Support NeoGAF

[Scopa]

I've been on a bit of a nostalgia kick lately and have been reminiscing about my childhood gaming experiences. I started to think about being at people's houses and playing these really fun PC games. But, I realised that I can't remember most of the games we fooled around with back then. I'm hoping others may be able to jog my memory.

I never really had my own PC until I was in high school. Until then, I always had to rely on visiting neighbours, friends or family to get a taste of what PC gaming was. In those days (we're talking early 90s) I remember playing tons and tons of really fun MS-DOS games. But, my problem is, I can't remember most of them (cocaineisahelluvadrug.gif).

Does anyone have any personal favourites from that time that they would like to list and describe if possible?

I'll start with what few I can remember.


Bruce Lee

Duke Nukem

Lode Runner

Police Quest

King's Quest

Leisure Suit Larry

 

[Makariel]

The secret of monkey Island, obviously. Because you fight like a cow.

Geoff Crammonds formula one grand prix. Was for years my favourite racing game. The fun began with changing the autoexec.bat and config.sys for a week to get it to work. Could only run it without mouse driver, since that used too much memory.

Red Baron - fantastic ww1 dogfight simulator, just the right balance of realism and fun.

 

[bitbydeath]

Dr Drago’s Madcap Chase Around The World

Wacky Wheels

Little Big Adventure

Cannon Fodder

 

[Scopa]

Dr Drago’s Madcap Chase Around The World

Wacky Wheels

Little Big Adventure

Cannon Fodder

I’ve never heard of Dr Drago’s Madcap Chase Around The World. I have to look that up.

 

[ThatStupidLion]

Trying to remember my dos games that havent been mentioned:

Goldrush

Spellcasting 101: sorcerors get all the girls

Ski or die

(this guy always reminded me of rodney dangerfield

Stronghold

amazing early RTS/SIM

Quest for glory

a classic series that shaped the future, though the combination or rpg mechanics in an adventure game was never quite replicated early on

Superhero league of hoboken

overlooked surreal post-apocalyptic fun rpg adventure

Space Quest:

 

[klosos]

Great Thread

Championship Manager ( Soccer management Sim - all stats , its great )

Zak McCracken vs the Alien Mind Benders ( classic Lucas arts adventure game )

Old DOS games easily had the best covers.

 

[Scopa]

Great Thread

Championship Manager ( Soccer management Sim - all stats , its great )

Zak McCracken vs the Alien Mind Benders ( classic Lucas arts adventure game )

Old DOS games easily had the best covers.

Omg, I spent hours on Championship Manager when I was at my cousin’s house. So good.

 

[DonJimbo]

There was a super mario game if i remember correctly

 

[CrustyBritches]

Oh goodness that was a long time ago. Some of my old favs...

Oregon Trail:

Commander Keen:

Life or Death:

D/Generation:

 

[Strife In a Teacup]

AD&D Gold Box games without question.

Old DOS games easily had the best covers.

And yes, the AD&D games had the BEST covers!

GOG has them and the D&D collection goes on sale every now and then.

 

[Domisto]

Warlords

 

[Airola]

I loved most of the Apogee games. Soleau Software was my jam too!

Pharaoh's Tomb is a fantastic game where one screen is one level and you are supposed to jump around and fight the enemies and avoid traps.
Monuments of Mars and Arctic Adventure are similar games and just as good.

The there is the combo of Secret Agent and Crystal Caves.
Both games have a "world map" screen where you walk around to choose levels, and the levels are super fun platforming action.

Paganitzu and Chagunitzu are really good puzzle games.

There were tons of great adventure games and everyone knows about Police Quests and King's Quests etc. Among those great games was the Hugo trilogy with House of Horrors, Whodunit and Jungle of Doom.

From Soleau Software titles I'd like to mention at least Loader Larry and Bolo Ball. The latter is a simple game where you just push the ball down and let it fall down in hopes to get as many points as possible. That was really addictive game.

And of course, from John Romero himself, there was Dangerous Dave!
That game had many sequels but I liked the first one the most.

 

[Scopa]

Oh goodness that was a long time ago. Some of my old favs...

Oregon Trail:

Commander Keen:

Life or Death:

D/Generation:

I’ve never played Life or Death. I’ll definitely be looking that up.

I loved most of the Apogee games. Soleau Software was my jam too!

Pharaoh's Tomb is a fantastic game where one screen is one level and you are supposed to jump around and fight the enemies and avoid traps.
Monuments of Mars and Arctic Adventure are similar games and just as good.

The there is the combo of Secret Agent and Crystal Caves.
Both games have a "world map" screen where you walk around to choose levels, and the levels are super fun platforming action.

