[HN Gopher] Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that ti...
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Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot
(2019)
Author : Tomte
Score : 103 points
Date : 2022-08-30 14:45 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| bluedino wrote:
| Paganitzu, Hugo's House of Horrors, Corncob 3D, Jetpack
| b800h wrote:
| We loved Sleuth in our house. So much so that about ten years
| ago, I made a quick rewrite in JS with the permission of the
| original author. It's not completely identical by any means, but
| pretty similar, and still enjoyable to play.
|
| Sleuth JS: https://www.bencollier.info/sleuth/
|
| For the fully authentic experience, there's a version (or
| several) of the original DOS game on archive.org, of course.
| bashonly wrote:
| scorched earth is the only one of these i've played
|
| i also loved worms, which felt like scorched earth with lemmings
| dtx1 wrote:
| Say it with me kids Jazz Jackrabbit.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was my childhood in the late 90s. That plus
| MPlayer was the height of online multiplayer for me. Turns out
| all you needed was 56k for a lovely online experience.
| kgeist wrote:
| I remember having a large collection of shareware DOS games. Once
| playing one of the games our family PC died. My father blamed me
| for contracting a virus from those shareware games. So I stopped
| playing them. Now I'm pretty sure it was actually a disk failure
| because of the specific sound the HDD made.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| Scorched Earth was my favorite among that list. I spent many
| hours playing it on my Packard Bell 486x.
| indymike wrote:
| Atomic Tanks is an open source clone of Scorched Earth taking
| it to it's natural conclusion. Then there's the open source 3d
| version... Scorched3d. Still a good time waster when you are on
| hold.
| Tomte wrote:
| You can actually still buy it:
| http://www.whicken.com/scorch/index.html
| nicolas_t wrote:
| I wish it was on gog or steam. I'm lazy but would love to
| just have it work on the steam deck without me buying it,
| backing up the zip, configuring dosbox etc...
| staindk wrote:
| Seems you should be able to play at least the Shareware
| version online:
| https://archive.org/details/msdos_SCORCH15_shareware
|
| EDIT: this seems to be the full one, but I'm not sure how
| one would check (never played this game):
| https://archive.org/details/ScorchedEarth
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| I would not call "forgotten" Scorched Earth. Even there is a
| remake in 3d.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Are "Capture the Flag" and "Scorched Earth" really that obscure?
| vehemenz wrote:
| Probably not. Both of these were staple party games in my
| household.
| [deleted]
| Sharlin wrote:
| I have fond memories of the thriving shareware/freeware game
| scene in mid 90s Finland. It was a legitimate cultural
| phenomenon, like demoscene to which it was closely related.
| Titles such as Auts, Wings, Turboraketti, Triplane Turmoil gave
| rise to a genre of their own, _luolalentely_ or "cavern flying".
| Split-screen (and shared-keyboard) multiplayer was, of course,
| _the_ way to play all of these. Other legendary titles of various
| genres include MineBombers, Tapan Kaikki, Liero...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Had to look those up on YouTube (had a Mac, not a PC). I am
| definitely missing that era of gaming. I'm wanting to write and
| play 90's games again.
| tpmx wrote:
| Turboraketti! It spread well in Sweden too.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boaddp6MPpc
| kennywinker wrote:
| Pharaohs Tomb stands out in my memory. An early apogee game (pre
| commander keen) - I haven't played it since floppy disks came in
| two sizes, but man was I into this game
| https://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/pharaohs-tomb/
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I still have some DOS games on my computer, including ZZT (which
| is now FOSS), Pharaoh's Tomb (from Apogee), Jill of the Jungle,
| and others, including some that I had written by myself. Apogee
| and Epic made other DOS games too.
|
| I did not know of many games listed in this article, so I will
| read that too, now.
| every wrote:
| Sorry. I was too busy playing a DOS port of Nethack I found on a
| dial-up BBS...
