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[efyu_lemonardo]

so much goodness in this thread, I love all you guys!

Some played Raptor, while others played Tyrian. I played Galactix.

 

[MrCunningham]

UE1 uses a special dithering algorithm on the environment when running in software mode without bilinear filtering. It kind of sort of smooths the textures out so they don't appear so pixely. Other than that, a lot of the visual tech and gimmicks in the engine were coded to run in software, whereas most others at the time relied exclusively on 3D acceleration for those effects, like colored lighting and such.

Yeah, the game does have a really nice look to it in software rendering mode. On a modern PC, it might even have a playable framerate.

Right now I have been digging through most of my old Win 9X era PC games...

But I am missing a lot of games that I use to own retail copies of. Some might be stashed away in rubber maid storage containers in my parents house. I don't know, I would have to pay them a visit and check. Some of the discs that I am missing include Duke 3D and expansions, Shadow Warrior,Quake 1 and 3 (though I have Quake 2), Warcraft 2, Tomb Raider 2, TR Gold and 3, my Need for Speed discs, Terminator Future Shock and Skynet, Anachronox, Earthsiege 1 and 2, Comanche, Carmageddon 1 and 2, and a bunch of others. The image posted is about 1/3rd of what I owned from the DOS to Windows 9x era.

Oh my god, MrCunningham, what are you doing. The memories... I am almost crying.

I still love the look of UT '99. More so than UT2003/4 and UT3. Aesthetically UT99 has a clean look to it with some unique locations. Like the Galeon, Facing Worlds and some of the medevil themes. I also love the weapons/ weapon set in UT '99. They may not be as balanced as some of the later games, but I love the diversity this game has. The rocket Launcher has so many different fire modes and the sniper riffle is so simple yet effective. Of course tellifragging has always been one of my favorite mechanics from UT '99.

 

[blast processed]

Terminator Future Shock

I wanted to like this game. I really tried but couldn't get very far.

 

[MrCunningham]

I wanted to like this game. I really tried but couldn't get very far.

Admittedly, it hasn't aged that well, but I still have some nostalgia for it. At the time of its release it was pretty amazing, especially with the large and partially open world nature of the game, and the fact that you could enter any building with a texture of a door on it. It was one of the first traditional styled FPS's to require full mouse look and even has drivable vehicles. Which was a real novelty for the time. It was pretty innovative for a 1995 release. But I can see why it can be hard to get into now.

Also, being a Bethesda game, it had its fair share of bugs.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Oh shit, The Neverhood. I really wanna try that sometime, but it was $50 when I last looked, and probably even more now :\

 

[MrCunningham]

Oh shit, The Neverhood. I really wanna try that sometime, but it was $50 when I last looked, and probably even more now :\

It really goes for $50.00 for just the disc, jewel case and manual? I had no idea that it was sought after. I bought my copy for like $20.00 Canadian back in 1999 or so and it was the big box version too. Though unfortunately when I moved out of my parents house they decided to throw away all of my old PC game boxes... which makes me cry to this day

 

[Shadow Hog]

Yep! Just what's in that photo is at least $50 USD.

 

[Barkley's Justice]

Mortal Kombat 3 has a great DOS port as well and all three of them are available on GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/mortal_kombat_123

Oh snap! Thanks! Just bought them. That's so cool!

 

[A Black Falcon]

I finished the second part of my PC platformers summaries list thread. 12 games, all from the '90s: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1213383 (starts at post 9)

so much goodness in this thread, I love all you guys!

Galactix is simple fun. Weird controls though, at least in the DOS version... didn't they change it to something more normal in the remake or something?

Oh yeah, and Galactix is actually by the guy who went on to make Raptor, so... playing Galactix kind of picked that side of the Raptor/Tyrian war. (Raptor is his best game, but Galactix and Demonstar and its addons are good as well...)

 

[capitalCORN]

Galactix is simple fun. Weird controls though, at least in the DOS version... didn't they change it to something more normal in the remake or something?

Oh yeah, and Galactix is actually by the guy who went on to make Raptor, so... playing Galactix kind of picked that side of the Raptor/Tyrian war. (Raptor is his best game, but Galactix and Demonstar and its addons are good as well...)

I remember getting really far in Galactix, to the point of getting all the possible upgrades and coasting thru an endless series of waves, and then simply dying from attrition. Was there even an end to that game? Although seriously, Tyrian was the better game, even the demo for Tyrian had more content than the full version of Raptor.

In other topics, anyone else love Abuse? I thought it was a brilliant 'twin stick' scroller.

 

[didevol]

Does anyone remember the "Aureal A3D" tech?

