nostalgic reasons.
I'm not sure if it can be fun for new players today.
The game also has many things that were clearly unfinished. You can ask your advisors several questions but they always give the same answers.
Ex: What do you need? reply: more products ; how are you feeling? reply: awful
>>3042441
Maybe somewhere on the Internet it says that, but I have a DOS version...
> unzip -lv micro-league-baseball-2.zip
Archive: micro-league-baseball-2.zip
Length Method Size Cmpr Date Time CRC-32 Name ("^" ==> case
-------- ------ ------- ---- ---------- ----- -------- ---- conversion)
0 Stored 0 0% 06-23-2008 17:44 00000000 ^micro-league-baseball-2/
1321 Defl:N 525 60% 01-01-1980 00:11 23d88113 ^micro-league-baseball-2/firm.bbs
1400 Defl:N 725 48% 01-01-1980 00:26 150ac1fd ^micro-league-baseball-2/infofirm
80500 Defl:N 46175 43% 01-01-1980 00:01 38a27d6d ^micro-league-baseball-2/mlb2dat1.frm
377856 Defl:N 174791 54% 01-01-1980 00:10 2f91f47c ^micro-league-baseball-2/mlb2dat2.frm
1694 Defl:N 1500 12% 09-25-2019 22:40 0d108705 ^micro-league-baseball-2/mlb2firm.com
-------- ------- --- -------
462771 223716 52% 6 files
>
(it's from myabandonware.com)
>>3042854
At this point, there only computer I have is an amd64 laptop. I doubt it would run DOS, and even if it does boot FreeDOS (haven't tried), the sound hardware probably won't work, and anyway it's a laptop with a single 16:9 screen resolution (it doesn't even do 1024x768 or 800x600, much less stuff like 320x240). So it's basically a lost cause, except for emulators.
If I had a real retro PC, I would use that instead. I'm not phased by the autoexec.bat and config.sys stuff that others shy away from. I used to make boot menus to have different profiles for various games. It wasn't really a big deal for me, and that was before I even started getting into Turbo Pascal and other programming stuff.
That goes for other machines too. I'd rather use a real 8-bit machine, or Amiga, etc. instead of emulating. I emulate because it's my oinly choice right now.
>>3046105
>3043020 (You) doesn't seem like anyone who actually was playing on an Amiga in the 80s
Correct, I had a DOS machine. Started gaming on a 286. I have an irrational hatred for the Amiga, and frankly, shitheads like you are not making it any better.
>>3046069
>At this point they didn't have a separate "day job" any longer, so they just couldn't afford to take as much creative freedom as in the 80's
Do you know how many games were shitty knock-offs of Pac-Man, Galaxian, Ultima, etc? Lemme tell you, it was a lot.
>>3046108
;)
>>3046113
>>3046116
I was a kid during the 5th gen but I really never liked those games. Well, the computer games in the late 90s were good. The console stuff never moved me.
>>3046107
>I have an irrational hatred for the Amiga
I actually don't have anything against Amigas however their disproportionately Yuropoor fanbase is quite cancerous.
There were a lot of weird, but also unique, fresh and fun gameplay concepts in the DOS era.
A lot of which never picked up. Nowadays there are a lot of indie devs who help themselves with some of those gameplay ideas, and who are complimented on their creativity for doing so.
I remember Sleepwalker, which was very unique, and still is to day (only one game copied the concept, Casper on SNES). 2D sidescroller, you play the role of a dog whose master is sleepwalker into danger. You don't control the boy, but you have to interact with the environment, and with him, while he's constantly in movement, so he is safe.
Kinda like Lemmings, except with one Lemming, and much faster and with a lot of possibilities.
>>3046131
>There were a lot of weird, but also unique, fresh and fun gameplay concepts in the DOS era
That's true however they seem to have mostly been shareware/freeware. The major commercial devs back then stuck to a steady monotonous diet of CRPG/sports sim/war sim.
>>3046131
Earthworm Jim has a level "For Pete's Sake", which seems to be somewhat like what you're describing.
>>3046108
Yeah, I don't deny that. But you also got lots of entirely different stuff altogether. Just looking at the Apple II, C64, and Amstrad CPC game libraries make it pretty clear there was a lot of variety.
The thing too is that people wanted the arcade clones. This might sound crazy to you right now, but I loved me some Galaxian since the first time I played it at the arcades, and I really, really wanted to play that game again on my computer, even if it wasn't perfect conversion, or even that close, so long as it felt fun and exciting. That's why there were so many clones, but they weren't by far the only games.
