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

arstechnica.com

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

#11

Post by petercooper »

I 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, I want to throw Conquest (1992) into the mix as it's where I got the bug for Risk and it, too, was very customizable like Scorched Earth: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Conquest_1992

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

#13

Post by b800h »

We loved Sleuth in our house. So much so that about ten years ago, I made a quick rewrite in JS with the permission of the original author. It's not completely identical by any means, but pretty similar, and still enjoyable to play.

Sleuth JS: https://www.bencollier.info/sleuth/

For the fully authentic experience, there's a version (or several) of the original DOS game on archive.org, of course.

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

#15

Post by staindk »

Mitzz wrote: post #4

I wish these were all available on Android so that I could play them on my phone. However, UI issues, my own technical incompetence and laziness (if they don't come up after a Play Store search then I don't check much further) stand in the way. Unless someone has any suggestions? I would think DosBox would not work well on a small screen?

DoxBox does IMO work well on Android but it's clunky to set up - you likely need some variant of a "hacker keyboard" installed to make initial setups easier for games, and then AFAIK you'll probably need to also install another keyboard of choice that supports the buttons your game needs.

All in all it likely is worth it for some games if you're nostalgic enough for them but don't feel like playing them when you're at your PC.

I've had more success playing old PlayStation games, personally (on ePSXe these days but I've used RetroArch in the past, which I should probably look at using again).

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

#16

Post by staindk »

hestefisk wrote: post #8

Secret Agent ftw! Wacky Wheels! Commander Keen!

Will always have a soft spot for CK!

My dad introduced me to Keen, Prince of Persia (and other classics like Doom and Wolfenstein etc.) when I was tiny.

I still recall how he contrasted the comical/arcade-y movement in Keen to the "realistic" movement in PoP. I was 3 or 4 years old, mind. It was great to see this [1] on HN the other day - it led me to this [2] video which kind of served to explain to my dad and I how he got the movement so right. Sorry weird tangent.

Two other games I remember enjoying was The Incredible Machine and Chip's Challenge. TIM was amazing! Must remember to dig that out if I ever have kids.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32538026 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbk5qH2-1S8

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

#17

Post by staindk »

nicolas_t wrote: post #10
Tomte wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually still buy it: http://www.whicken.com/scorch/index.html

I wish it was on gog or steam. I'm lazy but would love to just have it work on the steam deck without me buying it, backing up the zip, configuring dosbox etc...

Seems you should be able to play at least the Shareware version online: https://archive.org/details/msdos_SCORCH15_shareware

EDIT: this seems to be the full one, but I'm not sure how one would check (never played this game): https://archive.org/details/ScorchedEarth

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