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Apogee Games and other classic Dos games

I'm trying to think of this fantasy action game from a 2D side perspective. Your hero wields a sword, and his health was represented either by an hour-glass or an orb which is constantly ticking down. I think you had to keep climbing upwards.
 
It varies from game to game. Sure, some are like Dark Ages, where nothing is added in the later episodes and it's just new levels with the exact same graphics and enemies, but then you have some of the best shareware games, like Commander Keen, where each one is completely different...

Yeah, this is true of Commander Keen as well. Honestly, I think iD were just better about this sort of thing than most of the others. Their games tended to have big, significant differences, while a lot of Apogee's in-house stuff took the lazy way out.
 
Hardcore Gaming 101 is your friend.

I would recommend picking up I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream off GOG. It's only $6. Great dialog and story, tho I will warn that I've seem to have triggered a game-crashing scenario. It's after you
go to the bathroom and flush 3 times, go to the meat fridge w/ the bodies, go back out before talking to any of them to talk to the dog, give him the good heart, go back to the meat fridge, talk to your wife, leave, and try to go back in.
It crashes when you
try to go back in.

At least my version did. But I say it's worth playing in spite of that b/c the themes and the stories it has are fantastic if you like dark gritty sci-fi/horror stuff, and the dialog is great with good challenging puzzles. I need to make time to finish playing through the game this week actually.

I actually read the plot in full to that game already, but I might give it a shot soon enough. Really been meaning to play though ALL of Teen Agent, I thought the whole game was Episode 1. LOL

EDIT: Found it!
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/524/Blackstar+-+Agent+of+Justice.html
Can't believe it! I was gonna call my dad to dig though the CDs to find the title of that compilation and probably get cussed out.
 

Sciz

Member
I think this is kind of a running theme with these old shareware games, actually.

(Except Doom. Eps 2 and 3 are dope.)

Eh, it varies. The tendency was always to polish the first episode up more than the rest, but DOOM, Keen, Cosmo, Tyrian, and Jazz all immediately spring to mind as games that gave you your money's worth even then.

Dark Ages was just a special sort of misery where it couldn't even be arsed to provide a real boss fight to cap the game off with despite the backstory blatantly setting one up, never mind the mundane complaints of shit level design and zero new assets.

edit: whoops, beaten. That's what I get for taking the half hour to blow through the third episode of DA before refreshing.
 
I never really thought about the variety in shareware episodes until now. Something like DOOM added new enemies and put you in increasingly evil environments, while Wolfenstein 3D had like six episodes but most of the game was fairly samey for the most part.
 
Eh, it varies. The tendency was always to polish the first episode up more than the rest, but DOOM, Keen, Cosmo, Tyrian, and Jazz all immediately spring to mind as games that gave you your money's worth even then.

Dark Ages was just a special sort of misery where it couldn't even be arsed to provide a real boss fight to cap the game off with despite the backstory blatantly setting one up, never mind the mundane complaints of shit level design and zero new assets.

edit: whoops, beaten. That's what I get for taking the half hour to blow through the third episode of DA before refreshing.
This is all true, but I love Dark Ages anyway. When I first played it I remember finding the animating grass impressive... :) (But the gameplay and music are good too!)

Yeah, this is true of Commander Keen as well. Honestly, I think iD were just better about this sort of thing than most of the others. Their games tended to have big, significant differences, while a lot of Apogee's in-house stuff took the lazy way out.
Well, I don't know if Apogee/3D Realms' internal teams ever made anything as mediocre as most of ID's Softdisk games are, but yeah, ID's best games of the era -- Keen, Wolf 3D, Doom -- were of course really amazing. Apogee's internal stuff was often great, but wasn't quite on that level. Of course, it didn't help that they didn't have an engine guy like John Carmack -- Ken Silverman was close, but he left after making the Build engine unfortunately and didn't stay in engine design. Even before 3d games (like Blake Stone using the Wolf 3D engine) BioMenace ran in the Keen engine, though. I don't know... Keen was one of my favorite series in the early '90s, but while BioMenace is good, it's not quite as great as the real thing (Keen)... even if it is a fairly different game thanks to all the shooting.

