Sorry. I was too busy playing a DOS port of Nethack I found on a dial-up BBS...
Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
61–70 of 99 posts
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#62I 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…
There's a certain time period where I feel like everyone remembered their games by the DOS executable name.
piratesg.exe
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#63Secret Agent ftw! Wacky Wheels! Commander Keen!
Commander Keen was the first game I ever played. Took me a long while to figure out he had a raygun. Shooting was some weird combination of inputs, like ctrl+space, not the first thing you try. ... also * Raptor: Call of the Shadows. * Magus. * Jill of the jungle. * Mystic Towers. * Terminal Velocity. The Psygnosis logo was legit the coolest thing I ever saw when I was single digit years old.
Yes! I get the intent of link's list as little-known games, but Command Keen (and the precursor id team) and Escape Velocity feel like they should at least be mentioned.
They're far enough back a lot of people won't be aware of them, yet modern enough they're still playable.
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#64I played a text based adventure game called (I think) “Bad King” that was on one of those “1000 free programs” shareware/freeware CD’s when I was a youngster. Every time I try to find it on the internet I’m stumped. It was my first introduction to text based adventure games, so I’m dying to find it. If anyone has heard of it please drop a line!
Also I believe on the same or similar shareware CD was Stars 2.b. That was my first experience using a LAN to play a multiplayer game with other people. That’s been easier to find, and still a nostalgia bomb for me.
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#65There 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
The tell tale the I recall is that when you "warped out" (or whatever), there was a sound of the drive spinning up, since it was real time, spinning up the drive took time. When the buzz peaked, you were ready to go.
I also remember the display being more busy than what we've seen here so far.
I don't recall a splash screen, and it was all CGA.
It was definitely '84-'85 time period, a friend just bought a new Tandy 1000 from Radio Shack that we played it on.
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#66Paganitzu, Hugo's House of Horrors, Corncob 3D, Jetpack
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#67Scorched Earth was so good!
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#68They forgot to mention Pizza Tycoon :)
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#69scorched earth is the only one of these i've played
i also loved worms, which felt like scorched earth with lemmings
Re: Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot (2019)
#70I played a text based adventure game called (I think) “Bad King” that was on one of those “1000 free programs” shareware/freeware CD’s when I was a youngster. Every time I try to find it on the internet I’m stumped. It was my first introduction to text based adventure games, so I’m dying to find it. If anyone has heard of it please drop a line! Also I believe on the same or similar shareware CD was Stars 2.b. That wa…
There's groups on facebook (classic gaming) or reddit (/r/tipofmyjoystick) that will help out if you can describe it.