Doom?
"That time forgot".
Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
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Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#22I was a kid/teenager in the 90s with little money and nowhere to spend it, so I pretty much lived on shareware games from cover disks. Scorched Earth felt almost like a pioneer(?) of the "you can customize every variable" game in a pre-mod era. That "Capture the Flag" has a very specific aesthetic and looks very NeoPaint-y. I'm sure I saw a few games use that style. Was it a specific GUI toolkit? While I'm rambling,…
Almost everyone in the DOS world built their own little GUI toolkit, implementing exactly as much was needed for each app. That was part of the charm IMO. We had a Cambrian explosion of graphical and interaction styles. Then things got gray, uniform and boring with Windows 3.1/95, and then fun again with the early web. I'm looking forward to the next fun UI style period - perhaps it will start with AR.
The GUI "toolkit" used by that CTF game (1993) looks like it was partially "inspired" by Borland's OWL for Windows 3.x (1991).
Comparison:
CTF Game: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Captu...
Borland OWL: https://sourceforge.net/p/owlnext/wiki/Replacing_usage_of_BW...
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#23I played the hell out of a game that only had 4 colors. 'Pyromaniac' and the filename was pyroman.exe (It looked a lot like sleuth, the first game on the list). You had to go through buildings trailing a burning fuse that you couldn't let catch you, and also there were cans of gas that would explode across several walls. Higher levels required quite a bit of strategy, intentionally starting fires so they would burn o…
All games had only 4 Colors in cga
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#24I played the hell out of a game that only had 4 colors. 'Pyromaniac' and the filename was pyroman.exe (It looked a lot like sleuth, the first game on the list). You had to go through buildings trailing a burning fuse that you couldn't let catch you, and also there were cans of gas that would explode across several walls. Higher levels required quite a bit of strategy, intentionally starting fires so they would burn o…
All games had only 4 Colors in cga
But some of us had EGA or VGA in that era. In fact, some of the screenshots in the article shows more than 4 colors.
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#25Absolute favorite: Ragnarok / Valhalla by Norsehelm Productions, released 1992-1995.
https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/02/game-354-ragnarok-19...
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#26cosmos cosmic adventure
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#27I have fond memories of the thriving shareware/freeware game scene in mid 90s Finland. It was a legitimate cultural phenomenon, like demoscene to which it was closely related. Titles such as Auts, Wings, Turboraketti, Triplane Turmoil gave rise to a genre of their own, luolalentely or "cavern flying". Split-screen (and shared-keyboard) multiplayer was, of course, the way to play all of these. Other legendary titles of various genres include MineBombers, Tapan Kaikki, Liero…
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#28I played the hell out of a game that only had 4 colors. 'Pyromaniac' and the filename was pyroman.exe (It looked a lot like sleuth, the first game on the list). You had to go through buildings trailing a burning fuse that you couldn't let catch you, and also there were cans of gas that would explode across several walls. Higher levels required quite a bit of strategy, intentionally starting fires so they would burn o…
You might like Pyro II v2.2 - https://archive.org/details/PyroV2.2.3SW1991MichaelOBrienAct...
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#29I have fond memories of the thriving shareware/freeware game scene in mid 90s Finland. It was a legitimate cultural phenomenon, like demoscene to which it was closely related. Titles such as Auts, Wings, Turboraketti, Triplane Turmoil gave rise to a genre of their own, luolalentely or "cavern flying". Split-screen (and shared-keyboard) multiplayer was, of course, the way to play all of these. Other legendary titles o…
Turboraketti! It spread well in Sweden too.
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#30Supaplex!