Anyway though, even though some full versions of shareware games are lacking in variety versus what you see in the first episode, that varies from game to game. ID/id were not the only ones to have each chapter be very different -- some of Epic's games are like that too, of course, such as Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle, Traffic Department 2192, etc. Others are lazy and are basically the same, with Dark Ages as one of the worst cases of that since there are literally no new graphical elements in episodes 2 and 2. But if the basic gameplay is good, getting more of the same isn't that bad! Sure, Dark Ages would be better with a final boss and more graphical variety and new enemies, but it's still a pretty good game as it is, and episodes 2 and 3 are fun even if there's nothing new in them.
 

Sciz

Member
This is all true, but I love Dark Ages anyway.

It's a weird beast. Ugly as sin, but in that particular way that wraps around to being a unique style all its own. And there's the little touches, like the idiosyncratic weapon upgrades, or how instead of a mere key and locked door you'd have to find something for the old man who'd transform into one of those weird-ass flying things when you helped him, or how the major health refill is a realistically rendered beating heart, or how the game just hotswapped between levels instead of having any clear segmentation.

Their heart was in the right place, but the execution of the actual game design was stiff and repetitive. Todd Replogle was better than that. A few more enemy types would've gone a long way.
 

jaosobno

Member
Wow, this thread is nostalgia overload. Some of my favorite DOS games:

Shadowcaster

screenshot_shadowcaster_3.jpg


Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos

lands-of-lore-the-throne-of-chaos_29.gif


Heretic

358565-screenshot_heretic_20080728_234044.png


Metaltech: Earthsiege

10841-MetaltechEarthsiege2.jpg


Witchaven

witchaven.png
 
It's a weird beast. Ugly as sin,
No it's not! In the early '90s, I thought the game looked pretty good. As I said in the last post, it actually had animating environments! That grass looked cool back in 1992 or whenever I first played the game. That was pretty cool on the PC at the time in the early '90s. The graphics seemed better and more detailed than those in other games like Keen, Crystal Caves, and the like. Also of course, it helps that it's a fantasy game and I've always loved the middle ages and fantasy settings.

but in that particular way that wraps around to being a unique style all its own. And there's the little touches, like the idiosyncratic weapon upgrades, or how instead of a mere key and locked door you'd have to find something for the old man who'd transform into one of those weird-ass flying things when you helped him, or how the major health refill is a realistically rendered beating heart, or how the game just hotswapped between levels instead of having any clear segmentation.
Yeah, I like all these things about the game. It's cool that it doesn't use a standard level progression, but instead feels like one long quest. The need to find an item for a character who then reveals the exit and shows you which direction it's in was nice too -- it adds an adventure element to this platform/action game, which is great.

The game could have used some more challenge (it's easy once you've played it enough, and episodes 2 and 3 aren't much harder), and that some of the new weapons are missable is kind of annoying, but well, the game rewards exploration, and that's okay. Dark Ages wouldn't be nearly as interesting as a standard "walk to the right and hit everything" game, the adventure elements help make it what it is.

Dark Ages definitely has some weird graphics, including the designs of most of the enemies, but that just adds to its charm. That makes it more interesting looking than the more generic stuff!

Their heart was in the right place, but the execution of the actual game design stiff and repetitive. A few more enemy types would've gone a long way.
Sure, a few more enemy types would have been nice, particularly in episodes 2 and 3, but the basic gameplay is great! I think it's a quite replayable game, myself, lots of replay value. I've always liked Dark Ages a lot, and return to it -- playing the shareware version again after we finally got a computer with a sound card (this wasn't until early 1995) enough so that the music is quite memorable even though when I first played it it was sound effects only, playing the whole game finally when the game was released as freeware, etc. The only Apogee game I actually bought the full version of back in the early '90s was Commander Keen 1-3, though I did also get Raptor later on, but if I'd gotten more, Dark Ages would definitely have been high on the list. I've always thought that it was too bad that Todd Replogle, its lead designer, left the industry, Dark Ages is a pretty good game!
 