>>3026485
but that isn't true at all. there are plenty of popular games that are completely fucking different from one another. how is jazz jackrabbit and doom similar? master of magic? sim city 2000? and i understand it isn't the objective to play 'every videogame', i am saying you would only have enough time on this planet to experience some games, why gamble your time playing potentially frustrating, boring, and broken videogames when you could be playing games that got popular specifically because they were fun?
>>3028730
it is physically impossible for you to play all of the 'classics'.
>>3028871
thats not what i was saying at all. top 40 is maybe 2 hours worth of music and isn't even comparable to literally thousands of games over the span of only 30 years where each could easily occupy 20 to 200 hours of your time. and i am saying why specifically target games you know nothing about? i bet you haven't even beaten ten games in your fucking life and here you are looking for games you know will probably be completely fucking terrible just for the sake of being a hipster who plays games entirely on the mindset of "lol nobody knows this game"
>>3046131
There was also a similar game (Builderland) where you don't have a dog but you interact directly with objects and try to keep the kid alive. Pic is Amstrad CPC version. Probably has the worst graphics of all the versions, but still very colorful and nice.
>>3045806
It can be found. I mean I have found it couple of years ago. It's pretty ok for nostalgia factor, as I only had the demo version as kid.
>>3041134
>gryzor
>ghosts n goblins
>castlevania
>good ports
pls
also i hope you don't mean nemesis as in gradius because that had no good port on any 8-bit computer except the MSX at all
DOSBox or QEMU + FreeDOS?
>>3046352
DOSBox, definitely. I don't miss juggling TSRs, config.sys and autoexec.bat to get anything to work. DOSBox just sidesteps the whole issue
>>3042027
I always loved how everything shattered when you shot it. Looked neat as shit.
Anyone know the name of this game?
2D sidescroller
You play as a robot
You shoot other robots
Black background
Thats's all I got.
>>3036156
I had this on Amstrad CPC.
I never understood what I was supposed to do.
![screenshot_47e99-wearing-a-condom-you-never-know[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/LpePW7g.png "screenshot_47e99-wearing-a-condom-you-never-know[1].png")
Astrotit.
You play a dick shooting sperm at lactating space tits while dodging bibles.
>>3046340
Gryzor was one of the best games on the CPC. It was really fantastic in every way.
Anyway I never played the arcade version or other conversions. Those days I had a CPC, and that was that. I judged a game based on first impressions, and the ones I listed really delivered.
Ditto with Castlevania 1 for DOS some years later. I never even saw the Amiga version until much more recently, tried to play it and well, it doesn't.
I'm sure now people are much more intelerant and notice imperfections very quickly, and decry a game as bad if it doesn't match up to the "best" version. But along with that comes great anxiety from people constantly wanting to be re-assured they're getting the "best" experience possible, instead of you kknow, just playing a game and having fun (and if you're not having fun, then playing a different game).
>>3046131
You are the only other person I've met who has even heard of Sleepwalker. I liked it, it was unique and challenging, I haven't played it since it was new tho. I wondered if there was anything else similar, I'll check out Casper. Thanks!
>>3046672
Yes, Contra was good.
This game is pretty tough, but I like it.
>>3046672
but you see that's the thing
most of these ports were made by overworked programmers who had to do it in a few weeks
they're unpolished and janky as fuck
there's a few acceptable taito ports, though, like the ninja warriors and rainbow islands on amiga
>>3046780
rastan on dos is pretty impressive actually
>>3046780
I dont' think you're understanding here. Those games were fun to play. I had fun, all the kids at school with CPCs had fun with those games. We didn't talk about or know anything about ports, or software business, and even common terms of today like "gameplay" and "unpolished" were not part of our vocabulary. And the CPC preceeded the Amiga anyway, the only comparison for many games would have been with other 8-bit computers or the real arcade machine. However, arcade centers were extremely rare in my country, most such things were at bars. And most of us were lucky to even have one computer at home, rarely did we spend much time in front of other types (except maybe at school, but not much gaming there) Our first-hand experiences were usually just booting a random copied floppy from other kid at school on our home computer. Very few had money to buy games, even the blank floppies were very limited and precious. If a game wasn't fun, it stayed until you were running low and needed to reclaim some space for other/new games. So it was really all entirely from first-hand experience that everything got judged, nothing like today were you can see lots of different versions or ports and try them all, etc.
