DOS Games Discussion

[tonyf]

Seems most who come here are into the nostalgia attached to these games...is there anyone else like me who have come fresh,ie I didnt play dos games at all?

What fired your interest?

What s the attraction of these games for you?

[Dogbreath]

We grew up playing them? That's the reason most of us have. If you're dosraider, then it's "we grew old playing them."

Aside from nostalgia (which is a fairly major factor, I'll admit), I think the biggest draw is that they are, by and large, *good.* Now don't get me wrong, there are some pretty damn good games that have been released in the past 10 years (Starcraft, Baldur's Gate series, TES: III&IV, FS:2, Half Life Series, etc. etc.), but games today are now multi-million dollar corporate productions that take years to develop, and cost a lot of money to buy. On top of that, probably only 1 in 50 of these huge, multi-million dollar games are great, and a lot aren't even worth playing.

A lot of great DOS games were developed at low price, and only a couple of grand by a few poor, starving programmers, and yet they had things in them most modern games lack. Story, plot, great characterization, intuitive game play, endless replayability, well thought out design. And whenever a lot of money *was* spent on a game, and a lot of programmers came together, you can bet your ass they were nothing short of amazing. Some of those games, like Star Control 2 (1992), Ultima VII (1991), or Lands of Lore (1993) had environments and graphics that functioned better and more believably than modern day games. (Especially Star Control 2... you really should play it)

To top it off, many of these games have been released as freeware by their authors, and the rest are... easy to come by.

Anyway, what genres/styles of games do you like? I'd be more than happy to create a list of games to start your adventure.

[dosraider]

[ YAY, rant modus ON ]
Let's face it, 90 % of todays games are console games, poorly ported to PC.
Checkpoints, restricted freedom of movement, and so on.
And above all: easy t'll the point they're booooooooooooooooring.
We shouldn't want the kids to get frustrated, would we?

Seems it's more about the eye candy then about the game.

The older games were more developed towards 20-40 years old, they were the only ones who could afford a PC, not the youth.
Ourdays games are developed for the youth, pubers, yuppies.
Currently it seems acceptable that a game offers some 10-20 houres playtime. (They are even edvertised so, ZOMFG 10 houres play fun !!!!)
Was days, even months sometimes to finish the old ones, some even never ended.

Old games played on hard were really hard, almost impossible even (DOOM -nightmare setting someone ?) ....
I've played through HALO and *maybe* died trice, and it was probably more from being bored then from the gameplay.

Take a look at Half-Life Half-Life2, one a lovely PC game, the second one a bloat console game. You even can't kill Alyx or other NPCs !!! Shovel 20 RPGs in her ar*e and she even doesn't react. The whole HL2 is totally scripted, you sit there more watching cutmovies then you actually play.

[Rant modus off]

[Dogbreath]

Dosraider: Indeed, if I wanted to watch a fucking movie I'd rent a movie. People play computer games to explore and adventure, not to get lectured at.

Hell, the Ultima series created an entire WORLD to explore, and modern day games won't even let you take the "wrong door" in this one. Damn stupid idiot designers.

Let's hope someone gets the point and starts programming memorable computer games again.

I do resent the comment about 10-20 year olds destroying video games, though. It's stupid people who're doing that, not young people. I bet if companies were to start making good games again, we'd see a lot of young gamers really appreciating it.

[dosraider]

Let me rephrase that.
The game developers ourdays go for the easy money, and develop games aimed at the youth (mainly 10-16 year olds) as those are the easiest target.

I didn't meant that the youth can't appreciate a good or hard game, or that they only want 'easy' games, it's the developers who dont want make the effort to develop those.

And even in a rare occasion, when they want to make a good game, they are whistled back by the publishers.
Look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R., what has been published is only a shadow of what that game could have been. It could have been a milestone a la Doom, a new refreshing game, alas it was totally cripled. It had to be published, the devs has been stopped half way. Shame.
That game could have been a mixture of FPS, adventure, RPG, total freedom of movement, a vast world to explore, managarial elements, trading, making alliances, betrayal, nice hard fights, it was all there.
You can play as good guy, or as total badass, but it's not interesting anymore now, the game lost his soul.
It has been rushed to publishing, most interesting features cripled, retrieved, totally screwed up.
What a waste.

[GAMER]

Bring back adventure gaming...

That's all.

GAMER

[emmzee]

I wanted to try Zack & Wiki for the Wii, cuz I heard it's somewhat similar to the old-style adventure games ...

But yea, I'd like to see 'em make a comeback. You pretty much have to go to indie devs nowadays for those kinda games.

[GAMER]

Adventure gaming on Wii would be a real adventure. Mm. *thinks of the posibilities*

Do you think when our generation grow up and become software designers that good games will return?? I have a few mates that enjoy the same games i do and we've all just finished high school. A few of them are going into software / gaming design...

Wouldn't it be grand if the people making games were as into old games as we are?

GAMER

p.s. I'm pretty sure none of us have answered the original post-question. I think he aimed it at other people on the forum who have only recently discovered old games...Are there others here?

[dosraider]

[Wally*Won_Kenobie]

There's plenty of unique Mac Classic games as well as DOS games..

I have done a review of 51 games in two days on my powerbook 1400cs, and I still have 3 - 4 DVD's worth (this is only the letter A and B on a CD. I could probably catch up to emmzee, soon enough) . Some of these games are really awful like maybe dosraider will remember "Third Dimension" being one of the most noisy 3D Tic-Tac-Toe games Im actually suprised that these old school Mac developers haven't continued devving. Except for the fact that 85% of them are either scientists or doctors. I am trying to pump life back into the old school macs / emulators. It just seems that the underdogs isn't good enough.

Anyway the only reason I play old games as said before, is that most of the PC games are poorly ported console games or they just plain suck. Its all 3D this, 3D that these days. Oh and I have found that games dont last as long as they used to. Nintendo are the only company keeping their head up and making games last I mean Mario Galaxy looks like its going to end and shows credits but then you go back and you have to so many more stars .

Its more First Person Shooters these days anyway, kind of sucks. I don't mind Pursuit Force on PSP as its got a shitload of action and its HARD as buggery.

[owfio]

I'm kinda new to old games, I grew up with a crappy computer I had been given and never got any new games so I had Sopwith 1(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_(computer_game)) and space quest one. Later (about 9) I got a new computer (new for me, it was from around 1995) and got Pirates and a few AGI games. Finally I started earning money and got another "new" computer that came with some semi-modern games like AoE at which point I stopped playing old games. Now I've started again because I can't afford to buy a new game every time I clock the last one I bought.
I now play ADOM, Pirates, Solar Winds, Ragnarok, and Elfland (1 & 2). Any games you would recommend I play? I'm getting kinda bored with these.

[dosraider]

[AdamN]

good advice Raider
I might do that one day lol

[emmzee]

Another suggestion could be to try the games in bold on this page:

http://dosgames.com/gameindex.php

Those are the ones I gave 4.5 or 5 out of 5 ratings to. So they're the "cream of the crop" ... according to me anyways.

[dosraider]

Sure, we all know that emmzee has an excellent taste when it comes to good games.