That shit was amazing. It made Jedi Knight an even better game than it already was.

Yea, it's still banned from most half-life servers haha.

 

[A Black Falcon]

I remember getting really far in Galactix, to the point of getting all the possible upgrades and coasting thru an endless series of waves, and then simply dying from attrition. Was there even an end to that game?

Yes, I believe it ends after wave 100. I've finished it.

Although seriously, Tyrian was the better game, even the demo for Tyrian had more content than the full version of Raptor.

Raptor destroys Tyrian. Best '90s PC shmup, hands down. I love that game, I've beaten it over and over, while I've never finished Tyrian. But of course, that's about par for the course, Apogee games were almost always better than Epic. (I do like TD2192 and Epic Pinball a lot, though.)

 

[capitalCORN]

Yes, I believe it ends after wave 100. I've finished it.

Finally, I have closure in my life!

Raptor destroys Tyrian. Best '90s PC shmup, hands down. I love that game, I've beaten it over and over, while I've never finished Tyrian. But of course, that's about par for the course, Apogee games were almost always better than Epic. (I do like TD2192 and Epic Pinball a lot, though.)

Not saying Raptor was a bad game, I did love it. Tyrian, however, had multiple ships with multiple configurable load-outs, 'Pentium' graphics mode, branching paths, more plot elements, secret levels, secrets in general, secret modes and ships, secret games within games, and a much better soundtrack (In my opinion). Not to mention bosses were more than max out on shield stock, ram till dead.

 

[MrCunningham]

A few more screenshots of UT99, this time running at 1280x1024 32bit colour with the Direct3D8 fan patch renderer:

OpenGL at 1280x1024 @ 32bit colour:

Performance is a little better under D3D8, but it is missing the transparencies. What I have noticed with these Nvidia drivers is that Direct3D6 doesn't seem to work at all. The default renderer in UT99 is D3D6 and the game will just crash on start up... hmmmm....

Running DXDiag, I can't even get a system self test for D3D6 (I hit cancel, but it will run tests for D3D7, D3D8 and D3D9).

Here is another D3D6 game, Rollcage:

It seems like D3D6 performance is really broken and I am not sure if it is the card or the drivers. A game like Rollcage should not get 7fps on a Geforce 2ti. My older Geforce 256 would run this game just fine at 1600x1200. Which is a shame because I have a lot of D3D6 games that I would like to run on this machine. I might have to try rolling back to drivers to see if I can find something that can fix this issue.

 

[MrCunningham]

Yep! Just what's in that photo is at least $50 USD.

Hmm... interesting. I love the game, though I haven;t actually gotten around to playing Armikrog. yet. I really need to get around to that one.


Also, a few screenshots of Sega Rally 95 running in Win98se:

It's a port of the Saturn game, and runs at a maximum resolution of 640x480 and the framerate is locked at 30FPS. The game also has an official patch for D3D and has simple options including perspective correcting, fogging and bilinear filtering.

 

[Bancho]

Here are 2 systems i am playing about with at the moment. Currently testing out configurations etc.

1st is a AMD K6-2 500mhz, 512mb Ram, 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 AGP. I'm still looking at sound cards. Good ISA sound cards do fetch nice amounts of $$$. I'm also on the lookout for a desktop style case so i can put the monitor on top.

Second system is real close to my heart. When i got into upgrading and overclocking as a teen the AMD Athlon "Thunderbird's" were released. I had a Abit KT7-Raid with 256 ram and a Athlon 1ghz. I did the L1 bridge mod to make it 1.1ghz! Man those were the days. I spotted this board in as new condition, boxed with manual and all parts for pennies. So its currently rocking a L1 unlocked (HB Pencil mod) AMD Athlon 1333mhz, 768 Crucial PC133 and i'm currently on the look out for a Graphics card, probably something like a Geforce 3 Ti 500.

Playing with all this old hardware is great, but all those Windows 98 restarts is not!

 

[PantsuJo]

Hmm... interesting. I love the game, though I haven;t actually gotten around to playing Armikrog. yet. I really need to get around to that one.


Also, a few screenshots of Sega Rally 95 running in Win98se:

It's a port of the Saturn game, and runs at a maximum resolution of 640x480 and the framerate is locked at 30FPS. The game also has an official patch for D3D and has simple options including perspective correcting, fogging and bilinear filtering.

I had this version, it was awesome. So many memories

 

[blast processed]

This was my World of Warcraft back in the day.

 

[MrCunningham]

Here are 2 systems i am playing about with at the moment. Currently testing out configurations etc.

