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[manzoman96]

Hey GAF,

Recently, I remembered a few DOS games that I used to play with my cousins at my uncles house. After a few Google searches, I was able to find 2 of the games that I was looking for.

One of them was a slots game called The Vegas Bandit.

It's very simple, just bet 1-3 coins and try to win big. My cousins and I would always compete for high scores.

Another one I was able to find was Jungle Pinball

It's one of the boards from Epic Pinball by Epic Games. Again, we always had so much fun trying to beat out each others high scores. We would do the same thing with the pinball game that was pre-loaded on Windows XP.

I'm glad that I'm just able to drop them right into dosbox and play them just like I did back in the day.

One game I wasn't able to play was a game we used to play called F-18 No Fly Zone. I found out that it was a Windows game, not a DOS game, and my Windows 8 computer only does compatibility mode up to XP. If anyone has any advice to me on how to get it running on my computer, it would be awesome.

But playing those two games brought back a lot of memories for me. If you guys have any stories to share about DOS games, I'd love to hear them.

I'd also love to hear recommendations for DOS games that others and I may have missed.

 

[Chinbo37]

Commander keen

Jazz jack rabbit

2 of my favorite do platformers

 

[Buttonbasher]

Commander keen

Jazz jack rabbit

2 of my favorite do platformers

Add in this:

 

[Cavalier]

One game that popped up right away in my head:

Quarantine

 

[Kadin]

I remember playing Snake way too much. Don't remember if it was this one specifically but yeah, I was ecstatic when it finally came to Nokia phones...

 

[RionaaM]

Add in this:

If you're gonna mention Crystal Caves, then let me throw Secret Agent in there too. Used to spend a lot of time playing the demo, which featured the first episode.

 

[zephervack]

California games and Stunts, being able to design your own tracks in stunts is still fun today.

 

[cacildo]

Master of Magic is on sale on GoG

i registered on gog just for this game. Waited for a sale and got it for $2,99 i think. First night i played for 6 hours straight


I used to play it when i was 10 or 11. But whenever armies and cities became too big, the game usually froze.


BTW i registered on GoG by GAF recomendation... im really enjoying it! They give you a few dos games free just for registering, games have decent prices, right now they are giving a free big game, "Mount and blade" or something....
Its pretty nice!

 

[DragonGirl]

Those games are way too advanced for my DOS memories. I recall a game where I continually died to a smiley face. I think the game was called Castle.

 

[jamsy]

Don't know if anyone else remembers Jill of the Jungle but as a kid I really liked it. Made by Epic back in 1992.

 

[taybul]

Rise of the Triad!

 

[Fisty]

Does anyone think they can name this game?

-lots of floppys
-very very 80s neon noirish
-main is a detective/PI
-maybe point and click or text adventure
-I think there was a car on the cover
-from the late 80s, maybe early 90s

Dont know the name but had the game when I was young, always wanted to play but wasnt allowed, for whatever reason. Thanks for the help gaf

 

[_Ryo_]

Aladdin

With better quality music than the Genesis version. IMHO the definitive version of the game. It should be released on Steam/GOG.

Sam and Max Hit the Road

Awesome animation, great art, hilarious story and fun P&C adventure gameplay. Was recently released on GOG. GET IT.

Concentration!

How good is your memory? Concentrate and you just might be a winner.

 

[Kadin]

I'll just put this here:
autoexec.bat and config.sys

Anyone who played DOS games remember these two files. Always tweaking them to get thing just right...

Spoiler

oh and of course memmaker.exe

 

[Rapstah]

I grew up on Stunts:

It was a crazy early 3D (!!!) racing game with loops and jumps and stuff. The 3D was the point, but it also had an amazing track builder which probably got me into game design and is why I'm a programmer today.

The picture made me remember there was a way you could place two jumps one block apart and have a certain length of road before the first jump in order to have cars always land right on the edge of the second jump, which sent you really far into the sky.

Edit: here's the track editor:

It was really good.