Morfeo

The Chuck Norris of Peace
My introduction to gaming is all from these shareware games. Raptor, Jazz Jackrabbit, Hocus Pocus, MegaRace, Doom, Heretic, Terminal Velocity and countless of other games.

One of the few full games that I remember on my good old Pentium 166MHz MMX with 32MB EDO RAM... with good old S3 Virge 2MB VRAM that my dad bought:

Au5OjXk.gif

Dr Riptide

nBTofYp.png

Theme Park

wAyvnSY.jpg

Crusader: No Remorse

So good.

I could never get a working park in Theme Park, always got bankrupt really early. What was the trick?
 

lazygecko

Member
Crusader: No Remorse and No Regret are such lovely games. Some kind of isometric real time tactical action. Very Robocop-esque in tone (complete with remote controlled ED-209s), and they're apparently set in the same universe as System Shock. They also had some of the most gruesomely detailed death animations I had seen in a game by that point. People would run around on fire screaming painfully, ruptured gas pipes would freeze people solid (which you could then shatter into pieces, of course), lasers would melt the flesh off their bones into a putrid pile, etc.

And you could destroy pretty much everything in the environments.
 

zoukka

Member
What was the name of this Knight game where the combat was really brutal and bloody, can't put my finger on it!
 

genbatzu

Member
Screenshot-2.png


Winter! - played this almost daily with friends at school before 1st lesson started

//edit: an image in this thread(on this page) is blocked by my antivirus... greatgamer.ru something something shadowcaster_3.jpg
 

magnetic

Member
Sorry if it has already been mentioned - but I absolutely adored ZZT (1991 by Tim Sweeney) back then. Mainly because it was one of the few things that would run decently on my mothers aging laptop, but also because I had a ton of fun to make my own little levels (that ultimately went nowhere).


The base world that came with the shareware version was very cool already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDZEroShhQ8

But other people made some very wild looking stuff. It´s one of these games that have a very specific DOS look to them that can´t be confused with consoles graphics of the time - mostly because it just uses text symbols instead of raster graphics.

You really had to use your imagination, but it also is visually interesting on its own, maybe in a way people these days can appreciate more, with the "retro" look gaining more and more acceptance again. Simple shapes in all colors of the rainbow on black backgrounds - it just so striking.

I really enjoyed how similar VVVVVV looked to this ASCII style.
 

Morfeo

The Chuck Norris of Peace
What was the name of this Knight game where the combat was really brutal and bloody, can't put my finger on it!

Moonstone?

Screenshot-2.png


Winter! - played this almost daily with friends at school before 1st lesson started

//edit: an image in this thread(on this page) is blocked by my antivirus... greatgamer.ru something something shadowcaster_3.jpg

Yeah this game was great back in the day, the ski jump and biathlon was the most fun imo.
 

mclem

Member
I could never get a working park in Theme Park, always got bankrupt really early. What was the trick?

I remember really getting the knack of the negotiation minigame such that - IIRC - I could fairly reliable be able to negotiate my way into them accepting a pay cut.

I never quite got my head around how the campaign was meant to work at the full sim level. I wanted to make a chain of theme parks and I don't think that was actually how it was intended.

Screenshot-2.png


Winter! - played this almost daily with friends at school before 1st lesson started

It always amuses me how people would often remember games by the dos executable label rather than the name of the game itself. It makes sense, of course, but "The Games: Winter Challenge" is a lot more descriptive than "Winter" :)

Sorry if it has already been mentioned - but I absolutely adored ZZT (1991 by Tim Sweeney) back then. Mainly because it was one of the few things that would run decently on my mothers aging laptop, but also because I had a ton of fun to make my own little levels (that ultimately went nowhere).



The base world that came with the shareware version was very cool already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDZEroShhQ8

But other people made some very wild looking stuff. It´s one of these games that have a very specific DOS look to them that can´t be confused with consoles graphics of the time - mostly because it just uses text symbols instead of raster graphics.