1st is a AMD K6-2 500mhz, 512mb Ram, 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 AGP. I'm still looking at sound cards. Good ISA sound cards do fetch nice amounts of $$$. I'm also on the lookout for a desktop style case so i can put the monitor on top.

Second system is real close to my heart. When i got into upgrading and overclocking as a teen the AMD Athlon "Thunderbird's" were released. I had a Abit KT7-Raid with 256 ram and a Athlon 1ghz. I did the L1 bridge mod to make it 1.1ghz! Man those were the days. I spotted this board in as new condition, boxed with manual and all parts for pennies. So its currently rocking a L1 unlocked (HB Pencil mod) AMD Athlon 1333mhz, 768 Crucial PC133 and i'm currently on the look out for a Graphics card, probably something like a Geforce 3 Ti 500.

Nice machines, and both AMD too. I actually have an unused AMD Duron CPU somewhere which has a clock speed of 1.7GHz and I also have my AMD Athlon XP 2400+ somewhere too. But no motherboard to use them in. The one that I did use for the XP 2400+ sadly burned out.

As for sound cards, you could always try to snag a good old AWE64 Gold.. though I could only imagine that they are not cheap to find these days.

Playing with all this old hardware is great, but all those Windows 98 restarts is not!

Haha, I just went through the process of completely reformatting my win98se harddrive and reinstalling windows 98 on it. Finding all those drivers... (though good think I have a lot of them still on disc) and the restarts... yeeesh, the restarts.


Also, digging through boxes at my parents house, I found this boxed up:

My OG Asus V6600 Geforce 256.... I even have all the original installation discs.

I don't even know if it still works, but I would gladly swap out my Geforce 2 ti for this if it does. Not that the Ti is a bad card it has excellent OpenGL and DX7 performance (for its class) , but it seems to have driver issues with D3D6 games and I can't find any work arounds for this. It is kind of a buzz kill for me.

 

[Baka Sempai]

Finally got my system up and running,... unfortunately I had to reformat and load the OS from scratch so all my old games are gone, but I'm digging through some boxes to get at least some games in it.
So far, only TOCA, .... will keep looking until I find the rest, or at least a copy of formula 1, to test Glide.

 

[MrCunningham]

Finally got my system up and running,... unfortunately I had to reformat and load the OS from scratch so all my old games are gone, but I'm digging through some boxes to get at least some games in it.
So far, only TOCA, .... will keep looking until I find the rest, or at least a copy of formula 1, to test Glide.

TOCA was pretty great series as far as racing games go from that era.

I haven;t tried installing that other card yet, but I have been playing some Quake 2:

I was never really a big fan of Quake II and always preferred the first game over this one. But after spending a few hours in this game, I am actually starting to like it. What I never really noticed about the campaign back then was that the levels actually has some elements of Metroid in it. All of the areas are interconnecting and you do revisit areas, there is some back tracking. I wouldn't quite call it a Metroidvania, but the game is a lot less linear than I once thought it was. But that is because I never gave the single player campaign a chance, with Quake II I always jumped to the multiplayer.

The game runs smooth on this machine too, always well above 60fps at 1280x960. I am playing the game on a CRT, so I cannot flip the resolution any higher than that (this one maxed out at 1280x1024)

 

[PastorOfMuppets]

It really goes for $50.00 for just the disc, jewel case and manual? I had no idea that it was sought after. I bought my copy for like $20.00 Canadian back in 1999 or so and it was the big box version too. Though unfortunately when I moved out of my parents house they decided to throw away all of my old PC game boxes... which makes me cry to this day

Big box PC games vary so much in price it's crazy. They were really cheap to collect for a long time and then they just inexplicably took off all of a sudden. Sometimes it makes sense: If you have the original Fallout games (1 and 2 and Tactics) in box and complete, they can go for $50-200+ depending on the game. More if they're sealed. It's understandable with Fallout - it's a beloved PC franchise that found a lot more attention on consoles in the last 10 years. Some games that you'd expect to go for high prices don't while games that weren't particularly known for anything go for high prices. Rarity doesn't seem to affect PC games that much either, some games are rare as hell but you can pick them up for cheap. I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few people in the world who has the PC game adaptation of Rendezvous with Rama - a game based on an Arthur C. Clark novel of the same name. I got that game for $3 on eBay plus shipping ($10). There's a weird combination of factors that go into PC game pricing.

One thing I never understood is that PC games based on Star Trek tend to go for much higher prices than PC games based on Star Wars. Birth of the Federation for instance routinely sells for $100+ but you can grab X-Wing vs Tie Fighter sealed for $50.

 

[lazygecko]

TOCA was pretty great series as far as racing games go from that era.

