MS-DOS games

How many people are old enough to remember these? The 8-bit fun? The 3d glasses needed for games like "3D Dinosaur Adventure"? The soul-crushing abusive relationship we all had with The Oregon Trail? I just want to reminisce a little bit.

Incidentally, did anyone else here ever have a game called "Merlin"? It had a crappy 8-bit version of "Speak Softly Love" as its opening theme and played "If I Were a Rich Man" when you found one of the items you needed (A gold bar, a silver bar, a key, etc)? I'm worried I'll never find it again.

Ah, Origin... I'll miss you, along with Ultima and Wing Commander... You too, SSI...

And no, I have yet to play Merlin.

The DOS game most nostalgic for me is Sim Earth. I had it on a floppy disk and brought it to my school's computer lab every morning. I never really understood how to play it, but I liked to nuke things.

Oh boy, my dad used to play Doom and Duke Nukem 3D and I used to play Raptor Call Of The Shadows and Stargunner when it came to DOS.

I miss Apogee.

edited 13th Jul '11 10:52:55 AM by RocketDude

I was more of a Commodore Amiga fan in the early to mid 90's, but I remember playing Oregon Trail on the Mac's in school, and a lot of the games back then were on a bunch of different computer systems. Our first IBM clone had Windows 95 and I used to play a bunch of MS-DOS games on it. Chuck Yeager's Air Combat was a pretty fun game.

One of these days, I'll have to actually play through Wasteland.

edited 13th Jul '11 11:47:02 AM by Driscoll

I only mostly remember playing things like Duke Nukem 3D and Gabriel Knight, so not much from me beyond that.

I liked the original Civilization, and the Ultima and Bard's Tale series of games.

Duke Nukem and Doom were a little too extreme for Dad to let me play them as a kid, but I loved watching my big brother play them. Also, Lemmings was the shit. Anyone who questions it can go play Jericho. :P

Jazz Jackrabbit THAT WAS MY CHILDHOOD.

Sierra and Lucas Arts adventure games.

Wacky Wheels, Duke Nukem 1, Secret Agent...

Was 3D Dinosaur Adventure the one where you had to go around saving dinosaurs before the meteor hit or something? I loved that one!

That, and there was a similar game whose name I can't remember, where you were travelling around a body destroying viruses.

Then, I had a point-click adventure game where you were traveling around an island with a volcano collecting idols, through caves, ruins, and underbrush. Still looking for that one, but I've long since lost hope in finding it, since I don't remember anything too distinctive.

I had a bunch of games on my DOS when I was a kid that I would love to track down today, except I can't remember what they were called. Sigh...

But of the ones I can remember the names of, there is no game, absolutely none, that compares to Carmen Sandiego. I had Wolfenstein 3D, too. Kids games like Treasure Mountain, Reader Rabbit, Bailey's Bookhouse and Treehouse. But nothing compared to the almanac crunching, globetrotting mental challenge that I can still enjoy today.

I'm so glad I found an emulator to play it on my Mac.

Island Of Doctor Brain. My favorite edutainment game of all time.

edited 13th Jul '11 6:22:21 PM by stevebat

Gah! You raised my hopes, yet in the end they were dashed. Why were there so many DOS games with that theme? Why?

Man, this game looked a lot cooler when I was a kid.

edited 13th Jul '11 6:40:40 PM by KnownUnknown

Hmm, trying to recall some DOS games.

Commander Keen was awesome. Excellent platforming. I've played a bit of Episode one, but most of my exposure was with Episode 4. Awesome game, and excellent graphics.

Apogee made some other neat platformers as well. Bio-Menace was amusing. I was shocked when I was trawling Youtube and saw somebody develop the first episode mini-boss, Skullman, as a fighter for MUGEN.

There was also Monster Bash. Pretty neat game, and quite surprising how gory it was, considering the protagonist was a kid in his PJ's.

