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Great DOS games

I clicked on this thread and said "You know, the unfortunate thing about these threads is that a lot of what's posted is unavailable and a lot of the stuff that's still for sale, people will end up pirating instead of buying".

... and then I realized this was a year-old thread and I had already posted stuff to that effect several times :p
 
Return to Zork was awesome too.

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Megatraveller 1

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Those talking about Tyrian should be aware of the OpenTyrian project, where the game was recoded into C from the original Pascal and released for free for almost every platform known to man. One of the best "abandonware" support jobs I've ever seen, and it couldn't happen to a better game.

Pro Pinball is great and the best video pinball there is, but I also need to make mention of Slam Tilt Pinball, which is damn good in its own right.

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Finally, I'll sign onto the Champions of Krynn reset. So much greatness.
 
It's nice to see the Commander Keen series mentioned so many times here. I only played the two I could find on shareware (1 and 4) but they were pretty good games!

There was also this educational game I played a lot back then that was actually fun. It was one of those Super Solvers games from The Learning Company called Challenge of the Ancient Empires. It had some really cool levels and puzzles. Maybe it's not worth revisiting other than for nostalgia, but it was pretty good back in the early 90's.
 
CitizenKang said:
It's nice to see the Commander Keen series mentioned so many times here. I only played the two I could find on shareware (1 and 4) but they were pretty good games!

There was also this educational game I played a lot back then that was actually fun. It was one of those Super Solvers games from The Learning Company called Challenge of the Ancient Empires. It had some really cool levels and puzzles. Maybe it's not worth revisiting other than for nostalgia, but it was pretty good back in the early 90's.
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Heh, I remember having one of the Super Solvers games, Outnumbered:

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I think TLC's stuff is more notable for being moderately decent educational games in an era where most educational software was utter tripe.
 
Anybody remember the Magic Candle series? I've been looking into a bit more info... all I remember were they were Ultima-style rpgs, I think there might have been a rumored NES port at one time, and the lead character had my first name (Lukas).
 
Lionheart said:
Oh, has anyone here ever played Supaplex? Excellent puzzle / strategy game. :) Many impossibly hard levels, at least to me as a kid.

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YES! I think I still have that on disc somewhere. I am amazed no one has tried to remake that as a PSN or XBLA game yet. I is so awesome
 
Watching the Let's Play of the first Gabriel Knight reminded me of just how great that game was.

It was also the first game I can remember that actually had good voice acting/direction. Tim Curry and Leah Remini (of all people!) were great.
 
Templar Wizard said:
Everything by Origin, especially BioForge
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Amen to origin greatness (although as good as bioforge was I wouldn't say it was nearly as good as the ultima series pre-U8)

EDIT: Totally revelling in nostalgia here but dos gaming circa late 80s to mid 90s was sooooo the greatest era of gaming for me. nothing i've played in the last ten years comes close to the magic of origin, lucasarts and sierra heydays.

EDIT 2: And bullfrog too! oops. and some psygnosis greatness too, although a lot of their best stuff was psx1 era.
 
flyover said:
Watching the Let's Play of the first Gabriel Knight reminded me of just how great that game was.

It was also the first game I can remember that actually had good voice acting/direction. Tim Curry and Leah Remini (of all people!) were great.
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It's currently up on GoG. Talkie version, compatible with all modern OS trough DOSBox.
 
SapientWolf said:
Z

It's easily one of the best RTS games ever made.
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Yes! Totally forgotten about this sucker. I liked this game because it still involved unit production but you had to capture the production facilities all over the map rather than just harvest ore near your base or whatever. it was strategic like a resource-oriented rts but, just like in the tactical/combat-focussed rts games that have become popular in the last ten years, turtling was suicidal/impossible. great game.
 
Lionheart said:
Oh, has anyone here ever played Supaplex? Excellent puzzle / strategy game. :) Many impossibly hard levels, at least to me as a kid.

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Oh wow! I had this game on an old Macintosh Performa 460 computer, but I think it was only a demo or something. I remember the scream the smileyguy makes when you die. :lol
Thanks for reminding me.

This thread also reminded me of Terminal Velocity which I played once at a friends house and didn't touch again. But I remember that I have wondered what that game was called, and now I know :D

Speaking of old Mac games, there was this game that I used to play where you were a robot going through different rooms filled with a variety of enemies and items.
I can't remember much about it except that the background was just black and the robot, enemies and items were made out of really simple colors.
The robot used some kind of phazer as a weapon, firing a red zig-zag line of energy from it i think. (Not a huge pattern or anything. Just like this sorta: /\/\/\/\/ )

Also you had to collect the items in a somewhat specific order to advance further. The sound effects were probably also very simplistic.
I know that aint much to go by, but perhaps someone knows which game it is? Maybe it also existed for DOS?

To contribute something to the thread, I will post this game called Castle Adventure. It was probably one of the first PC games I played on an old computer with DOS 2.x on it.