 

[xDUMPWEEDx]

STORMOVIK: SU-25 SOVIET ATTACK FIGHTER
Absolutely loved this game as a kid. It was so amazing for the time to fly around, shoot down planes, and blow up buildings.

http://www.myabandonware.com/game/stormovik-su-25-soviet-attack-fighter-10z

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqTMqYK-GoY

 

[Xamtheking]

I'm not old enough to have played on DOS when it came out, but there was a time when I was emulating Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall and I freakin loved the game.
Who needs graphics when you have stellar gameplay

 

[HalfwayOrb]

One game that popped up right away in my head:

Quarantine

Great game. The sequel wasn't bad either.

 

[cs060mk2]

I am mostly into 486 games (up to DX2 66), currently have a DX2 80MHz system and a backup 133MHz Cyrix 486 singleboard computer:

Jungle Book - great platformer
Alladin - Same as Sega version
Seek n Destroy - Great top down shooter
LHX attack chopper - Nice heli sim
Sim City 2000
4D racing/Stunt car racer - very good driving game
4D boxing - superb boxing sim
Tie Fighter
Pinball Fantasies - Very good port of the Amiga game
Psycho Pinball - Another nice pinball game
Fate of the Atlantis - Prefer it on the MS-DOS platform
Monkey Island - Same here
Golden Axe - I was surprised the MS-DOS version was good
Heart of China - It was considered the future of gaming, cheesy now but was a good time bitd
Rise of the Dragon - Interesting and detailed adventure game

 

[Joey Ravn]

If you're gonna mention Crystal Caves, then let me throw Secret Agent in there too. Used to spend a lot of time playing the demo, which featured the first episode.

I came to recommend Crystal Caves, and two people had already done it!

Milo would be proud.

 

[Daniel Jackson]

I loved Supaplex. I can still remember a lot of levels

 

[Puppet Shadow]

I grew up on Stunts:


It was a crazy early 3D (!!!) racing game with loops and jumps and stuff. The 3D was the point, but it also had an amazing track builder which probably got me into game design and is why I'm a programmer today.

The picture made me remember there was a way you could place two jumps one block apart and have a certain length of road before the first jump in order to have cars always land right on the edge of the second jump, which sent you really far into the sky.

Edit: here's the track editor:

It was really good.

Came to post this! I used to make tracks that split, then at several points during the race my opponent and I would jump over the office buildings from different sides. Sooo much time spent lining that stuff up.

 

[jblank83]

I want to reply to your thread but first I need to edit my config.sys.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Yay text adventures!

 

[EvilKatarn]

Get that 3D Realms bundle that just released. It includes Raptor, Bio Menace, Cosmo, Hocus Pocus and basically every other DOS game I used to play as a kid.

https://3drealms.com/catalog/3d-realms-anthology_50/

 

[Durante]

Master of Magic and Stunts in the first 15 posts? Well done GAF, well done indeed.

I'll add Dark Legions:

It was very unique, with turn-based strategic battles:

But real-time top-down action combat to resolve the battle whenever two units met!

 

[BouncyFrag]

My first RPG long before I even knew what a RPG was. I recall putting some time into my lute playing as I was tired of sounding like ass at inns trying to earn some extra coin.

 

[Rapstah]

Came to post this! I used to make tracks that split, then at several points during the race my opponent and I would jump over the office buildings from different sides. Sooo much time spent lining that stuff up.

Yeah, totally, I did the exact thing you describe. I remember finding out that you could save more tracks than the game would normally allow by saving a replay on the track in question and then deleting it from the list. You could then load the track by playing the replay, and there was some glitch where you could get control of the car in the replay and then restart the race.

 

[manzoman96]

Don't know if anyone else remembers Jill of the Jungle but as a kid I really liked it. Made by Epic back in 1992.

That's what the jungle pinball board was based on. I should give it a try.

 

[jimi_dini]

Grew up with those gems:

Spoiler

Lode Runner

Spoiler

Boulder Dash

and then of course:

Spoiler

Leisure Suit Larry

 

[SwiftDeath]

Zeliard of course

Music drove me insane but still loved it


And then Rescue Rover was my jam

 

[A Black Falcon]

Buying that 3D Realms Anthology is definitely a great place to start...