Ahh, yeah, the old Duke Nukem. Who still had a fair bit of his trademark personality even back then. The game itself said Duke is so vain, he loves collecting his own merchandise, hence why you pick up T-shirts and CDs for points. I wanted to see Dr. Proton back for Duke Nukem Forever...

What other games can I remember?...

Jill of the Jungle... Which was fun, but nothing special.

You know, too many of these DOS platformers lacked cool boss battles. I've been watching playthrough videos of quite a few of them, and those that have bosses are rarely impressive. The final boss of Monster Bash stands out in my mind, especially.

Anybody willing to prove me wrong?

Not old enough to remember when this stuff came out, but I've emulated Traffic Department 2192. It's aged surprisingly well, though the plot's a bit chaotic.

Ah yes, let's just pull up what I've got in my old games folder...

• Monster Bash
• Crystal Caves
• Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure
• Duke Nukem (probably "Duke Nukum", actually)
• Duke Nukem II
• Elfland
• Eric the Unready
• Commander Keen 1
• Commander Keen 4
• God of Thunder
• Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage
• Jill of the Jungle
• Biomenace
• Packrat
• Paganitzu
• Raptor: Call of the Shadows
• Rescue Rover
• Secret Agent
• Vinyl Goddess from Mars
• Xargon

edited 15th Jul '11 9:59:32 AM by NateTheGreat

Known Unknown: Yup, that was the one. Scared me when I was a kid, but I loved it anyway. I just hated when the comet hit the Earth and all of a sudden there was fire all over the monitor of my Packard Bell and the yelling Dinosaurs didn't help the matter.

Yeah.

That virus game creeped me out a little too, but I DO remember it.

Betrayal At Krondor — This game was far ahead of its time, with features that are still not used in most of today's "RPG"s, and it made me read the whole first Riftwar book.

Bio Menace — Back when Apogee Software made games, they made a lot of fun little games.

Commander Keen — This game made me try out one of those "sound card" things

Darklands — The only C"RPG" that comes even remotely close to getting the feel of a pen & paper game

Tyrian — Quirky humor, tons of stuff to try out, and bonus stages with big money and big prizes

X-COM — I'll never forget the month during which I played the demo, getting sniped by Snakemen and zombified by Chryssalids

Does anyone know how to get the sound working on DOS Box?

For which game?

Usually, most games do a good job of auto-detecting or defaulting to the same settings that DO Sbox uses.

Life and Death, the surgery game. I remember getting so frustrated with it that I would just carve my name into the patient before putting him under anesthesia. This is why I'm a Med Tech and not a surgeon

9 times out of 10 the midi function will work for a game. sometimes I managed to get soundblaster to work, but midi almost never fails.

I don't know how I found time for all the PC gaming I did, but I have a lot of extensive PC memories. The first time I heard the Space Quest theme (I started with part six BTW), the first time I got stuck on an adventure game (King's Quest 6), trying to figure out what the hell that friendship weed was for in Return to Zork, extensive online gaming with Warcraft II (probably the only game I ever played online. Man, that lag was nasty)...

Actually, about Return to Zork: you have to play a board game against the final boss, and I swear that as a kid, I discovered a pattern you could do that would always beat him, every time. It wasn't even mentioned in the official strategy guide, but I wrote it down in the blank pages. Unfortunately, I lost that strategy guide -__-, and its been so long since I've played that game that I can't recall the pattern from memory.

Anyway, I think one of my favorite DOS games was and still is The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall. While it wasn't the first PC RPG I played (that dubious honor goes to Interplay's Dragon Wars) it was a game that expanded my concept of what an RPG could be, and in any case kept me entertained for several hours—and that was just the demo! Don't even get me started on the full game (which I found complete in an Electronics Boutique bargain bin. Man, the irony)!

I've also played some early DOS platformers. Commander Keen, Monster Bash, and actually discovered Duke Nukem before he went 3D, but most of my fonder memories are from the mid-1990s.

Definitely remember most if not all of those games mentioned. One of my favorites (and still one of the most popular DOS games as far as I know) is Tyrian.