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Anyone have the Shareware Breakthrough disc? Was a CD a with a
| red brick texture. Wonder how much time I sunk into that when I
| was a kid.
|
| I don't remember a lot of the games off the top of my head except
| Merlin and Gladiator https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wZaK-yH50eA
| Noxwizard wrote:
| Epic MegaGames had some great shareware games:
| https://www.dosgamesarchive.com/profile/epic-megagames
|
| I remember playing OverKill a lot and I think we actually ended
| up purchasing the full game to unlock the remaining planets.
| sli wrote:
| Once I get my arms around gamedev a little more, one of my
| planned projects is a remake of Fire Fight[0], which isn't on
| this list but it's still in the spirit of the thread.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Fight
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Are they related to today's Epic?
| CUViper wrote:
| Yes -- they dropped the "Mega" in 1999.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games
| myth_drannon wrote:
| There is a new book on the history of shareware - "Shareware
| heroes". It's a good overview.
| https://unbound.com/books/shareware-heroes/
| hestefisk wrote:
| Secret Agent ftw! Wacky Wheels! Commander Keen!
| staindk wrote:
| Will always have a soft spot for CK!
|
| My dad introduced me to Keen, Prince of Persia (and other
| classics like Doom and Wolfenstein etc.) when I was tiny.
|
| I still recall how he contrasted the comical/arcade-y movement
| in Keen to the "realistic" movement in PoP. I was 3 or 4 years
| old, mind. It was great to see this [1] on HN the other day -
| it led me to this [2] video which kind of served to explain to
| my dad and I how he got the movement so _right_. Sorry weird
| tangent.
|
| Two other games I remember enjoying was The Incredible Machine
| and Chip's Challenge. TIM was amazing! Must remember to dig
| that out if I ever have kids.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32538026 [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbk5qH2-1S8
| Mezzie wrote:
| I believe both TIM and Chip's Challenge are available on
| Archive to play in browser.
|
| The first game I remember playing on my own is the first
| Commander Keen. I was very proud of being able to start and
| run it on my own from DOS (I was 3; using a text-only input
| mode is difficult when you're pre-literate!)
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Commander Keen was the first game I ever played. Took me a long
| while to figure out he had a raygun. Shooting was some weird
| combination of inputs, like ctrl+space, not the first thing you
| try.
|
| ... also
|
| * Raptor: Call of the Shadows.
|
| * Magus.
|
| * Jill of the jungle.
|
| * Mystic Towers.
|
| * Terminal Velocity.
|
| The Psygnosis logo was legit the coolest thing I ever saw when
| I was single digit years old.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Yes! I get the intent of link's list as little-known games,
| but Command Keen (and the precursor id team) and Escape
| Velocity feel like they should at least be mentioned.
|
| They're far enough back a lot of people won't be aware of
| them, yet modern enough they're still playable.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> Shooting was some weird combination of inputs, like
| ctrl+space, not the first thing you try.
|
| Ctrl - jump
|
| Alt - pogo stick (after you obtained it)
|
| Ctrl Alt (pressed at the same time) - fire blaster
|
| If you did not time it well you could end up doing an
| "advanced" pogo high jump (by pressing Alt just before Ctrl)
| when you intended to zap a Vorticon.
|
| Commander Keen 4 improved the controls with a dedicated fire
| button. It also had one of the best control schemes,
| gameplay, and art for that generation of platform games.
| contingencies wrote:
| _The Land._ http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=The_Land
|
| _Islands of Danger._
| https://archive.org/details/IslandsOfDangerTheV3.2SW1991Carr...
| mcbuilder wrote:
| Traffic Department 2192 was a favorite of mine for it's edgy plot
| and awesome music.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| I played a text based adventure game called (I think) "Bad King"
| that was on one of those "1000 free programs" shareware/freeware
| CD's when I was a youngster. Every time I try to find it on the
| internet I'm stumped. It was my first introduction to text based
| adventure games, so I'm dying to find it. If anyone has heard of
| it please drop a line!
|
| Also I believe on the same or similar shareware CD was Stars 2.b.
| That was my first experience using a LAN to play a multiplayer
| game with other people. That's been easier to find, and still a
| nostalgia bomb for me.
| mysterydip wrote:
| There's groups on facebook (classic gaming) or reddit
| (/r/tipofmyjoystick) that will help out if you can describe it.
| mmarquezs wrote:
| this one https://archive.org/details/BADKING ?
