Old Dos Mode Games

[Kraellin]

microsoft's one real saving grace is that they've always tried to keep things somewhat backward compatible with older o/s'es and software. this has kept their customer base somewhat happy, at least in that regard. thus, you've got certain aspects of the various o/s'es that run older software on newer machines and operating systems. in windows 98 you've got the dos prompt, icon propertie editing and even the older dos mode system.

well, the 'top 10 of games' thread got me thinking about the old game of Empire. i played that game forever, but when i went to win98 and later, i had pretty much quit playing it. i still have it, but just never even thought it would work in win98 or got busy with other, better games. obviously, it's a dos game.

so, tonight, i decided on a lark, to see if it would even install on my win98 machine. i have the original box, the manual, and even the promo that came in the box, plus (now this will tell you the age of this game) two 3 1/2 floppy disks that are the install disks.

so, ok, i put the disk 1 in the 3 1/2 and open windows explore and click on drive A:. i was almost even surprised that the disk could be read. it's a bit old. but, lo and behold, there was the install.exe. i double clicked on it, the screen went black and up comes an old 640 x 480 svga type screen with an install screen on it. ok, this is getting interesting. so, i go ahead and click on the install box in this screen and, amazingly, it starts to install! ok, i'm a bit impressed at this point, but still almost certain something is going to go bad.

sure enough, after disk 1 it asks for disk 2. so, i put in disk 2 and hit ok and it asks for disk 2 again. aha. i was right. this isnt going to work. prolly disk 2 is too old or something, or some piece of hardware on the machine isnt going to read or configure right....or something. so, i pull disk 2 out and put it back in again and hit ok again and it still fails. hmmm.... now, i'm pretty sure this isnt going to work, but, i liked this game and i want it to work. so, i pull disk 2 again and put in disk 1 and hit ok. it still asks for disk 2, so i pull disk 1 and put disk 2 in and this time it continues to load!

ok, now i'm getting kind of tickled. this thing might actually work....maybe. so, it gets to the end of the installing itself and wants to run a config file to 'detect my hardware and set my settings'. now, i figure again, ok, this is where it will hang up. so, the config screen comes up and my options are things like ega, vga and svga, along with 640 x 480 16 color or 640 x 480 256 color. naturally i pick 256 color, having this super machine :)

i run through a bit more of the config options and boy, was this thing dated. it even offered to let me pick which vid card i was running. lol. i didnt even recognize any of them.

so, i finally get done with the config and am now ready to try it and watch it fail. surely, at this point, it's just not going to run and going to crash my machine badly. but, it actually loaded the game! oh my lord, those graphics! and, i actually got to play a move or two before it finally did crash, but it only crashed the game and not windows. so, i killed the dos window it had been running in and tried it again, thinking maybe i'll just configure it a bit differenly and see if that will help.

when i clicked on the .exe again (no entry in the 'start' menu, thank you very much :) i got a windows message telling me that this program may not work correctly in the current mode and that it might work better in dos mode and would i like to switch it to dos mode and try again? hmm, ok. so i clicked on ok and tried the .exe again.

well, windows promptly shut down and sent my machine to rebooting. as it did so, i was again somewhat surprised to see the main menu for the game come up....in true dos mode! ok, that's pretty slick, i'm thinking, but i'm still being a bit sceptical and waiting for bill gates to have a laugh at me while this thing fails again. but, it didnt! wow!

so, i went ahead and played a game of Empire (actually, it's Empire Deluxe, the sequel to Empire, but includes the original classic version). and, i played the entire game through, no crashes, no burps or hiccups, in 640 x 480 svga, and it played quite smoothly. that was pretty slick... and it's still a fun game!

so, if you've got the inclination and an old dos game or two laying around, you know, on floppies, where you had to always rewrite your autoexec.bat or config.sys files and set himem and all that other stuff, and you've got a win98 machine, you might wish to try this out :) and quite frankly, i'm going to leave it on my machine, cause i'll be playing it again :)

K.

[Voigtkampf]

Aaaah, the memories…

Nice story, Kraellin. Hope you enjoyed yourself. I have thrown off all of my old DOS games, I believe, though might have some of the up the attic in some old game box now. I’m not surprised that those floppies held out that long, I had some that worked ten years after I wrote on them.

Retro gaming is something of a sado-masochistic approach. I got myself an emulator for Commodore-64 (I can see the baffled faces of our younger patrons ) and re-enacted some of the old glories. Man, those games were good! Pirates, Defender of the Crown, Wolf, Decathlon… Brought a tear to me eye! Nothing like retro-gaming, I tell ya!

[Togakure]

Recently, in here, an old favorite of mine was mentioned--Master of Magic. I have the DOS version and hadn't thought about it in years until I read about it here. Remembering fondly the weeks of playing this game, I dug it out of storage and attempted to get it running. At first I did not succeed, but after asking around, a DOS emulator was recommended. After installing the emulator I was able to run the game. The only thing that suffered was the background music (sound effects were fine). So, I turned off the music, put in some CDs, and enjoyed a week of reminiscing with the first game that introduced me to campaign maps and simulated battlefields. It was a lot of fun.

I still have the original Quake loaded, which runs without the emulator just fine. Every once in a while I'll get in the mood to clear a few levels, and listen to the great NiN soundtrack that adds so much to an already creepy environment.