Btw, I did get a chance to play Arkanoid II at a bar several times, but still loved the first Arkanoid game on my computer. Looking back now, you can tell it's not the best version, etc. but I didn't know or care whatsoever. Instead I played the hell out of it, because it was loads of fun.
>>3025184
Moraff's DOTU
256 colors and HD res!
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gou42MyAvuE
>>3036135
I had the sharware vesion or something. I killed the vampy, but everyone except 2 guys died.
>>3046880
That's pretty good man, it's really hard to kill Dracula.
Most common ending is to miss him entirely. Sometimes you can trap him at the end but he defeats you or escapes.
The best ending is to kill Dracula with no losses. I've never done it. The best I can manage is one death (i think Mina or Lucy, whoever gets bitten in the book, it's been a while since i played).
>>3035990
>"check out our mode 7 in DOS"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6BjJnRKeNA
>>3027383
>getting images in the mail
how quaint
>>3040973
You sound like a cancerous yuropoorfag , anon. EGA was great, it had a few 3D FPS games too
Almost single-handedly made by John fucking Carmack but whatever.
http://www.gog.com/game/catacombs_pack
It's too bad the EGA era was mostly obsessed with adventure and platform games. But it's not like the C64 and Amiga wasn't filled with shitty clones either.
>>3026390
It was pretty fun but balls hard.
>>3047304
>EGA was great
until you had to code for it
>it had a few 3D FPS games too
certainly despite its capabilities, not because of them
>EGA era was mostly obsessed with adventure and platform games
Because that was within the realm of feasible software for mortals not named Carmack
>>3047163
>"check out our mode 7 in DOS"
The game came out in 1989, at least a year before the SNES introduced its mode 7.
The flat shaded tile based procedurally generated ground and the infestation mechanic is more likely to be inspired by Zarch/Virus, which came out two year before Archipelagos
>>3040973
You are forgetting about Ultima Underworld.
People always forget about Ultima Underworld.
>>3047351
Carmack was just a young punk trying to steal Apple computers when Michael Abrash was writing black book of assembly language programming.
>>3047351
There we go. My god man, if you only understood the hell of trying to program late 80s PCs.
>typical game has to support CGA, EGA, Tandy, Hercules
>all very different video modes, all a massive programming headache
When everyone switched to the completely linear VGA Mode 13, it was a massive breath of fresh air and a revolution in gaming on IBM compatibles.
>>3046795
Nice copypaste from some blog.
>>3046780
We could do a lot of arcade ports much better today not only because we know more about how to get the most out of the hardware, but we also have better programming tools. It's pretty hard to have to pencil all your code on paper, calculate jump addresses in your head, and enter it into the computer via a shitty machine language monitor cartridge.
>>3047695
Seriously, almost anything in the 85-90 period that isn't a Sierra adventure can be played better on the C64, Amiga, or NES. That hulking $3000 286 PC was nice for doing the company payroll, Double Dragon not so much.
>>3047695
>see Youtube video of a Compaq luggable PC with an orange plasma display running the IBM port of TMNT: The Arcade Game
>comment section: "I was the programmer of this game. God, I don't miss those days."
>>3047304
>It's too bad the EGA era was mostly obsessed with adventure and platform games
That was the entire world of computer gaming back then.
>>3046672
The IBM port of Castlevania is actually pretty bad. Choppy as fuck and the sound is awful either with the PC speaker or Adlib.
>>3047795
Pretty much all DOS arcade ports or home console ports were pathetic. TMNT, MegaMan, Castlevania, Uninvited, Outrun, Mortal Kombat. All shit.
Gauntlet was only just passable. Street Fighter 2 was actually pretty good.
>>3047805
Mortal Kombat II and 3 are very good. Mortal Kombat I it kinda depends on the version and a lot on your audio gear. X-Men: Children of the Atom and SF Alpha are good as well.
>>3047805
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cehaqXFCGE
Oh...god.
>>3047805
>Street Fighter 2 was actually pretty good.
you mean this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud1LrUfzrOo
or this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQqYp9wi8k4
>>3047815
Also Megaman X, aside from the music which I guess the person porting it forgot that MIDI has a channel 10.
>>3047716
By 1990 you could get 286 for around $1000, I know because I was looking to buy a computer towards the end of that year. They were marketing 386SX and 386 at the higher end, and yeah those could cost a lot more. Before that though, there were budget machines (compared to regular PC) for home use by Amstrad and Tandy. I'm sure you could also buy 286 without HDD to cut costs also, as many games could be played from floppies those days.
>>3048015
All or nearly all 286 PCs had hard disks; floppy-only was an XT thing.