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Absolute favorite: Ragnarok / Valhalla by Norsehelm Productions,
| released 1992-1995.
|
| https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/02/game-354-ragnarok-19...
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Pouring one out for Tyrian.
| petercooper wrote:
| I was a kid/teenager in the 90s with little money and nowhere to
| spend it, so I pretty much lived on shareware games from cover
| disks. Scorched Earth felt almost like a pioneer(?) of the "you
| can customize every variable" game in a pre-mod era.
|
| That "Capture the Flag" has a very specific aesthetic and looks
| very NeoPaint-y. I'm sure I saw a few games use that style. Was
| it a specific GUI toolkit?
|
| While I'm rambling, I want to throw Conquest (1992) into the mix
| as it's where I got the bug for Risk and it, too, was very
| customizable like Scorched Earth:
| https://archive.org/details/msdos_Conquest_1992
| cbozeman wrote:
| Do you remember the shareware games website HappyPuppy?
|
| For some reason, a few years ago I tried to find out what
| happened to them, but it's like there's nothing but a few
| archive.org captures.
| tpmx wrote:
| Almost everyone in the DOS world built their own little GUI
| toolkit, implementing exactly as much was needed for each app.
| That was part of the charm IMO. We had a Cambrian explosion of
| graphical and interaction styles. Then things got gray, uniform
| and boring with Windows 3.1/95, and then fun again with the
| early web. I'm looking forward to the next fun UI style period
| - perhaps it will start with AR.
|
| The GUI "toolkit" used by that CTF game (1993) looks like it
| was partially "inspired" by Borland's OWL for Windows 3.x
| (1991).
|
| Comparison:
|
| CTF Game: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/08/Captu...
|
| Borland OWL:
| https://sourceforge.net/p/owlnext/wiki/Replacing_usage_of_BW...
| Semaphor wrote:
| One of my favorite games was Liga [0] (German for league, a
| football managing simulation), got the shareware in some gaming
| mag, later sent 5 DM in an envelope to the author and got an
| envelope with a floppy disk of the full version back :D Not quite
| DOS Era, but still old. The only DOS game I played was Prince of
| Persia at my dad's workplace because we didn't have a family PC
| until Win 95.
|
| [0]: http://www.ligapro.de/ (Not Liga Pro, scroll down further to
| "Liga 1.24 als Vollversion", apparently it's free, nowadays :D)
| Mitzz wrote:
| I wish these were all available on Android so that I could play
| them on my phone.
|
| However, UI issues, my own technical incompetence and laziness
| (if they don't come up after a Play Store search then I don't
| check much further) stand in the way.
|
| Unless someone has any suggestions? I would think DosBox would
| not work well on a small screen?
| staindk wrote:
| DoxBox does IMO work well on Android but it's clunky to set up
| - you likely need some variant of a "hacker keyboard" installed
| to make initial setups easier for games, and then AFAIK you'll
| probably need to also install another keyboard of choice that
| supports the buttons your game needs.
|
| All in all it likely is worth it for some games if you're
| nostalgic enough for them but don't feel like playing them when
| you're at your PC.
|
| I've had more success playing old PlayStation games, personally
| (on ePSXe these days but I've used RetroArch in the past, which
| I should probably look at using again).
| Mitzz wrote:
| Thank you. Sounds like DosBox is worth it. I will give it a
| shot!
| doubled112 wrote:
| I think it would depend on the game you were running.
|
| Monitor resolutions were low in the DOS days so a lot of the
| text and UI elements were relatively large to make them
| readable.
|
| The virtual keyboard mapping would probably be the hard part.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| cosmos cosmic adventure
| hbogert wrote:
| Supaplex!
| Macuyiko wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21245827
|
| Especially the commenter on my post: Rocks and Diamonds is
| great.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Does anybody know the name of this DOS game with a turtle who
| could shoot at things (not enemies, it was non-violent as all
| hell), featuring puzzles and random Cyrillic letters like Zh?
| fb03 wrote:
| Scorched Earth was so good!
| BMc2020 wrote:
| I played the hell out of a game that only had 4 colors.
