What is your Favorite game?

[nickdalzell]

I have seen boxed copies of Myst back in the 1990s and always wondered: are the graphics as depicted by the box art anywhere close to what's seen in the game? I remember it had insanely high system requirements since it wouldn't have worked with the i386DX/33 I had at the time.

DOS gaming is really quaint. Before the internet, I spent hours playing tours of duty in Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. Often right after school. I always made it 3/4 of the way through then someone blew up my fuel tank or I crashed in enemy territory. That's if the computer didn't hard-freeze or dump me to the DOS prompt with an 'integer divide by zero' error, whatever that was. I sucked at maths.

Since I only had the PC speaker to work with, seeing any replays on YouTube feels odd since I grew quite fond of the hilarious sound effects on PC speaker and hearing the Adlib and Sound Blaster audio feels, well, wrong.

For some odd reason, there was a huge interest of WWII combat sims in the early 1990s, such as the above, plus Aces over the Pacific (Sierra), Aces over Europe (Sierra), Battlehawks 1942 (Lucasfilm), and Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain (Lucasfilm). Others include B-17 Flying Fortress (MicroProse) and Silent Service.

 

[ocnbrze]

 

[olbriar]

I have seen boxed copies of Myst back in the 1990s and always wondered: are the graphics as depicted by the box art anywhere close to what's seen in the game? I remember it had insanely high system requirements since it wouldn't have worked with the i386DX/33 I had at the time.

The graphics were outstanding for their time. The game wasn't an action game so there's that to consider. It ran well on whatever PC I had at the time, either a 486 or P5.

 

[Milo Williamson]

Also one of the massive games in each one,just amazing!

 

[nickdalzell]

The copies I saw at Babbages of Myst were around perhaps in 1997, and demanded at least a Pentium, and I just had the lowly i386, and later an i486. I didn't get my first Pentium until I had gotten out of college in 2001. By that time, any copies of the game had ceased to exist, and were unobtainium.

Physical PC games pre-dating Steam also seem to have ceased to exist entirely, as I can't even find them at the vendor malls. It's like a great force came and silenced them all, like with the infamous E.T. cart for Atari, or any car that's older than 1996.

All I remember is the graphics on the box looked amazing. It seems to have been forgotten by most gamers and I wasn't able to find any real let's plays online so I never really got to experience what it was about. I assumed at the time it was an RPG.

 

[Milo Williamson]

The copies I saw at Babbages of Myst were around perhaps in 1997, and demanded at least a Pentium, and I just had the lowly i386, and later an i486. I didn't get my first Pentium until I had gotten out of college in 2001. By that time, any copies of the game had ceased to exist, and were unobtainium.

Physical PC games pre-dating Steam also seem to have ceased to exist entirely, as I can't even find them at the vendor malls. It's like a great force came and silenced them all, like with the infamous E.T. cart for Atari, or any car that's older than 1996.

All I remember is the graphics on the box looked amazing. It seems to have been forgotten by most gamers and I wasn't able to find any real let's plays online so I never really got to experience what it was about. I assumed at the time it was an RPG.

I might have my copy just laying around now you speaking of it though, it still probably in the celler..

 

[olbriar]

Through the years I managed to toss most all of my removable media including the games I had. In my shed, somewhere, is a box of 8" floppies and my original dos 3.1 through dos 5 upgrade. I never had a reader for the 8" floppies and only gathered them up because of their oddity by the time I got into computing. I kept my revs of dos just out of nostalgia.

Games that I remember having: Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Space Quest, Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, Red Baron, a Sherlock Holmes game that I can't remember the name, Wolfenstein, and Fantasmagoria. I played other games but they escape me now. They were all fun games for their time.

 

[AugieTN]

Through the years I managed to toss most all of my removable media including the games I had. In my shed, somewhere, is a box of 8" floppies and my original dos 3.1 through dos 5 upgrade. I never had a reader for the 8" floppies and only gathered them up because of their oddity by the time I got into computing. I kept my revs of dos just out of nostalgia.

Games that I remember having: Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Space Quest, Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, Red Baron, a Sherlock Holmes game that I can't remember the name, Wolfenstein, and Fantasmagoria. I played other games but they escape me now. They were all fun games for their time.

You must of had Duke Nukem. That was everyone's favorite back then, including me

 

[olbriar]

You must of had Duke Nukem. That was everyone's favorite back then, including me

For a fact! I forgot about that game, how, I don't know.

 

[ocnbrze]

Through the years I managed to toss most all of my removable media including the games I had. In my shed, somewhere, is a box of 8" floppies and my original dos 3.1 through dos 5 upgrade. I never had a reader for the 8" floppies and only gathered them up because of their oddity by the time I got into computing. I kept my revs of dos just out of nostalgia.

Games that I remember having: Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Space Quest, Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, Red Baron, a Sherlock Holmes game that I can't remember the name, Wolfenstein, and Fantasmagoria. I played other games but they escape me now. They were all fun games for their time.

Leisure Suit Larry!!!!! OMG i had to sneak in at night to play this game at my parents house as i was supposedly too young to play it when i was a kid. i love that game.

 

[olbriar]

Leisure Suit Larry!!!!! OMG i had to sneak in at night to play this game at my parents house as i was supposedly too young to play it when i was a kid. i love that game.

There was some pretty funny stuff in that game.