Paganitzu and Chagunitzu are really good puzzle games.

There were tons of great adventure games and everyone knows about Police Quests and King's Quests etc. Among those great games was the Hugo trilogy with House of Horrors, Whodunit and Jungle of Doom.

From Soleau Software titles I'd like to mention at least Loader Larry and Bolo Ball. The latter is a simple game where you just push the ball down and let it fall down in hopes to get as many points as possible. That was really addictive game.

And of course, from John Romero himself, there was Dangerous Dave!
That game had many sequels but I liked the first one the most.

Now we are getting somewhere! These are the types of obscure games I find it hard to remember.

 

[NiiloPielinen]

Supaplex

 

[Shotpun]

Some of my favorites that I still today like to play now and then:

Syndicate:

One Must Fall 2097:

Raptor: Call of the Shadows:

And of course most of the Lucasarts adventures. Then there's the original C&C games but I've always preferred the windows versions for their larger resolution. I also absolutely love Doom and Doom 2 but I wouldn't play them these days without a source port with enhancements to graphics and controls.

 

[nkarafo]

Doom 1/2 are my favorite DOS games by far.

 

[Elcid]

Disappointed no said Monster Bash.
Doom and Hexen for me!

 

[asker]

Oh boy, there's a lot of good ones! Some of them were great back in the day but are really hard to play today.

Like the brillant Street Rod 1 and 2.

Buy used cars, upgrade the parts and put the whole thing up as ante in a street race. Only problem is the actual racing runs at about 10 frames per second.

And the classic Ultima Underworld 1 and 2

This was absolutely gorgeous at the time. Not to mention the box art!

There's a cool little forgotten gem from Sierra called Jones in the Fast Lane, where you compete against your friends to have a fulfilling life of economical security, education, work status and happiness. You have to carefully decide where you spend the valuable time of your week to balance all these factors.

Some games I play actively to this day. Like Doom II. The source ports have done amazing things to the game and the modding community is still very much active and pushing out quality level packs. I'll link to some good ones:

Valiant

Back to Saturn X

And another example: Recently I started playing the board game 1830, released 1986. It's an economy game where you buy and sell stocks in train startups during the railway boom of the 1800's. There seems to have been only one instance of a PC implementation of this game where you can play vs. an AI, and that's in an old DOS game from 1995. And the AI is amazingly not half-bad. This is the work of some seriously talented programmers.

1830: Railways & Robber Barons

 

[JohnnyFootball]

The original Doom.

Dune 2 was another one that was a blast.

 

[Ulysses 31]

No Prince of Persia mentions?

 

[betrayal]

Raptor: Call of the Shadows:

And of course most of the Lucasarts adventures. Then there's the original C&C games but I've always preferred the windows versions for their larger resolution. I also absolutely love Doom and Doom 2 but I wouldn't play them these days without a source port with enhancements to graphics and controls.

I remember how we would go back to the store where we freshly bought our computer and this game. We asked how we could start the game. He said we need to enter "install" after "A:" to switch the drive. We still did not understand and at the end he had to install the game on one of the computers in the store so we were able to replicate these steps.
Oh well, these times were awesome. I still know how we felt the weekend after buying the computer and we were able to start Windows 3.11 typing "win" in MSDOS for the first time. We felt like hackers, thugs and heroes at the same time.

 

[Scopa]

No Prince of Persia mentions?

I purposefully left it out (or I meant to include it, but forgot) and was waiting for someone to mention it. Took too long

For shame.

 

[thelastword]

Slordax


Stunts


Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion


Scorched Earth

 

[Jaxx_377]

I loved the old text based adventure games like Zork or Hitchikers guide to the galaxy.

I used to play them when my father would take me to work with him and he wanted to keep me busy.

 

[Shotpun]

Slordax
Stunts

Stunts! Had forgotten this awesome game! 4D Sports Boxing was also great.

 

[DigitalScrap]

Great thread!

I remember being absolutely blown away by Karateka. I played it endlessly!

Jordan Mechner was doing amazing work at the time.

 

[Silvawuff]

Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, and Monster Bash! All my yessss!

Oh yeah, Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage! So good!

 

[Scopa]

Great thread!

I remember being absolutely blown away by Karateka. I played it endlessly!

Jordan Mechner was doing amazing work at the time.

Yeah same. That was such a mindblowing game at the time (to young me).

 

[ThatStupidLion]

How about the educational games:

Treasure Mountain
Treasure Cove
Midnight Rescue
Carmen Sandiego series
Incredible Machine series

 

[Lightsbane]

Sid Meier's Colonization was my favorite, without a doubt. It's not that old though (like early 90s).

