[HN Gopher] Software Library: MS-DOS Games
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Software Library: MS-DOS Games
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 92 points
Date : 2022-06-03 17:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
| myth_drannon wrote:
| or just download eXoDOS and eXoWin
| themodelplumber wrote:
| I'm curious, what's eXoWin's size? I'd guess there are a lot of
| CD games included.
| speps wrote:
| 700GB
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Compressed, as distributed: eXoDOS: 603.8GB
| (562.4GiB) eXoWin3x: 371.3GB (345.8GiB)
| eXoScummVM: 145.0GB (135.0GiB)
| Zaskoda wrote:
| The game I made in high school is up there. You need to hit
| ctrl-f12 about 4 times for it to run at a reasonable speed.
|
| https://archive.org/details/bob_and_his_amazing_journey_home
| [deleted]
| metadat wrote:
| Clearly not optimized for mobile. I love it.
| acheron wrote:
| This reminds me that I have a couple games that I still have
| never seen available online, I should upload them to archive.org.
| jmclnx wrote:
| There is a text mode game called starship which is a very good
| game. And it is here :)
|
| https://archive.org/details/msdos_Starship_Invasion_1984
|
| I wasted lots of time with it years ago. Remember to reduce speed
| at first.
| am_lu wrote:
| Time to install dos box and replay Master of Magic, again.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| No need to even install dosbox, archive.org has a JS powered
| emulator right in your browser. Just press play.
| AyyWS wrote:
| That game (and x-com) helped me learn autoexe.bat and
| config.sys. I had to do all manner of memory, DMA, & IRQ
| fiddling to load a mouse and soundcard. Probably why I'm in
| tech today.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| A trick I learned is that if you started it with wizards.exe
| instead of mom (don't remember if it was .com or .exe) it
| would skip the intro video which used about 60k more RAM than
| the rest of the game. Also, nwcdex (the novell CD-ROM driver)
| could load into either EMS or XMS while the microsoft version
| could not.
| axus wrote:
| Getting the right command-line java options for combinations
| of Minecraft mods seems to be the modern equivalent
| ShayNehmad_Reco wrote:
| So much nostalgia. Good music in those games as well
| Kalanos wrote:
| clouds of xeen. word.
| kderbyma wrote:
| https://archive.org/details/Scramble_20180830
|
| yes!!! best free dos game ever!
| contingencies wrote:
| Some personal picks of the DOS era: Basstour (somehow great
| fishing sim), BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception (RPG way
| before its time), Budokan (AFAIK still the most varied such game
| produced), Civilization (the original - _" 6,000 years of history
| in 640K"_), Colonization, Descent (first free 3D action), Hero
| Quest series, Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries (best early sim), Pyro
| II (hilarious, original and addictive), Sid Meier's Pirates!
| (still play this!), Railroad Tycoon, Stargoose, Stunts
| (unmatched), The Land (huge indy dev effort), Transport Tycoon
| Deluxe (unmatched), Warlords II (hotseat). Of course, Dune 2 for
| its legacy popularizing the RTS genre from an obscure Amiga
| start, and Warcraft 1 & 2 thereafter, but they're borderline
| unplayable now.
| dwringer wrote:
| > BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception
|
| Great catch there. Ultimately too short but fantastic
| storytelling and for its day, a real sense of freedom. I
| remember playing this one a lot as a little kid, as well as
| seeing the BattleTech/Mechwarrior manuals in bookstores and
| having my mind blown. I enjoyed the modern PC title but it is
| far more tactics-oriented than RPG. I would _love_ to see
| someone build a proper modern RPG in that universe.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| Oh man, I havent played jill of the jungle in like 25 years.
| Thank you for this nostalgia
| CyMonk wrote:
| it's available for free on gog, too.
|
| https://www.gog.com/game/jill_of_the_jungle_the_complete_tri...
| asciimov wrote:
| This doesn't give me nostalgia as much as it reminds me of the
| huge headaches of PC gaming during the late 90's. IRQ's, sound
| card settings that didn't always work, boot discs, not to mention
| verifying ownership with a color wheel, special glasses, or find
| a word in the manual.
| martincmartin wrote:
| "Your sound card works perfectly."
| moosedev wrote:
| HMI Module Alpha Humana on approach to Space Station Mercury!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I could probably still today answer 2/3 of the Wing Commander
| questions without looking them up. It was 100% back when I
| played the game daily.
|
| Example: Maniac's age is 23.
| the_af wrote:
| Almost every DOS game I played was cracked, so none of those
| annoyances for me!
|
| The one game which wasn't, MicroProse F-19, thought it would
| deter me by asking me the names of various shapes of Cold War
| era aircraft. As if! It only served to teach me those few
| shapes I didn't already know.
| rzzzt wrote:
| The copy protection quiz in the first instalment of Leisure
| Suit Larry taught me trivia that wasn't really applicable to
| real-life conversations.
| 6581 wrote:
| That quiz was for age verification though, not copy
| protection.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Oops, that's right. I thought the answers were listed in
| the manual.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Anyone else remember in this era it was common to get a disc with
| a ton of games on it?
