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Apogee Games and other classic Dos games

Davey Cakes

Davey Cakes

Member
Some of my favorite Apogee games were the ones starring dudes with blonde hair. Crystal Caves, Secret Agent, and obviously Duke Nukem 1 and 2.

I have a lot of nostalgia for the "charm" of these games. The PC Speaker sound effects, the graphical styles, and in Duke II's case, the soundtrack (which at that point was done on soundblaster).

I never finished any episode in Hocus Pocus other than the first one, but I do own the game as a download. Maybe I'll get back to it sometime.

The 90's was a mess of PC sidescrolling goodness. Apogee had a lot to do with that, but id came in with another great series in Commander Keen.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
Apogee, Epic, Sierra, and Lucasarts were early PC gaming for me (well, when I wasn't using a CGA). Personally, I think Epic was the best.
Tyrian > Raptor

If I didn't have a ZZT avatar then I'd have a One Must Fall 2097 avatar.
 
T

ThreePiMatt

Member
L Thammy said:
Apogee, Epic, Sierra, and Lucasarts were early PC gaming for me (well, when I wasn't using a CGA). Personally, I think Epic was the best.
Tyrian > Raptor

If I didn't have a ZZT avatar then I'd have a One Must Fall 2097 avatar.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Raptor is a great game, but as far as I'm concerned Tyrian is the best shmup made. And it was released for free on GOG.
 
G

Game Guru

Member
I did not play too many classic DOS games back in the day, being focused more on the colorful TI-99/4A my dad had which when I was not playing my NES. However, my dad did have an old Hercules DOS system with a number of games on it. One of those games was Castle Adventure, a shareware title that worked like a better version of Adventure for the Atari 2600. It's a pretty fun game, but you've got to set the speed to low and for the best graphics, you need to set it up as an emulation of the Tandy.
 
B

BomberMouse

Member
That thrill when you got a CD full of shareware goodness. And the sadness that came when I couldn't get one to run or I finished that whole episode and couldn't buy the full game.

Good times. Sometimes I miss the time before the internet, that adrenalin rush of getting a new CD with shareware demos, gazing into the unknown was incredible.
 
MrCunningham

MrCunningham

Member
gryz said:
qF6BzvW.jpg
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This is the demo that launched ID Software:

ddici_02.GIF.gif


DAVE201.GIF.gif


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj4HJkeQSg0

Carmack made this demo in his spare time while working at another company with John Romero and Tom hall called Softdisk. Carmack attempted to recreate the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3 using a technique called adaptive tile refresh, which would only update the necessary tile pieces needed to create the illusion of smooth scrolling. The tile art was created by Tom Hall, and it used John Romero's character Dangerous Dave. Both Carmack and Tom Hall apparently showed to to John Romero, and Romero was so blown away by what he saw that he convinced them to send this demo to Nintendo with the proposed idea of porting Super Mario Bros 3 to the PC. Of course Nintendo turned that offer down, but apparently this demo made it all the way to Miyamoto's desk, and he sent a letter back congratulating them on their work. Or at least that is what John Romero claims.

But later on Appogee games caught wind of this demo and managed to get John Carmack. Tom Hall and Romero to turn that demo into Commander Keen.


Gambit61 said:
I don't know how I'd even get these running lol.
Click to expand...

DOSBOX: http://www.dosbox.com/

Download and install DosBox for windows (of you are using Windows), find the DOS .exe for the game you want to play, right click it and tell it to open in DOS BOX. The game should just boot up.
 
Z

Zizbuka

Banned
I still remember the LAN sessions in ROTT we used to have at work. Each of us in our office, speakerphone, taunting......... Seeing someone hit a launch pad followed by a heat seeking missile was godly.
 
D

diggmcbadass

Member
Stunts, wolfenstein, terminal velocity, stunt island, commander keen, raptor, dr riptide, treansport tycoon dx, ports of call, god of thunder, blake stone, bodycount, death rally, lost vikings, commander keen, winter games, sam and max, sim farm... Nostalgia overload.

Best thing, though, is that between dosbox and some virtual machine magic, there is pretty much not one single game from my childhood that can't be played on my current computer.
 
B

Baraka in the White House

2-Terms of Kombat
Anyone remember a DOS-based game where you flew around obstacles in a "level" on a sort of jetpack collecting gems while avoiding traps and whatnot? The thing about it I remember most is being able to design your own levels where you got to place the gems and obstacles wherever you wanted.

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of this game.
 
O

Orbis

Member
Baraka in the White House said:
Anyone remember a DOS-based game where you flew around obstacles in a "level" on a sort of jetpack collecting gems while avoiding traps and whatnot? The thing about it I remember most is being able to design your own levels where you got to place the gems and obstacles wherever you wanted.

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of this game.
Click to expand...
Jetpack?
 