I haven;t tried installing that other card yet, but I have been playing some Quake 2:



I was never really a big fan of Quake II and always preferred the first game over this one. But after spending a few hours in this game, I am actually starting to like it. What I never really noticed about the campaign back then was that the levels actually has some elements of Metroid in it. All of the areas are interconnecting and you do revisit areas, there is some back tracking. I wouldn't quite call it a Metroidvania, but the game is a lot less linear than I once thought it was. But that is because I never gave the single player campaign a chance, with Quake II I always jumped to the multiplayer.

The game runs smooth on this machine too, always well above 60fps at 1280x960. I am playing the game on a CRT, so I cannot flip the resolution any higher than that (this one maxed out at 1280x1024)

It looks like you have that issue with the texture quality being lower than it really was in the day. Some kind of post-Glide compatiblity issue I think.

 

[MrCunningham]

Big box PC games vary so much in price it's crazy. They were really cheap to collect for a long time and then they just inexplicably took off all of a sudden. Sometimes it makes sense: If you have the original Fallout games (1 and 2 and Tactics) in box and complete, they can go for $50-200+ depending on the game. More if they're sealed. It's understandable with Fallout - it's a beloved PC franchise that found a lot more attention on consoles in the last 10 years. Some games that you'd expect to go for high prices don't while games that weren't particularly known for anything go for high prices. Rarity doesn't seem to affect PC games that much either, some games are rare as hell but you can pick them up for cheap. I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few people in the world who has the PC game adaptation of Rendezvous with Rama - a game based on an Arthur C. Clark novel of the same name. I got that game for $3 on eBay plus shipping ($10).

You can say that about older games as a whole. There used to be a point where you could find games from just about any old console for next to nothing on eBay, but over the past... I dunno how many years? Game prices have shot up. I really think sites like youtube are to blame. I love CGR, but Clint did a lot to make collecting big box PC games look more appealing, I can't entirely point my finger at him as I think it was only a matter of time. and there has also been an increase of people just dictating prices because they want to make money off of other peoples hobbies.

A lot of my old PC games (including ones not pictured here) were purchased from bargain bins and sold at discount prices. Even back then it was so much cheaper to get into PC gaming than it was for console gaming because of the lower software prices. Though on the downside, you always had to pay more for the hardware.

It looks like you have that issue with the texture quality being lower than it really was in the day. Some kind of post-Glide compatiblity issue I think.

Really? I just assumed that this is what the textures for the game looked like. I am running it in OpenGL on an Nvidia card and the only option that I have for textures is "use 8-bit textures", which I have turned off. But to be honest I don't really see any differences with this option on or off. Maybe this is the problem? I wonder if there is any way to enable them through the terminal, or through some sort of patch or fan mod?

 

[DrFunk]

Oh god the memories

 

[lazygecko]

Really? I just assumed that this is what the textures for the game looked like. I am running it in OpenGL on an Nvidia card and the only option that I have for textures is to "disable 8-bit textures", which I did. But to be honest I don't really see any differences with this option on or off. Maybe this is the problem? I wonder if there is any way to enable them through the terminal, or through some sort of patch or fan mod?

Fairly certain 8-bit is just refering to the color depth here. I mean, the texture fidelity is visibly much blurrier than the weapons in Quake 1, and that never struck me as looking right and not the way I remember it looking like on my old 3DFX card. I can't remember specifics, just that I remember reading something about this a few years ago. Possibly even a GAF thread.

 

[MrCunningham]

Fairly certain 8-bit is just refering to the color depth here. I mean, the texture fidelity is visibly much blurrier than the weapons in Quake 1, and that never struck me as looking right and not the way I remember it looking like on my old 3DFX card. I can't remember specifics, just that I remember reading something about this a few years ago. Possibly even a GAF thread.

Hmm now I am interested in looking into this.

 

[Accoun]

I actually recently took a look at how the viewmodels for guns are made*. It's pretty interesting, because the textures aren't painted flat for different faces/sides, but are painted under angles. Plus how they are optimized. Guess the engine doesn't work well with uncapped holes? IIRC in Jedi Outcast the models weren't capped where they deleted polygons you can't see. Anyway, it produces some hilarious results when you see the models in the way they weren't supposed to be seen.
Plus all the weapons were under 400 polys (including hands), which these days is kinda crazy (I personally thought they are nearer 800 polys).

I think I might resurrect that old Quake 2 Software vs OpenGL thread for that.

Spoiler

God dammit, it was 2 years ago?

*in q2test because it was only 10 MB and I was on phone internet. No idea about differences with the final verion.

 

[PantsuJo]

This was my World of Warcraft back in the day.