|
| I remember having one as a kid with like 25 games on it and just
| flipping through playing each for like 10 minutes
|
| Recall playing a lot of Ant Attack from one of those discs for
| some reason
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| You want to check out this archive:
| https://archive.org/details/cdbbsarchive
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Oof looking through that takes me back to the era of big CD
| binders
|
| And scratched disks was such a problem, I remember trying
| weird toothpaste lifehacks to fix them
|
| Ended up buying some games twice due to that
| jonathankoren wrote:
| I one time bought some 4 in 1 box set with Chuck Yeager's
| Advanced Flight Trainer, The Hunt for Red October, and two
| other games, I forget. For some reason, the games were stripped
| of all display drivers except glorious 4-color CGA graphics.
|
| One game had a teal sky, and a hot pink ground, and there other
| had a pink sky, and teal ocean.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| https://archive.org/details/cdbbsarchive
|
| Thanks to that I was able to locate a game[0] I had been
| searching for for years by investigating likely candidates on a
| "1000+ Games!"[1] or somesuch CD.
|
| [0] It was Space Exploration Mission Alpha[2]. A lunar lander
| clone where you play as aliens visiting all of the Sol system
| planets. I never did find the non-shareware Space Exploration
| Mission Bravo, so if anyone knows Jeffrey R. Marken please drop
| me a line, I'll gladly pay the $16.75.
|
| [1] A bald-faced lie
|
| [2]
| https://archive.org/details/SpaceExplorationMissionAlpha_102...
| giobox wrote:
| By "disc", you mean CD? I remember this a lot once CD-ROM
| became huge in the mid 90s, but most of my DOS shareware came
| on 3.5 inch floppies.
| jiayo wrote:
| Tokened shovelware, as in they shoveled as much onto a CDROM as
| they could. Sometimes, they'd accidentally include not just
| shareware but licensed software... oops.
|
| The "Shovelware Diggers" YouTube series does a great job
| documenting these: https://www.youtube.com/user/Pixelmusement
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Oh neat thanks for sharing that channel
| wolpoli wrote:
| Yet somehow the thrill is gone these days even through we have
| unlimited games on the mobile app store.
| [deleted]
| themodelplumber wrote:
| It's funny to see the first three there and feel so much
| nostalgia.
|
| Prince of Persia: Massive nostalgia for the sound of those first
| 5-6 notes of the intro music in bold OPL3 MIDI, out of my
| oversized computer speakers. Inviting my friend over one weekend
| to play it, only to cheer him on as he beat the entire game.
| "...maybe you jump through the mirror...?!"
|
| Doom: HS Physics teacher bribe. "In my hands I'm holding a stack
| of floppy disks with the Alpha version of a game called Doom. If
| you work hard today..." Worked so hard. Massive jump-scare
| weekend with friends over.
|
| Wolf3D: "There's a full copy on the drafting class computers, and
| you don't have to shell out of anything, they boot straight to a
| DOS prompt!" What??! Incredible. Made every computer class after
| that year seem so restrictive. You'd walk in expecting to see CAD
| being done, and instead you'd see Wolf3D, POV-Ray
| experimentation, computer programming, and "I don't care, as long
| as you get your work done, hee hee" was the only response from
| the teacher. Loved that guy.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Indeed. We used to play different puzzle games after we
| finished the work in our Math Computer Lab. I was obsessed with
| Aargh! back then.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/xwhp61J
|
| It's very cathartic and nostalgic to go back and finish this
| one.
| griffinkelly wrote:
| First time I played Doom as a kid I had nightmares for weeks.
| Looking at it now...
| codr7 wrote:
| I thought even Wolfenstein was creepy; today, not so much.
|
| Are we losing our imagination or just becoming numb?
| ridgered4 wrote:
| I remember being blown away by how intense and visceral the
| experience was, it probably helped I played it on my uncle's
| top tier 486 with a great sound system. Whenever I look at
| screen shots these I'm kind of shocked how pixelated the
| sprites were, I guess it wasn't a concern at the time.
| eiriklv wrote:
| CRT monitors made things look so much more vivid than on
| LCD. So when you look at old games today and think <<Did it
| really look this bad and pixelated?>>, the answer is
| actually <<no>>.
|
| Ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/anwgxf/here_i
| s_an_e...
|
| Edit: typo
| hulitu wrote:
| You should have seen Blood.
| the_af wrote:
| Doom didn't cause me nightmares as a kid, but when Dead Space
| got released I bought it, played a bit, then stopped because
| I didn't enjoy the jump scares at all. And I was an adult.
| Well made without question, but not for me.
| the_af wrote:
| To this day I still think Prince of Persia is one of the best
| videogames ever made.
|
| Don't get me wrong, Doom and Wolf3D were impressive tech
| breakthroughs and I played and enjoyed the hell out of them.
| But unlike them, Prince of Persia is still a genuinely good and
| enjoyable game, with impressive animations.
| pvitz wrote:
| The sounds of the prince yelling while falling or being
| chopped in half are deeply ingrained in my brain...
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(page generated 2022-06-03 23:02 UTC)