Looking for certain old games' demos...

Post by **MrFlibble** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 7:25 am

...The only thing is, I'm not even sure those demos exist in the first place

Here's the list:

Alien Legacy
Blood & Magic
Catacomb 3-D (not Catacomb Abyss)
Civilization
Civilization II
F-15 Strike Eagle II
F-19 Stealth Fighter (not NightHawk F-117A Stealth Fighter)
Heroes of Might and Magic (DOS)
Heroes of Might and Magic II (DOS)
Killing Time
King's Bounty
Master of Magic
Mortal Kombat
Redneck Rampage (or its add-ons; anything besides the one-level alpha demo)
Reunion
War Diary
Warlords II (not Deluxe Edition)

Any help in clarifying if (preferably playable) demo versions of these games exist, and their whereabouts in the case they do, would be deeply appreciated

Post by **dosraider** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 8:55 am

You will find most of them (if not all ....) on one of the largest shareware CDs sites as they all (if not all ....) were published on the shareware scene :
http://cd.textfiles.com/

Searching that site is another matter, but usually using google with something as:
"game name" +cd.textfiles.com will be helpfull and reveal at least some tips to locate them games in that collection.
Happy digging.

....and no; I won't do monkey work for you.

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:28 am

dosraider wrote:Searching that site is another matter, but usually using google with something as:
"game name" +cd.textfiles.com (...)

A better syntax would be "game name" site:cd.textfiles.com.

Post by **dosraider** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 12:52 pm

....... someone is in a nitpicking mood AGAIN.

Add this one:
ftp://ftp.chatnfiles.com/../
Bit slow and you will have to dig, but they have a lot of stuff.

Same here:
http://archives.thebbs.org/

Post by **wardrich** » Tue Dec 14, 2010 3:33 pm

dosraider wrote:You will find most of them (if not all ....) on one of the largest shareware CDs sites as they all (if not all ....) were published on the shareware scene :
http://cd.textfiles.com/

Searching that site is another matter, but usually using google with something as:
"game name" +cd.textfiles.com will be helpfull and reveal at least some tips to locate them games in that collection.
Happy digging.

....and no; I won't do monkey work for you.

They actually have all those old Aztech Shareware CD's that I dumped on here a while ago -- including the ones that I had that were too scratched to load. lol.

Post by **MrFlibble** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 9:27 am

Wow, guys... that's a lot of useful links and tips, thanks a bunch

dosraider wrote:....and no; I won't do monkey work for you.

I didn't expect that

Just thought that maybe someone would know for sure from their experience if such or such demo of a game exists or not (finding an existing demo is often hard enough, searching a non-existent one is loads harder, not to mention it's absolutely pointless

).

Oh, just checked, http://archives.thebbs.org/ doesn't work for me for some reason...

Post by **dosraider** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 11:00 am

MrFlibble wrote:Oh, just checked, http://archives.thebbs.org/ doesn't work for me for some reason...

Yep, is down now, and not for the first time ...
Ah well, will be back up sooner or later ... or not.... who knows.
Would be a shame if it's completely down, was a lot of stuffs there, NightOwl's CDs etcetera etcetera.

Post by **wardrich** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 6:10 pm

What's the best way to go about recursive downloading from those directories (in windows)?

Post by **dosraider** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 6:17 pm

I think that will be Firefox + jDownloader.
http://jdownloader.org/home/index?s=lng_en

...or ask ftp access ?

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Thu Dec 16, 2010 12:21 am

Or some simple crawler like HTTrack.

Post by **MrFlibble** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 9:46 am

Here's what I've found so far:

Civilisation Demo (non-playable)
Haven't been able to run it though (DOSBox)
F-19 Stealth Fighter Demo (non-playable)
Even though it is not playable, it's worth checking out. It's a spectacular record of a mission in Northern Europe.
Master of Magic Demo (beta)

There seem to be no demos for King's Bounty or Heroes of Might and Magic I.

Post by **MrFlibble** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 6:45 pm

Quite unexpectedly, I have found the demo of War Diary:
War Diary Demo
There's also a split download as well:
War Diary Demo Part 1
War Diary Demo Part 2
War Diary Demo Part 3
The demo features the first two levels of the full version, and if you never played this game before, I suggest you check it out. The graphics may look outdated for 1996, but it has some interesting features like day/night cycle, weather effects (rain and lightning), the ability to trade resources, weapons that wear down and break (and thus units have to be re-equipped) among other things. It also explores a historical theme, rather than a medieval fantasy one, although some fantasy elements like the ability to summon spectres is present as well.