 

[DeleteriousObnoxious]

Stunts were absolutely amazing... and then i was so hooked on Lemmings during early 90's
and this gem. (yes my computer in early 90's were a mid 80's one IBM with big floppy.)



this game might be the reason i am a cat person : / damn you IBM!

 

[asker]

Stunts! Had forgotten this awesome game! 4D Sports Boxing was also great.

And do you know who programmed both those games?

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

X-COM

CD-Man

Commander Keen (the first trilogy; I didn't care for the later games or Keen Dreams)

Nethack

 

[Valonquar]

Battle Chess

 

[Pejo]

Battle Chess

This was my JAM when it came out. loved those "cinematic battles" lol. Not sure if C64 stuff is allowed in this thread or not, but my very first video game was Choplifter.

Naturally I sucked really bad as a kid, but it pretty much ignited the game fire in me. Cool thread idea OP.

 

[jshackles]

My two favorite DOS games were already mentioned

Stronghold

amazing early RTS/SIM

I played the everloving shit out of this game, I believe it was part of a box set of D&D games and was eventually re-released on Compact Disc. I even went back and replayed this a few years ago in DOSBox, and it's been re-released on GOG now which is amazing. The RTS elements alone are standout, but using the AD&D ruleset was ace since me and my friends were really into that at the time this came out. The game holds up surprisingly well today.

There were tons of great adventure games and everyone knows about Police Quests and King's Quests etc. Among those great games was the Hugo trilogy with House of Horrors, Whodunit and Jungle of Doom.

I loved the Hugo series as a kid, I thought they were really well put together but the first one especially was cool since it was my first adventure game in the genre - I played it before King's Quest, before Maniac Mansion, and I loved every second of it. The puzzles were hard though!

 

[AndrewRyan]

Zork I, II, and III. Tetris.

Sopwith Camel

Choplifter

 

[Ulysses 31]

Spider-Man (1986)

 

[zombie_gamer87]

Dune (1992)
Gunship 2000 (1991)

 

[ThatStupidLion]

I played the everloving shit out of this game, I believe it was part of a box set of D&D games and was eventually re-released on Compact Disc. I even went back and replayed this a few years ago in DOSBox, and it's been re-released on GOG now which is amazing. The RTS elements alone are standout, but using the AD&D ruleset was ace since me and my friends were really into that at the time this came out. The game holds up surprisingly well today.

i too played it recently and it was still fantastic. the music. the systems. the strategy. the variety in monsters and classes. the game really had it all. it legit holds up. I was young and still am unfamiliar with the D&D rules so just assumed thats how the game played. didnt know there was an actual rule set this was based around. i never meet people who are familiar with this game and it blows my mind since i feel it's one of the forefathers of the genre

i think what it lacks most is a deeper story, which is fine for everything else it accomplishes so well

 

[Shifty]

Reactor... Online
Sensors... Online
Weapons... Online
All systems... Nominal

MechWarrior 2 of course!

It's pretty dated from a tech standpoint by now - you can barely use a HOTAS with it without writing a few pages of remapping code - but it's still got that good sim feel. Stomping a big slow mech across the surface of a barren planet with enough time between encounters to take a leisurely sip of coffee has a certain tension about it.

Bit of a shame that the DOS version with its slow software renderer is (paradoxically) the only way to play it on a modern system, but it's worth it. I'd love a remaster.

 

[swit]

Bio Manace


Prehistorik 2


Little Big Adventure 2 (ok, this one is not that old, considering there was a windows version too)

 

[Nullabe]

...
MechWarrior 2 of course!
...

Thank you a lot for mentioning MW2, i played it a lot as a child, my gosh what a game ! Would love a remaster too. I loved using flying bots to destroy things. BTW it was beautiful for the age.

To me, my fav DOS game ever :

DESCENT

I love everything in this game.

 

[petran79]

Metal Mutant. I played the DOS version on a CGA monitor but even then graphics were very impressive
Basically this was my dream version of Metroid, released just few months before Metroid 2 in 1991. Atmosphere was fantastic. Thanks to Atari they cancelled the port for the Atari Lynx

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Thank you a lot for mentionning MW2, i played it a lot as a child, my gosh what a game ! Would love a remaster too. I loved using flying bots to destroy thing. BTW it was beautifull for the age.

To me, my fav DOS game ever :

DECENT

I love everything in this game.

Forgot about Descent. Great choice!

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Chopper Commando!!!!!

 

[ipukespiders]

 

[fvng]

Abuse

 

[zombie_gamer87]

Quake (1996)
Worms (1995)

 

[DeepEnigma]

Plus a lot already mentioned in here. There is so much more but I can spend all day, lol.