You really had to use your imagination, but it also is visually interesting on its own, maybe in a way people these days can appreciate more, with the "retro" look gaining more and more acceptance again. Simple shapes in all colors of the rainbow on black backgrounds - it just so striking.

I really enjoyed how similar VVVVVV looked to this ASCII style.

I'm very fond of ZZT; it was a great outlet for creativity, but also served as a slight cautionary warning about the age group of many creators when I hit my fifth or sixth iteration of a "Kill Barney!" gag. That said, I think there were quite a few big high-profile releases that didn't really get proper bugfixing, I often had to have the cheatmodes at hand,

Did you ever encounter Megazeux?
 

mclem

Member
Random discovery that just happened when searching for something inspired by this thread:

The Internet Archive has a page which archives shareware CDs. I remember my Dad - in the very early days of CD-ROM - had one of the first Black Box ones, which seem to appear in the archive.

Now, of course, the vast array of content will be easily available elsewhere, but I like the idea of just seeing it all in the form of a CD, just like the old days :)


(I assume these are legitimate, given it's The Internet Archive behind it, but apologies if they overstep legal boundaries)
 
I think DOOM was the first game which used DOS/4GW which started the craze of having these amazing games just load, instead of having to try and find 400 odd K of memory from somewhere.

I used to have to disable my mouse drivers from loading just to play some things.

Sure I remember having to edit for Doom. Frankly, gaming hasn't been the same since my Config.sys and autoexec.bat haven't had to be beaten to death to get to play Bioforge.
 

espher

Member
I'm getting a little bit away from shareware-type stuff, here, but I'll go with three games that were huge time vampires in my youth.

1ygRLUl.gif

Links 386

ugp9u53.png

Star Control II (now available for free as The Ur-Quan Masters)

pYatkCs.png

TIE Fighter
(Screenshot from the shareware/demo version, which was based on a pre-release build.)
 

Nyoro SF

Member
biomenacetitle.jpg


War has changed

I remember this game very well. One of the lines after you rescue a hostage goes along the lines of "Hey that's a sweet gun! Can I borrow it?" "Sorry, if you used it you might blow your foot off"

man I love this thread. Raptor is still a great game.

this was also pretty cool:

the_incredible_machine.png

Oh god. This and the sequel were so much fun. The puzzles were hard as hell too.
 
I loved those old Apogee games. I think Duke Nukem and Supaplex (Boulder Dash with chips and circuit board) really sparked my interest in PC gaming.
I had touched Leisure Suit Larry, Prince of Persia and Quest for Glory before that, but couldn't really get into them. Age probably had to do with it as well.

Would love to see some indie games using EGA or VGA graphics.
 
I used to play Stunts religiously as a kid, I believe on my dad's Windows 3.11 computer. The one thing I found that tickled me to no end was a glitch in the physics engine (or what served as one). If you made a jump between two ramps a specific distance away and jumped off one side of the ramp going at max speed, you would hit the very edge of the other ramp and fly completely perpendicular (straight up) with the ground for a couple minutes. You would then land and crash from a great height. Fun times.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
Anybody ever played this little gem:

Kye_original_screenshot_win.png


Got this on a shareware floppy. It's since been ported to modern operating systems. Such a fun game. It's basically Sokoban meets Boulder Dash.
 
I actually read the plot in full to that game already, but I might give it a shot soon enough.
I trust it is a great story from start to end; I've only played Garrison's section up to now but I like his arc very much. Everyone says you should save the Nazi doctor for last tho, that's what I'm gonna do.
 

CTLance

Member
Best non-Avatar and pre-Avatar Avatar videogame.