| 'Pyromaniac' and the filename was pyroman.exe (It looked a lot
| like sleuth, the first game on the list). You had to go through
| buildings trailing a burning fuse that you couldn't let catch
| you, and also there were cans of gas that would explode across
| several walls. Higher levels required quite a bit of strategy,
| intentionally starting fires so they would burn out by the time
| you needed to go through the area, strategic placing of gas cans
| etc.
|
| Make it to the final level you get to burn down the Kremlin. Good
| times.
|
| Please don't tell the parole board, I'm still doing 8 to 20 for
| arson.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| All games had only 4 Colors in cga
| andsoitis wrote:
| But some of us had EGA or VGA in that era. In fact, some of
| the screenshots in the article shows more than 4 colors.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Composite CGA is 16 color.
| indymike wrote:
| Composite CGA was Tandy only. Can confirm stock CGA was 4
| color, 4 different palettes which allowed IBM to claim "16
| colors*"
| ethbr0 wrote:
| There's a certain time period where I feel like everyone
| remembered their games by the DOS executable name.
|
| piratesg.exe
| eesmith wrote:
| You might like Pyro II v2.2 -
| https://archive.org/details/PyroV2.2.3SW1991MichaelOBrienAct...
| BMc2020 wrote:
| This is the game, thank you for finding it for me. I mis-
| remembered the name. I'll give it a go again when I get home.
| fb03 wrote:
| They forgot to mention Pizza Tycoon :)
| whartung wrote:
| There was this "Star Trek" game for the early PC. (Fly your ship
| around, defeat bad guys, dock at starbases...)
|
| Pretty sure they managed to use every character in the character
| set, and every color as well.
|
| It was real time, and even had good sound effects (for a raw PC
| speaker).
|
| And it was unplayable off of a 4.77MHz machine.
|
| Can't remember the name, but I recall it fondly.
| [deleted]
| stevekemp wrote:
| Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, from Interplay might be a
| candidate?
|
| It looked like this, in the enhanced/later version
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxtIFBLHOQs
| EarlKing wrote:
| Possibly you're thinking of Begin: A Tactical Starship
| Simulation[1]?? That, however, was not real-time at all but
| turn-based, since it was a direct descendant of the old
| mainframe Trek game.
|
| [1] https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/begin-a-tactical-
| starship...
| ghaff wrote:
| I played that quite a bit at one point. However, after a
| while, you figured out some strategies that were pretty
| tedious but very hard for the computer to beat as I recall.
| mynameishere wrote:
| There were a bunch of games based on the original "Star Trek"
| game. You might be thinking of "Star Fleet"
|
| https://www.mobygames.com/game/star-fleet-i-the-war-begins
| whartung wrote:
| The tell tale the I recall is that when you "warped out" (or
| whatever), there was a sound of the drive spinning up, since
| it was real time, spinning up the drive took time. When the
| buzz peaked, you were ready to go.
|
| I also remember the display being more busy than what we've
| seen here so far.
|
| I don't recall a splash screen, and it was all CGA.
|
| It was definitely '84-'85 time period, a friend just bought a
| new Tandy 1000 from Radio Shack that we played it on.
| kleiba wrote:
| Doom?
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Blake Stone!
| staindk wrote:
| I don't think time has yet forgotten Doom
| mkl wrote:
| "That time forgot".
| [deleted]
| wunderbaba wrote:
| Does anyone remember Redhooks Revenge? It was a maritime-themed
| trivia board game with risk battle mechanics for DOS. You can see
| the original here:
|
| https://archive.org/details/RedhooksRevenge
|
| I actually received permission from ImagiSOFT to build the
| sequel, titled Redhook's Revenge: Call of Booty which adds in
| 1000s of general trivia questions, which is freely available on
| itch.io:
|
| https://specularrealms.itch.io/redhooks-revenge-ii-call-of-b...
| Inhibit wrote:
| I remember playing games along the same lines (a few years
| earlier than the author) on the Amiga buried in free game
| archives and collections. Or possibly early networked systems; my
| memory's cloudy.
|
| I haven't seen them again. I've always wondered if some of them
| were partially finished personal projects that never were
| released widely enough to survive.
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