Those games are way too advanced for my DOS memories. I recall a game where I continually died to a smiley face. I think the game was called Castle.

Castle Adventure. Great game!

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/castle-adventure

 

[Syril]

Master of Magic and Stunts in the first 15 posts? Well done GAF, well done indeed.

I'll add Dark Legions:


It was very unique, with turn-based strategic battles:

But real-time top-down action combat to resolve the battle whenever two units met!

Oh man, Dark Legions was the best. My brother ended up getting really good and using the super cheap Thief units to kill pretty much anything. With the point-buying, rings, traps, and deployment, it was like Archon mixed with a tabletop wargame. SSI got absorbed into Ubisoft years ago, so it's a shame this never got rereleased at all, especially since it has manual protection.

 

[krae_man]

Grew up with those gems:

This is what I was going to post. Game is amazing, we minus the fishbowl level.

There needs to be a remake where they mocap a cat running through a giant block of swiss cheese as one of the ads.

 

[Succinct Verbosity]

Was the original theme park DOS?

 

[ichtyander]

One game I wasn't able to play was a game we used to play called F-18 No Fly Zone. I found out that it was a Windows game, not a DOS game, and my Windows 8 computer only does compatibility mode up to XP. If anyone has any advice to me on how to get it running on my computer, it would be awesome.

According to Mobygames, F-18 No Fly Zone is a Windows 3.1 game, meaning there are various ways of installing Win 3.1 and playing the game, ranging from virtualization software like VMWare or Virtualbox, or even DosBox itself. I haven't tried Win 3.1 in DosBox in a while but there are lots of tutorials online that guide you through it. It's not that complicated, but it depends on how much you're used to DosBox and DOS commands. The gist of it is that you need a Win 3.1 CD or ISO, mount a folder and the CD/ISO in DosBox, install Win 3.1 and download some audio and graphics drivers for a better experience. The dude in this YouTube video is using barebones DosBox but you could speed up some stuff a bit with a frontend like DBGL or D-Fend Reloaded. Here's another tutorial I ran into just now: http://joshmccarty.com/2013/08/run-windows-3-1-in-dosbox/

Anyway, some of my earliest DOS memories are of a 486 I believe, with some CGA graphics, that my dad brought home from a friend or colleague (we didn't own a PC at the time, early to mid 90's). I think he was supposed to fix something with it, probably clean up the HDD and such but kept it for a good week or two. Me and my older brother found Alleycat and Test Drive: The Duel on it and went nuts with it.

Another thing I just remembered is this bad boy, Banner Mania:

It's just a program for creating banners, but it seemed like so much more back then, like I was actually creating something of worth (utter garbage), being creative etc.

Later on, we discovered module music with:

Scream Tracker

and Fasttracker II:

Got us into music composing (my brother dabbles with trackers like Sunvox to this day), and on a PC Speaker no less. FT II pulled off some amazing sound on a mere speaker.

Not to leave the post with talking only about programs, there's a game I actually mastered and completed back then that I can't even begin to understand how I did it. The game in question is Tom and the Ghost:

It's a pretty interesting concept - you play as the ghost of Sir Reginald Arrow as you're trying to save Tom's mother from a 500 year old warlock. You only control Sir Reginald directly, while Tom has his own nerve wracking, dumb as a dodo AI routine and follows you occasionally. Your task is to kill baddies, collect items but also take care of Tom by giving him teddy bears, milkshakes and hamburgers to keep him fed and happy. Tom often looses interest, starts jumping around and doing his own thing so you always have to be mindful of where he is.
I didn't have that many games so this was it. I actually drew the map, screen by screen on a piece of paper and memorized the whole game, since it's designed in a way to make you make specific item combinations and do specific things. After god knows how long, I figured out the whole thing and got to the end, killing the warlock (who transforms into a dragon if I remember correctly).

I can't say it's that good of a game, but it's one of my earlier efforts to completely master a video game on my own.

