What Are Your Favorite MS-DOS Games?

[radou]

Actually, I wasn't sure where to start this thread - here or in general discussion. Anyway, I just stumped across some old CD with a bunch of 'old school' MS-DOS games and flashbacks just started to appear after I browsed through the folders. These games simply rule. So, what were (or still are) your favourite ones?

 

[NoTime]

Anything by infocom. Texted base puzzel/adventure.

The Sierra stuff like Kings Quest before they went to the mouse driven engine.
My kids learned to spell so they could play them.

 

[turbo]

Sierra had some nice puzzle games.

 

[radou]

Anything by infocom. Texted base puzzel/adventure.

The Sierra stuff like Kings Quest before they went to the mouse driven engine.
My kids learned to spell so they could play them.

Yeah...the good old times when you could play a game in 16 color EGA graphics and fully enjoy it. Actually, if a game has atmosphere, graphics is of minor importance.

I spent hours, hours and hours playing Monkey Island 1 and 2. Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis was great, too. Then Simon the Sorcerer. Actually, I loved 'point and click' adventures.

 

[Daverz]

Aztec, but that was an Apple ][ game, I don't know if it made it to MS-DOS.

 

[0rthodontist]

Jetpack! You can still download it and play it.
http://www.adeptsoftware.com/jetpack/
Also Commander Keen

 

[radou]

Great, I'll check it out!

Also, I forgot to mention Dangerous Dave.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

Space Quest!

 

[Luminous Blob]

Hmm, I loved King's Quest, Space Quest and Police Quest. My favourite games were probably Wizardry - Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord and Starflight I and II. Then there was Elite, which was awesome too.

 

[AlbertEinstein]

my fav pacman

 

[radou]

Also, forgot about Prince of Persia I and Titus the Fox. The legendary arcades.

 

[wxrocks]

Not quite a DOS game -- but I really miss the days of playing "Lunatic Fringe" on the screen saver program After Dark for Mac. What a stupidly fun game!

I still have the DOS version of PGA golf which is still the most fun!

 

[jtbell]

My favorite computer game, in fact the only one that I ever really "got into" (maybe I burned myself out with it) is the text-only Colossal Cave Adventure game that was originally written in the 1970s in FORTRAN for the "minicomputers" of the time: Digital Equipment PDP's and VAXes, etc. Then it was ported to C so it can probably be compiled on just about anything.

http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/

I wasted a LOT of time on this game when I was in graduate school.

 

[turbo]

jtbell, when I returned to college in 1977 after quite a number of years working, I found a Star Trek game that could be played on the consoles (where did the punch cards go!) and could return printed outputs of your position and those of the enemies. Cool.

 

[twisting_edge]

Nah, Civilization was the best MS-DOS game. Most people forget that game was originally produced sometime before Windows 3.0.

Ultima. You can't forget Ultima. Ultima IV was the first really good one.

 

[twisting_edge]

And don't forget Rogue/Hack/NetHack and the other one (Angband was part of that series, although that wasn't the original, which went by another name).

 

[verty]

Tie Fighter, Dark Sun, UFO/XCOM (the first one), Civ, Master of Magic, Daggerfall, Jazz Jackrabbit, 4D Boxing (great game), Stunts, Star Control 2, Doom, Duke Nukem (1 and 3D).

 

[haki]

Settlers 2
Transport Tycoon
and Wolfenstein 3d

My fav ms-dos games.

 

[NoTime]

My favorite computer game, in fact the only one that I ever really "got into" (maybe I burned myself out with it) is the text-only Colossal Cave Adventure game that was originally written in the 1970s in FORTRAN for the "minicomputers" of the time: Digital Equipment PDP's and VAXes, etc. Then it was ported to C so it can probably be compiled on just about anything.

http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/

I wasted a LOT of time on this game when I was in graduate school.

I ported this to IBM Mainframe fortran sometime in the 70's.
Even had a work request as they wanted somthing for the Boy Scouts.
Boy Scouts wern't the only people that played

Also put up a varient of Startrek (Galaxy) written for the 6800. Forget which language I used, but it stopped working when the mainframe went from direct terminals to remote and you could no longer do unsolicited display updates.

 

[delirium]

prince of percia
lemmings
sokoban
:!) i really liked my 286

 

[radou]

Yeah, Sokoban! I totally forgot about that game!

My 286 ruled. It was working on 16 MHz, had a 120 Mb HDD, and 2 MB of RAM. I only didn't have a color monitor, but whatever, the black and white experience made me appreciate colors later on.

P.S. Forgot about the horror games, too. Alone in the Dark I and Waxworks. Anthology.

 

[delirium]

u had hdd (but i had 8 colour monitor ) , i didn't get one when i was little . the hardware guy was just to install it when the system crash ,something went wrong, they downgrade my pc , and take my 3,5 flopppy disk
i forgot to add double dragon. i didn't succeed to reach the last level though

 

[Azael]

x-com
heroes of might and magic 2(I think it was dos?)
DOOM

 

[Integral]

Ultima IV ! In other words you totaly missed Ultima III on the Apple II, great game. I spend well over a year addicted to Civ I the game that finally ended that addiction was Panzer General a truley great DOS game. I could still play it in Win98 but it looks like it is pretty much history on Win2K or XP.