 

[ocnbrze]

There was some pretty funny stuff in that game.

did you know that there is an android version of lesuire suit larry? i played it a very long time ago.

Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded - - Apps on Google Play

Leisure Suit Larry - Play the best game from the 80s & 90s for Free (1st level)!

play.google.com

 

[nickdalzell]

For a fact! I forgot about that game, how, I don't know.

I seem to remember Duke Nukem being a bad guy on the tv series Captain Planet and the Planeteers before I found out he was also a videogame character from seeing LGR videos on YouTube

 

[olbriar]

Doom!! Another game that I played a lot but spaced off.

 

[Milo Williamson]

Yeah Doom and Quake were my thing before the internet, also Red Faction.

 

[nickdalzell]

I used to love playing Doom (the original one) and had so many expansion packs. Wofenstein 3D used a similar engine as well. The graphics at the time just blew me away more than the actual game itself, coming from the early Hercules and CGA era before it. Hardest part was clearing enough TSRs from config.sys to give it enough memory to load doom.wad. That halted a lot of progress until I got an i486.

Anyone remember the many DOS 'edutainment' games? Super Solvers Midnight Rescue, Outnumbered, Number Munchers (Apple II Port), Math Blaster, StickyBear Math?

I still got copies of Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and Sim City for DOS on their respective floppies and in box, but not old enough hardware to play them on (not even my oldest laptop has a 3.5" floppy drive.)

I have attempted to load up "sourced online" versions of both games into a FreeDOS VM, or via DosBox, but my skills have...shall we say, degraded over time. I used to know every single keyboard shortcut for SWOTL, but now? I suck. Now, I did a bit better in BattleHawks 1942, having successfully blown up the Japanese carrier on the first run.

 

[Milo Williamson]

I used to love playing Doom (the original one) and had so many expansion packs. Wofenstein 3D used a similar engine as well. The graphics at the time just blew me away more than the actual game itself, coming from the early Hercules and CGA era before it. Hardest part was clearing enough TSRs from config.sys to give it enough memory to load doom.wad. That halted a lot of progress until I got an i486.

Anyone remember the many DOS 'edutainment' games? Super Solvers Midnight Rescue, Outnumbered, Number Munchers (Apple II Port), Math Blaster, StickyBear Math?

I still got copies of Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and Sim City for DOS on their respective floppies and in box, but not old enough hardware to play them on (not even my oldest laptop has a 3.5" floppy drive.)

I have attempted to load up "sourced online" versions of both games into a FreeDOS VM, or via DosBox, but my skills have...shall we say, degraded over time. I used to know every single keyboard shortcut for SWOTL, but now? I suck. Now, I did a bit better in BattleHawks 1942, having successfully blown up the Japanese carrier on the first run.

Ah that was my childhood those DOS "enduatinment" games. There was a hidden gem of an action game I used to play, was slightly after that.. It was a vague game.. A little boy with a baseball cap, swimming underneath water, and he did not have much weapons just a slingshot and set in space.

 

[nickdalzell]

The little boy in baseball cap, did he have a thick jacket too? He was the Super Solver and star of many Super Solver's games (The Learning Company) and went up against the Master of Mischief.

Math Blaster Plus (1987) was set in space:

 

[Milo Williamson]

Nope more of an open level base platform...

 

[nickdalzell]

There was one game that took place underwater that was made by the same developer (the Learning Company) and maybe under the Super Solvers' line of games titled Operation Neptune, but that's all I can come up with

The only other game involving a baseball cap kid in space/underwater wasn't edutaiment software, but a series called Commander Keen.

 

[Milo Williamson]

Yes that is it, Commander Keen.

 

[olbriar]

I just remembered that I have an old Toshiba tablet running windows 95 that is still functional. It was running last year at least when I booted it for kicks.
What is note worthy about the machine is I bought an external 3.5 floppy disk drive to accompany the CD internal bay. I tossed all of those early games and some I could have played again. Some of the earliest stuff was on 5 1/4 floppies however. Oh well.

 

[nickdalzell]

I've always wanted to rock one of the original 'Windows Tablet PCs' like an old Stargate Command operative!

The last time I saw one was in 2011, one of my camping neighbors was watching YouTube on one that ran Windows XP Tablet Edition on this futuristic looking device with blinking lights and fans and it looked straight out of Star Trek. I felt such a letdown when I picked up my iPad at the time, so boring, so bland. He said it only made 2 hours on a charge and kept it plugged in, but darn I would have accepted that because it looked straight out of 2378.

 

[olbriar]

What I have is a Satellite Pro 400cs. It was robust for it's time and a solid build but weighs a ton. I seriously doubt the battery would hold a charge after all of these years. I max out the Ram and added a US Robotics modem to the unit. Beyond that, it's stock. I wish I had thought about it before tossing games I might have revisited.

 

[nickdalzell]

Don't be too surprised. I got a 16 year old Dell Vostro 1700 and a Dell Latitude D531 that have at least an hour of battery charge when unplugged. Quite surprised they even hold a charge.

The only laptops that I had that never took charges at all after x number of years were the ones from the late 1990s that used Ni-Cd batteries, such as the Toshiba 4000CDT. That one never knew a battery was even in it--just showed "--%" on the little LCD panel for status. I think those things went belly up around the 5 year mark. I've also had Compaq Armadas that refused to turn on unless you removed the battery.