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I never finished it. But there was an atmosphere to that game that I really enjoyed as a kid.
Edit: I just looked in my closet and I still have Castle Adventure on an old 5.25" floppy. I wonder if it even works :lol
 
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I didnt see this gem in the thread. As a kid, this was one of my favorite games, although I cant remember ever finishing it, because it was really difficult.
 
Pylon_Trooper said:
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Nothing has captured the feeling of the first book better than the original Cryo Dune game.
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Holy shit, I want this! Coincidencing with my current reading of the book. Love it so far.
 
Old favourites of mine already mentioned: Skyroads, Prehistorik, Supaplex (can't believe the patience I had back then, I remember finishing almost every stage). There's hundreds more to remember but now I just have few on my mind:

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Blockout

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Paratrooper, really vivid memories of this one I remember the gun position for jet planes and their bombs forever

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Alley Cat

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Grand Prix Circuit, the music the music!

I remember playing Castle too, but couldn't understand anything for example finding item called "HELMET" (Finnish word for pearls/pearl necklace) and thinking what do I do with these? :lol

SO much memories!
 
Sorry to bump this topic, but I'm just SO happy. I just went through all the games I could find for DOS, and finally I found out the name of the some of the games I have had vague memories of for a long time. They are Animal Quest, Boppin' (GREAT game), Fuzzy's World of Miniature Space Golf, Rescue Rover, Solitaire Royale and Zool. At the same time, I made a list of all the games I remember to have played at one time or another :)

Aladdin
Animal Quest
Bio Menace
Boppin'
Brix
Command & Conquer
Commander Keen
Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure
Crystal Caves
Dangerous Dave
Dinosaur Predators
Doom
Duke Nukem
Duke Nukem 2
Duke Nukem 3D
Fuzzy's World of Miniature Space Golf
Hexen
Hexxagon
Hocus Pocus
Jazz Jackrabbit
Jetpack
Jill of the Jungle
Lemmings
Lion King
Major Stryker
Monster Bash
Quake
Raptor
Rayman
Rescue Rover
Rise of the Triad
Secret Agent
Sokoban
Solitaire Royale
Superfly
Terminal Velocity
The Incredible Machine
Tomb Raider
Wacky Wheels
Wolfenstein 3D
Word Rescue
Worms
Zool

Sadly never got around to play Monkey Island or Leisure Suit Larry.
 
Descent (I LOVED this series.)

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Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure

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and for the lulz

Leisure Suit Larry

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Aww man, I would love to get my hands on Settlers, Sim City 2000 and X-COM.

How can you get these legit by DD?


Whilst we're on the subject, can anyone tell me the name of a game. Jesus, this will be hard to explain:

Anyways, it was a turn based strat either against a cpu or human, it had an isometric view but you could only view a window of the terrain which you could scroll around using the arrow keys. Aim was to build a village (I think) and train soldiers to fight. I'm pretty sure there was farming involved. PC only. It isn't Powermonga, I think it was earlier than that and didn't look as good. It had a grid look to the graphics.
 
Are you thinking of Populous?

You can buy the X-Com Collection from Steam, Direct2Drive or GamersGate. You should pick up the vastly superior The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom instead of the original. If you prefer a classic version, pick up Settlers 2 from GOG.
 
archnemesis said:
Are you thinking of Populous?

You can buy the X-Com Collection from Steam, Direct2Drive or GamersGate. You should pick up the vastly superior The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom instead of the original. If you prefer a classic version, pick up Settlers 2 from GOG.
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No, not populous. Pretty sure it was out before that.

Thanks for the heads up.

EDIT - Actually Populous is very close, so much that I'm starting to doubt myself! I just don't remember the graphics being that colourful and all those options around the play area.
 
I was gonna come in to post that it's a real pity that distribution for a lot of these games isn't better, because most of them are still for sale but it's a pain in the ass to actually find out where and the prices being asked are total gouging, so a lot of people end up pirating.

Then I realized that I posted that exact same thing 6 months ago... then I realized that when I posted the exact same thing 6 months ago, I forgot that I had posted the exact same thing 18 months ago.

How many times is this thread going to trick me?
 
Stumpokapow said:
I was gonna come in to post that it's a real pity that distribution for a lot of these games isn't better, because most of them are still for sale but it's a pain in the ass to actually find out where and the prices being asked are total gouging, so a lot of people end up pirating.

Then I realized that I posted that exact same thing 6 months ago... then I realized that when I posted the exact same thing 6 months ago, I forgot that I had posted the exact same thing 18 months ago.

How many times is this thread going to trick me?
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Going by 18 -> 6 months on the tricking scale, I'd say in about 2 months time :D
 
Lots of great games posted so far, but these were overlooked:

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If you ever played board strategy war games before the computer revolution, you'll love the V for Victory games. Well researched, well designed operational level war games with a solid AI. Well worth playing for history buffs...
 
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