F

Forkball

Member
I love my digital download PC future, but I do miss the obscenely huge boxes a lot of PC games came in. I guess that was to grab attention? They were often in some weird shape too.
 
indigo-cyclops

indigo-cyclops

Member
I've been going crazy playing things like BAT 1 & 2, Bloodnet, Rise of the Dragon, Dark lands, Night long, KGB/conspiracy... So many great old games that I missed out on or never finished.
 
5

5amshift

Banned
I still remember playing Commander Keen on my dads computer way back when it was released. Pretty sure it was my first video game I've ever played. Then moved onto Doom, and others through floppy discs.
 
K

krYlon

Member
Solstice said:
Anyone remember the Catacombs games? They were horror FPS games in the style of Wolfenstein. Scared the shit out of me as a kid.

23674-curse-of-the-catacombs-dos-screenshot-it-wouldn-t-be-a-shooter.gif
curse-of-the-catacombs_13.gif
GNda3yEm.png



Well, now they're on sale at GOG for only $6!
Click to expand...

Catacomb abyss is better than Wolfenstein. It was one of the first games I ever completed, the atmosphere was incredible. Doom was always to me more a successor to this series than wolfenstein, at least in terms of atmosphere and enemy design.

I used to live on apogee games and shareware in general.
Commander keen 4 is still my favourite 2d platformer ever unless you count pop or flashback.
Monster bash is a personal favourite too, but I loved more or less anything they put out.
 
L

lexi

Banned
Love this thread. I owned a SNES but remember playing 95% of these games. I must have done nothing else during my childhood.
 
Danny Dudekisser

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
MrCunningham said:
Alien Carnage was made freeware back in 2007, you can download the whole game for free here:

http://www.3drealms.com/news/2007/05/alien_carnage_freeware.html

But it would be nice if we could see this one get the GOG treatment with the game packaged nicely with DOSBox.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's basically just the idea of having the game set up to run properly from the get-go. But then, I haven't actually bothered to download the freeware release. Alas, I am part of the problem.
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Man, remember when shareware was a thing? I must have played the same demo levels of various Apogee games over and over again.
 
MrCunningham

MrCunningham

Member
firehawk12 said:
Man, remember when shareware was a thing? I must have played the same demo levels of various Apogee games over and over again.
Click to expand...

I remember buying shareware disks from one of the local grocery stores way back in the day for like 5 dollars a pop. Most of the games were Apogee, with some Epic and iD titles thrown in. So much nostalgia just thinking about it.


Chacranajxy said:
But then, I haven't actually bothered to download the freeware release. Alas, I am part of the problem.
Click to expand...

As someone else pointed out, Stargunner was also made as freeware, and Remedy made the original Death Rally (which was also an Apogee release) for free as well years ago too:

http://remedygames.com/games/death-rally-2/

Death Rally does natively work on modern OS`s like Windows 7 too.
 
L

Lemming

Member
The Horde was pretty nice for it's day.
I guess it was one of the first kind-of tower defense game with a playable main char.
You could have cows!
horde1.gif
 
A Black Falcon

A Black Falcon

Member
Apogee's better than Epic, and Tyrian has nothing on Raptor (Raptor's one of my favorite shmups ever, while Tyrian has never interested me enough for me to even finish it once...)... but I did like many of Epic's games anyway.

out0v0rder said:
the story is better than the gameplay.
dat twist near the end. robo velasquez.
damn that bitch was fine.
Click to expand...

Did you only ever play the first episode, or have you (any of you mentioning TD 2192) actually played the full game? It was made freeware several years ago, so the full game is free now... and anyone who liked the first episode (the shareware one) should absolutely play the other two! Seriously, the plot goes in directions I'd never have guessed... it's serious, sad, depressing, occasionally funny... it's a crazy-bleak game overall, but it does have a really good story. The gameplay's only average, with easily exploitable AI and simple gameplay, but the great story keeps it going all the way to the end.

But man, for anyone who's only played episode 1... you haven't seen anything yet, story-wise.

The parting scene between Vel and the robot in episode 2 is one of my favorite moving scenes... it actually succeeded in making me care about that robot. Good work. The bodycount in this series is RIDICULOUS, but somehow it's all so well done that I kept going all the way to the end...

BlackLagoon said:
td_3.jpg

Always the charmer.
Click to expand...
She may be a jerk, but when she says that she's better at piloting than everyone... well, she's just telling the truth! Nobody else comes even close to Velasquez. Yeah, she's a pretty good character overall, bad attitude or no.

Yeah, overall, mediocre gameplay or not, TD 2192 is my favorite game ever published by Epic. Epic Pinball would be second. :)
 
S

Shadow Hog

Member
Just_myles said:
Did Apogee make Blake Stone and Rise of the Triad? Those are classics for me back in the day.
Click to expand...
Yes and yes; both attempts to create a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, in spite of the developers of Wolf3D developing their own sequel-of-sorts that wound up getting the recognition that those two franchises never did (niche little game, but you've probably heard of it; goes by the name of "Doom").

One of these days, I'm going to play more of Rise of the Triad. Kind of annoys me that the one source port for it I could find likes to hang, which tends to make my entire computer unusable when it's in fullscreen.
 
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