Pretty late in the DOS era... still a nice game. Inofficial/Spiritual sequel to Ambermoon/Amberstar. Started development on Amiga (dat Thalion influence), but was moved to DOS in the middle of development. The troubled development history is painfully obvious, but it's still a good game after all is said and done. The english localisation is a bit low quality, so your experience may vary.
Best lowrez povray style wtf is going on intro
qacHNVg.png


Best 3D exploration parts
0j5jbE7.png


Best 2D exploration parts
u3G07oY.png


Best awkward smile ever hidden behind best useless messagebox ever
DlQ7Hbl.png


Best chessboard for turn based combat
tO3K8ew.png


Best mix of Fantasy and SciFi themes
(no pic, got annoyed by lack of presence of the game on google image search)

Seriously, they somehow packed three different perspectives into this game. A Doom-style 3D view that lets you move around freely, a classic 2D overworld view (in two different zoom levels - depending on location, e.g. inside a house vs on overworld), and a chessboard for the turn based combat that also allows you to switch to the 3D view. So weird. Come to think of it, there's also the (auto)map which you will be using quite a bit as well, giving you yet another view on things...

Love it though. Had a nice premise and some twists that I'd probably see coming from a mile away nowadays.

Shame blue byte is an Ubi pawn now. Wish GOG could get their grubby mitts on the license, though. Deserves more eyeballs. It's a solid 4 out of 5, maybe downgraded to 3.5 if you take out the nostalgia and hate me on a personal level, I guess?


Also:
Careful when surfing for Albion pics while at work. It's tastefully done, but you may see a saggy titty or two.
Rarely three.

Also²:
Erik Simon (Blue Byte) said:
Es war uns sehr wichtig, von den überstrapazierten 08/15-Fantasy-Stories wegzukommen, die man so häufig in Rollenspielen vorfindet. Wir wollten nicht schon wieder von Orks, Elfen und Zwergen umgeben sein. Stattdessen versuchten wir eine Welt zu schaffen, die unsere eigene hätte sein können.
It was very important for us to get away from the overused run of the mill fantasy stories that are so common in role-playing games. We did not want to be surrounded by orcs, elves and dwarves again. Instead, we tried to create a world that could have been our own world.
I think that actually worked out quite well. Gets a Celts rating of 1.


Finally, many hints for the price of one:

If you manage to find one, save the crime weapon and your game! Immensely useful in the early game, if you manage to pull it off.

You may want to check any crates near vendors until ... you'll see.

Rainer dies when enemies hit him. Also, when they shout at him. Sometimes even if they only vaguely look in his direction. This will probably not change for a while. Push his speed, give him something to pelt enemies from afar.

Talking to a certain potion vendor may net you a potion. Repeatedly.

A good person that enters a locked basement's sub-basement shall save at regular intervals. They shall enter with plenty of inventory space. They shall also ignite their torch so they don't stumble around in the dark like some idiot. Picks are useful.

Don't forget about the trainers in the city. Helps when you can't hit shit. Each party member has to do their own training.

No money? Gray-greenish body. Red Clothing. Best prices. Much later in the game
, sell your stuff at Umajo Kenta. Easily 50% better payout than anywhere else.
Keep in mind that you soon have one or two party members incoming, so save before you sell stuff to keep the heartbreak and anger to a minimum.

Glowing bushes have seeds that sell for a bit ... but keep some.

Later: Holes with teeth eat flesh. Glowing traps may like a violet gift. Both are night-blind. Do you have a music crystal on your person, by chance? It might be useful and save you some useless running around.

Always useful: You can beam to a user-set waypoint on the map.
Always useful: Running extends your range. Most vendors are idiots.
 

G-Fex

Member
KG5Ao7G.gif

I swore for years up and down that Hocus Pocus still held up, but upon replaying it im not so sure. The core gameplay is fun enough, explore big fantastical castles to find a certain number of collectibles but the game doesnt do enough to shake things up. I was getting really bored by the end of the first episode, definitely a game meant for short bursts.

my friend is trying to bring back hocus pocus as a doom mod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIP0UrSfU1I
 

L Thammy

Member
Reposting this from a previous thread, it's partially relevant here.
Also, Princess Maker 2 was another awesome old game. Wish we got more of them in English.

L Thammy said:
Adding to my previous post, here's descriptions and download links for the games. They're all old, but they're still freeware.



Lord Monarch Online
A real-time strategy game by Falcom. This one I haven't played, but it's in English. Seems like a Nobunaga's Ambition type thing to me. Doesn't actually have online.