Tribes was so fucking cool

 

[Dictator93]

Thanks for the posts in this thread btw guys. Some great reads and memories.

 

[DeadTrees]

One thing I never understood is that PC games based on Star Trek tend to go for much higher prices than PC games based on Star Wars.

Most of the Star Trek games are trapped in licensing hell, and have never been re-released digitally.

 

[blast processed]

Most of the Star Trek games are trapped in licensing hell, and have never been re-released digitally.

That and low print runs.

 

[BTails]

Most of the Star Trek games are trapped in licensing hell, and have never been re-released digitally.

Thankfully the two best are available digitally: 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites.

 

[blast processed]

Thankfully the two best are available digitally: 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Waitin' for Elite Force to get a digital rerelease, tho. I played the shit out of that one, and I've never even seen Voyager. TNG and DS9, sure, but not VOY...

 

[CaptNink]

Surprised I haven't seen the Warlords series mentioned yet. I loved Warlords 3.

Oh damn,,,,I played a ton of Warlords! Loved that whole series.

Played a lot of Warlords 3 and this guy:

 

[Roe]

These games have my childhood written all over it.

I played Jedi Knight a lot on Zone.com, that was the best game until I become a D2 addict. I used to play D2 for hours every day and the game was still fresh.

But yeah, I used to play MS Dos games until windows 95 was released. Then it was Yahoo Chess, Checkers, and Card games sharing the family computer with my sister.

 

[Baka Sempai]

TOCA was pretty great series as far as racing games go from that era.

I haven;t tried installing that other card yet, but I have been playing some Quake 2:



I was never really a big fan of Quake II and always preferred the first game over this one. But after spending a few hours in this game, I am actually starting to like it. What I never really noticed about the campaign back then was that the levels actually has some elements of Metroid in it. All of the areas are interconnecting and you do revisit areas, there is some back tracking. I wouldn't quite call it a Metroidvania, but the game is a lot less linear than I once thought it was. But that is because I never gave the single player campaign a chance, with Quake II I always jumped to the multiplayer.

The game runs smooth on this machine too, always well above 60fps at 1280x960. I am playing the game on a CRT, so I cannot flip the resolution any higher than that (this one maxed out at 1280x1024)

Thanks for all these great screenshots and pictures, The nostalgia is seriously overwhelming. Hope you continue sharing (both software and hardware)

 

[BTails]

Waitin' for Elite Force to get a digital rerelease, tho. I played the shit out of that one, and I've never even seen Voyager. TNG and DS9, sure, but not VOY...

As a Star Trek fan growing up, Elite Force was awesome when it released. Never played the sequel, was it any good?

 

[gabbo]

As a Star Trek fan growing up, Elite Force was awesome when it released. Never played the sequel, was it any good?

Not as good, but certainly still quite fun, solid shooting mechanics - Better looking certainly.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Plus it had Picard. played by Patrick Stewart. And Tuvok returned, for some reason (prolly cuz the Elite Force was his idea in the first game). And Barclay! Barclay was a good character.

 

[blast processed]

Was that Klingon Honor Guard game any good?

 

[Shadow Hog]

I recall it being savaged by reviews at the time, but never actually played it myself.

 

[BTails]

There were a bunch of Star Trek games on PC in the late 90s. Remember "Borg"? Or how about "Star Trek Hidden Evil"?

Not sure if any are good, haven't played a Star Trek game since Armada.

 

[Shadow Hog]

Remember "Borg"?

"The name is Q. It's short for "Q"."

I mean, I didn't own it, but... yes.

 

[lazygecko]

Unreal in glorious software rendering and 800x600. No other game looks quite like it.

I wonder what Deus Ex looks like in software as well.

 

[sixteen-bit]

Unreal in glorious software rendering and 800x600. No other game looks quite like it.

*pics*

I wonder what Deus Ex looks like in software as well.

this is fire

 

[Accoun]

Pics 1 and 2 are kinda whatever, but oh God, that third one.

 

[gabbo]

Was that Klingon Honor Guard game any good?

I recall hearing it was garbage at release, but it's metacritic seems to be alright.

 

[MrCunningham]

OK, Now I remember why I replaced this card. I dropped it into my system and it does post and my PC detects it just fine... but the GPU fan is completely ceased.

The fan has seen better days:

I don't think Will be able to fix this with some sewing machine oil. The model number for this fan is: Forcecon DFC401012M70T and sells for about $30.00 online, which is a little pricey for a bare fan. It is a bit hard to find a replacement for this one because it doesn't use the standard two pin connector that just about every Nvidia card from 2000 onward uses. This is a three pin connection.

I'm not sure if I can find an alternative replacement.