[dessa14]

yeah the c64 emulators and for some of younger ones here, the mega-drive and snes emulators, oh the fun to play sonic the hedgehog again and to play final fantasy 2/4 or 3/6
there are a million fun games on all those consoles and computers to have fun with and bring back the old days where a megabyte of storage space was huge and a 100 khz computer was the top of the line.
thanks,
dizzy

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Lotus III: The best car racing ever made.
Duke Nukem 3D
Blackthorn
Aladdin
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[Mouzafphaerre]

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where you had to always rewrite your autoexec.bat or config.sys files and set himem and all that other stuff

I spoke out abut it elsewhere.
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[nokhor]

i loved defender of the crown, except the jousting, could never get that right.
i still play viking kingdoms of england on an amiga emulator.
empire was the first strategy game i ever played.
memories indeed.

[GoreBag]

Aaaah, the memories…

Nice story, Kraellin. Hope you enjoyed yourself. I have thrown off all of my old DOS games, I believe, though might have some of the up the attic in some old game box now. I’m not surprised that those floppies held out that long, I had some that worked ten years after I wrote on them.

Retro gaming is something of a sado-masochistic approach. I got myself an emulator for Commodore-64 (I can see the baffled faces of our younger patrons ) and re-enacted some of the old glories. Man, those games were good! Pirates, Defender of the Crown, Wolf, Decathlon… Brought a tear to me eye! Nothing like retro-gaming, I tell ya!

Did you ever have Beer Tapper?


I've been digging through the archives to get all those old D&D video games I missed. I was surprised to learn that they were all made by the company who made the one I already own (Stone Prophet by Strategic Simulations), and that both Eye of the Beholder 1 and 2 are available for download at [snip]. Both are in zip files and are under a meg.

Also, I've gotten back into Earthsiege, although Earthsiege 2 wasn't a true Dos game. I feel as if I've forgotten some, but I can't recall right now.



EDIT: links to abandonware are not allowed

[marcusbrutus]

[QUOTE=TogakureOjonin]Recently, in here, an old favorite of mine was mentioned--Master of Magic. I have the DOS version and hadn't thought about it in years until I read about it here. Remembering fondly the weeks of playing this game, I dug it out of storage and attempted to get it running. At first I did not succeed, but after asking around, a DOS emulator was recommended. After installing the emulator I was able to run the game. The only thing that suffered was the background music (sound effects were fine). So, I turned off the music, put in some CDs, and enjoyed a week of reminiscing with the first game that introduced me to campaign maps and simulated battlefields. It was a lot of fun.QUOTE]

Ah Master of Magic, that game took up so many days of my life. I'm a bit scared to dig out all the 'old' games, I might end up completely cut off from the rest of the world. I especially have to stay away from Sword of Aragon, Master of Magic, Ultima V and Bubble Bobble - ahem.

[Fragony]

[snip]

ps, watch out for spyware, it is attacked quite often.

EDIT: Underdogs is abandonware, abandonware is legally difficult and generally seen as piracy by games companies, ergo no links to abandonware

[el_slapper]

I've got zounds of diskettes in my reserve... most of them plain don't work, alas. But those who do are top notch on emulators. MoM is still great. I even installed it at work for when I have time to spare! Buzz Aldrin's race into space is rather cool, too.

[Fragony]

Sorry mods, I thought abandonware was legal.

[King Edward]

I agree how come we cant post links to legal abondonware sites? I thought the point of them was that there was no licence holder anymore to sue us for downloading them so it cant be Illigal.

I may be wrong, just wondering thats all

[Ser Clegane]

Inspired by this I tried to get Fantasy General running again last weekend.
After several failuires I found the hint on a fansite that it would run under XP with the help of "dosbox".
I tried it and know it's running perfectly (only the intro music is missing).

Played it for several hours on Sunday and Monday evening (much to the joy of Mrs Clegane )

So much fun - I guess I will try some other classics (e.g. Dungeonmaster) next weekend

[Togakure]

Yep, that's the emulator I found--Dosbox. Works great!

[SwordsMaster]

Ha! Got Monkey Island 1 runing on DOS. MWHAAHAHAHAAA! On a college computer

[frogbeastegg]

I agree how come we cant post links to legal abondonware sites? I thought the point of them was that there was no licence holder anymore to sue us for downloading them so it cant be Illigal.

I may be wrong, just wondering thats all

In a nutshell: if you don’t own an original copy of the game it’s piracy. If you distribute the game it’s piracy. Very rarely a company will ‘free’ a game for download, and in this case it is legal to download a copy even if you do not own the original. I’ve seen companies do this maybe twice, usually to attract interest in an old licence they are reviving.

The law applies equally whether the game is 2 weeks old or 20 years.

[King Edward]

ok cheers.

Now im not trying to start an arguement, and if its the orgs policy not to allow links to abondonware i can except that, but I'd just like to add that true Abandonware is were the developers and publishers of the game no longer exist so there is actually no one to pirate the game from.

No one owns the rights to the game and it is no longer available to purchase, thats why they ends up out there for free for retro gamers to get nostalgic over

(I will admit that some sites have games that are still available to buy, then it does become illigal.)