Nekketsu Kakutō Densetsu
Enhanced remake of a Famicom game from the same series as River City Ransom. It's an eight-player fighting game. If you're familiar with River City Ransom then you'll have a good idea of how this will play, though there's also some special moves. It's in Japanese. I don't think you lose a lot, seeing as how it's an action game. Still, if you want to play it in English, you can play a translated older version.


One Must Fall 2097
It's a fighting game in the style of Street Fighter II, but with giant robots. There's a single player mode where you earn money off your fights and use it to upgrade your robot. Make sure you learn how to do the advanced options cheat and turn on rehit mode: it enables juggle combos.


Tyrian 2000 [Also on GOG, free either way]
It's a shmup, but you can collect money and buy upgrades. You also have regenerating shield, so being hit isn't always a game over. There's a ton of content. Hardcore shmup fans will probably find it be poorly crafted, though. The difficulty is all over the place, for example.


The Ur-Quan Masters
Port of Star Control 2 for the 3DO. You travel through the (huge) galaxy in order to build up your rebel forces and take it back from alien invaders. Combat is like Asteroids, but with different types of ships. Pretty complex game. You can scavenge planets, customize your main ship and fleet. There are conversation trees. I'm not sure how many solar systems there are to explore; I think there's a few hundred, and they often have multiple planets.


Vantage Master Online
A turn-based strategy game by Falcom. It's in English. You and your opponent run around the field summoning monsters to try to kill each other. Again, doesn't have online.


Warning Forever
This one is fascinating. It's a boss rush shmup where the bosses evolve to counter you. If you keep attacking it from one side, it will grow in that direction so that it's harder to attack. If you get hit by any one of its weapons, it will grow more of that weapon. You have unlimited lives, but not time. There's an English patch, but there's almost no text in the game anyway.


ZZT
It's a primitive game maker. And I do mean primitive. Sounds come from the PC speaker and graphics are just ASCII. But you still got some awesome proto-indie games out of it, and the fans created workarounds in order to make different kinds of gameplay. This list below is full of stuff that I vaguely recall being good. Can't vouch for it all. But I'm pretty sure that Code Red and Wartorn are fantastic and Asmodeus and Dungeon Master's Gallery are really good as well.


Alicesoft stuff (NSWF!)
Alicesoft is a hentai game company that's been around since the later '80s. Not sure if I should be posting this, but it does fit the thread: a ton of their old games have been made freeware. These are all the Japanese versions, but there are translation patches for some of them. I don't know much about them aside from them being free, so I can't personally recommend any. 鬼畜王ランス (Kichikou Rance) is a strategy RPG which I've heard is good.
 
I had a special boot disk to free up enough cache to play this turd:

zQGD37F.gif

I remember me, my Dad and sister were all really into Stonekeep. Have no idea how or why... I just remember playing it and being legitimately excited when exploring a new area lol.

Never did finish it, sort of want to now but can't be arsed.

Then years later I find everyone hated it lol. I think my Dad would just play these games and that is what got us into them. He loved Heroes Quest and Return to Zork etc. I told him about the Wiiware random 'Stonekeep' game a few years ago but he never played it thankfully - such a weird thing to release.

Me personally, I always loved Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion. Had heaps of random DOS demo things back then but Dangerous Dave always stuck out to me as my fav. The sound effects and stuff are awesome. Still fun to play even today.
 

genbatzu

Member
It always amuses me how people would often remember games by the dos executable label rather than the name of the game itself. It makes sense, of course, but "The Games: Winter Challenge" is a lot more descriptive than "Winter" :)

xD true

it was and will ever be "Winter" for me ;P

tbh, until I've googled a picture for this thread I thought the name was Winter and everyone called it Winter or Winter.exe in my old school. But thats already 16-11 years ago ~
 

RhyDin

Member
A couple of months ago I modded my friend's Wii and told her I was putting a special, secret game on there.

Tossed DOSBox on and let her relive her childhood memories with Monster Bash. Fun stuff, game is really difficult.
 
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