 

[LuFel]

my favorite DOS games:

-Secret Agent
-Raptor
-Paratrooper

 

[Alric]

Lands of Lore

just make sure you play the version that has patrick stewarts voice.

 

[indigo-cyclops]

One great one I've been playing recently is Daughter of Serpents. It's like a hybrid RPG/Adventure game. It's fantastic. Weird, great atmosphere, good writing. It's really quite good.

I mean you start the game creating a character that specializes in a whole heap of stuff. Ranging from Occult knowledge to forensics.

 

[luka]

i recommend that everyone go play crusader:no remorse/regret right now

 

[Lord British]

Does anyone think they can name this game?

-lots of floppys
-very very 80s neon noirish
-main is a detective/PI
-maybe point and click or text adventure
-I think there was a car on the cover
-from the late 80s, maybe early 90s

Dont know the name but had the game when I was young, always wanted to play but wasnt allowed, for whatever reason. Thanks for the help gaf

It could have been Mean Streets, the Tex Murphy game. Or perhaps the sequel, Martian Memorandum.

 

[Deleted member 245925]

I grew up on Stunts:

It was a crazy early 3D (!!!) racing game with loops and jumps and stuff. The 3D was the point, but it also had an amazing track builder which probably got me into game design and is why I'm a programmer today.

The picture made me remember there was a way you could place two jumps one block apart and have a certain length of road before the first jump in order to have cars always land right on the edge of the second jump, which sent you really far into the sky.

Edit: here's the track editor:

It was really good.

I played the shit out of this game as a kid, thanks for bringing back the memories. So good!

 

[runnin_blue]

i recommend that everyone go play crusader:no remorse/regret right now

No Remorse is free on Origin right now.

 

[manzoman96]

According to Mobygames, F-18 No Fly Zone is a Windows 3.1 game, meaning there are various ways of installing Win 3.1 and playing the game, ranging from virtualization software like VMWare or Virtualbox, or even DosBox itself. I haven't tried Win 3.1 in DosBox in a while but there are lots of tutorials online that guide you through it. It's not that complicated, but it depends on how much you're used to DosBox and DOS commands. The gist of it is that you need a Win 3.1 CD or ISO, mount a folder and the CD/ISO in DosBox, install Win 3.1 and download some audio and graphics drivers for a better experience. The dude in this YouTube video is using barebones DosBox but you could speed up some stuff a bit with a frontend like DBGL or D-Fend Reloaded. Here's another tutorial I ran into just now: http://joshmccarty.com/2013/08/run-windows-3-1-in-dosbox/

Thanks man! I'm gonna try to get it to work.

 

[hlhbk]

I don't think anyone has missed playing it but IMO Doom was THE DOS game.

 

[BouncyFrag]

Razzle Dazzle Root Beer

 

[Interceptor]

Theme Hosptial

Syndicate

Dungeon Keeper

All avaiable via gog.

 

[jimi_dini]

Razzle Dazzle Root Beer

Quest For Glory 1/Hero's Quest?

What's really funny is that I just found out in the last few weeks that the actual cheat/debug mode phrase is "Razzle Dazzle Root Ale". That's the phrase that is checked against. The game simply accepts beer as well as another word for "ale", that's why that phrase works too. Which means it wasn't discovered by looking through the game files. Instead someone must have figured it out by accident.

 

[KKRT00]

The best

Intentionally didnt include the title, because if You dont know this game, You are a bad person anyway

 

[KDR_11k]

Mostly Apogee and Epic Megagames with Raptor and Tyrian taking the crown, respectively.

Another game I remember is this top-down Zelda-like where you play as Thor and your hammer acts like a boomerang. I don't remember if it was called God of Thunder or something else.

Of course there was Descent, being in Germany that was pretty much the only FPS I had access to in those days.

We actually had full versions of games like Epic Pinball and Jill of the Jungle. And there was this "magazine" called Bestseller Games which was basically a full version game (mostly Lucas Arts adventures but some other games like Descent as well) plus a walkthrough or whatever other information there was about the game for 15DM (about 7.50$). I still have a yellowed Sam & Max poster from that thing on my wall.