Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)

#51

Post by ghaff » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 6:47 PM UTC

EarlKing wrote: post #49

whartung wrote: post #46

There was this "Star Trek" game for the early PC. (Fly your ship around, defeat bad guys, dock at starbases...) Pretty sure they managed to use every character in the character set, and every color as well. It was real time, and even had good sound effects (for a raw PC speaker). And it was unplayable off of a 4.77MHz machine. Can't remember the name, but I recall it fondly.

Possibly you're thinking of Begin: A Tactical Starship Simulation[1]?? That, however, was not real-time at all but turn-based, since it was a direct descendant of the old mainframe Trek game. [1] https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/begin-a-tactical-starship...

I played that quite a bit at one point. However, after a while, you figured out some strategies that were pretty tedious but very hard for the computer to beat as I recall.

Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)

#52

Post by hombre_fatal » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

Anyone have the Shareware Breakthrough disc? Was a CD a with a red brick texture. Wonder how much time I sunk into that when I was a kid.

I don’t remember a lot of the games off the top of my head except Merlin and Gladiator https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wZaK-yH50eA

Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)

#53

Post by mcbuilder » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

Traffic Department 2192 was a favorite of mine for it's edgy plot and awesome music.

Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)

#54

Post by mynameishere » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

whartung wrote: post #46

There was this "Star Trek" game for the early PC. (Fly your ship around, defeat bad guys, dock at starbases...) Pretty sure they managed to use every character in the character set, and every color as well. It was real time, and even had good sound effects (for a raw PC speaker). And it was unplayable off of a 4.77MHz machine. Can't remember the name, but I recall it fondly.

There were a bunch of games based on the original "Star Trek" game. You might be thinking of "Star Fleet"

https://www.mobygames.com/game/star-fleet-i-the-war-begins

Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)

#55

Post by whaleofatw2022 » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

Special mention to Sango Fighter, it was a Street Fighter knock off that actually played pretty dang good on a 486/33, had decent art if not great audio. Mechanics overall were not bad but not amazing.

I consider epic pinball something that time has forgotten, mostly because I am amazed there has not been a proper spiritual successor (that I am aware of)

Moraff's world was my first experience with a 'roguelike'.

Randomly generated worlds, rpg stats, trippy monster art. Had a NESW view, more or less turn based.

Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)

#56

Post by kennywinker » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:41 PM UTC

Pharaohs Tomb stands out in my memory. An early apogee game (pre commander keen) - I haven’t played it since floppy disks came in two sizes, but man was I into this game https://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/pharaohs-tomb/

Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)

#57

Post by Macuyiko » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

hbogert wrote: post #30

Supaplex!

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21245827

Especially the commenter on my post: Rocks and Diamonds is great.

Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)

#58

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:51 PM UTC

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #23

BMc2020 wrote: post #9

I 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

Composite CGA is 16 color.

Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)

#59

Post by indymike » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 7:58 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #58

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All games had only 4 Colors in cga

Composite CGA is 16 color.

Composite CGA was Tandy only. Can confirm stock CGA was 4 color, 4 different palettes which allowed IBM to claim "16 colors*"

Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)

#60

Post by indymike » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

hollywood_court wrote: post #2

Scorched Earth was my favorite among that list. I spent many hours playing it on my Packard Bell 486x.

Atomic Tanks is an open source clone of Scorched Earth taking it to it's natural conclusion. Then there's the open source 3d version... Scorched3d. Still a good time waster when you are on hold.