 

[^_^physicist]

Dune 2, Dune, and Reunion were awesome.

Commander Keen wasn't bad.

And of course the God of all games: Tetris!

 

[DannyC]

Transport Tycoon, I still play it to this day, its an absolute classic!

 

[radou]

Pizza Tycoon was amusing, too.

 

[RAAJKUMAAR]

MS-DOS games CD

hi how r u? may be i don't know u but i know that ur feelings r so much close to me. ok i am RAJ KUMAR, I have one MSDOS games CD in 1999, that contains many MSDOS games including EA sports cricket 96. Its volume label is terminator. I have wandered all over the place & yet to find a solution for my search.i have that game CD in the past & unfortunately i have lost it and now i want to have that CD again. so please help me to have that games CD again because i have enjoyed a lot while playing it & now i want to have that same enjoyment again with the help of u? THANK YOU! please immediately send the cricket 96 game if u have. please! Even if u don't have idea about this CD please do check with ur friends to get solution! Thanks in advance!

 

[rcgldr]

You can still probably get those old DOS games to work, using either DOSBOX, or Virtual PC. This website specializes in old games:

http://vogons.zetafleet.com

I remember Collosal Cave adventure as implemented on a CPM system. I never liked the hint "one of the words I've always known, now has a new meaning" (the word didn't have a new meaning, it just didn't work before). Also there were some variations that included one of the tranporter words displayed on a fiery wall.

While working on some device drivers for Xenix, I saw the ascii terminal version of Rogue being played, but never played it myself.

The DOS games I remember are:

Lucas Art series - Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, The Dig, Indiana Jones
Alone in the Dark series
7th Guest
Star Wars - Rebel Assault
Doom
Descent

The most impressive (to me) DOS game at the time of release was the original Tomb Raider.

 

[kenewbie]

Sierra games was a major contributor in my English education. One can argue the value of learning phrases like "Use Rubber", but hey, everything counts.

The games lost their appeal once they became point and click.

k

 

[jowjowman]

I ported this to IBM Mainframe fortran sometime in the 70's.

Hey, at that time I wasted weeks on the text-only Colossal Cave Adventure on the IBM Mainframe. Didnt know it was you who ported it, Thanks man, it was great.

 

[kbaumen]

There was this game where one had to collect microchips, Chip's Challenge if I'm not mistaken. I spent a lot of time on that when I was ~7. Though, was it a MS-DOS game? I don't remember, but I think so.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Definately Doom, Kings Quest, Sam and Max, SimCity, XCOM 1 and 2.

 

[Dude111]

my fav pacman

Mine too bud! (Well MS. Pacman)

I don't like any of these NEW games... I like classic/GOOD STUFF from the 80s

Ms. Pacman IS MY FAVOURITE GAME OF ALL TIME [PLAIN]https://www.physicsforums.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

 

[Borek]

I missed this thread back then.

Back in the early nineties I was Editor in Chief of "Top Secret" - monthly magazine for computer games fans in Poland. I HAD to play everything, that was my job - and I was paid for that

To keep things short - Monkey Island rulez.

Also, forgot about Prince of Persia I and Titus the Fox. The legendary arcades.

Prince of Persia... Wow, that's was something. I wrote several Turbo Pascal programs to:

1. Save screenshot on the disk after some combination of keys was pressed (I think it was something like Ctrl-Alt; could be this program was in assembler, not in TP, or perhaps some combination of both).
2. Combine these screenshots into a large file that contained complete level map.
3. Print out these maps on the first LaserJet printer we had in office (that meant learning basics of PCL4 or PCL5 just for this task).

Note it was before programs that do these things were commercially available, I was the strike force of the computer technology

Then I spent two days playing Prince of Persia and making screenshots. Finally we printed maps of all levels in the magazine...

Geez, these were the times.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Load Runner was great too!

 

[radou]

Wow Borek that's pretty impressive!

Prince Of Persia was great. Any the first two Monkey Island sequels are absolutely fantastic games, as are most of the old LucasArts games (I think the newest one I played was Full Throttle). I liked Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis very much, too, actually, the whole point-and-click adventure game concept is very fun.

 

[turbo]

Roberta Williams games were great fun! Sierra On-Line had some great products.

 

[Chronos]

I played Wizardry I until my toons were like level 250. It was there I honed the hand mapping skills that would become invaluable in later generations of adventure games. Ultima had these dark zones and spinners that put your mapping skills to the test. Teleport squares were also a pain in the map. Civ was an epic game, but, the time between turns could become the most severe test of will power late in the game. It became more than I could endure in Civ II. And who could forget Lemmings - a maddeningly addictive game. Wing Commander was a hoot and virtually impossible without a good flight stick. I had one with suction cups and programmable buttons. Even with the suction cups, mayhem and disaster was a lurking horror in every mission.

 

[DavidSnider]

Fallout

 

[drewmatts]

My favorite computer games is :-
1. Chain Reaction: Build a Food Chain
2. I Don't Want to Clean My Room
3. The Great Bug Hunt
4. Animal Adaptations
5. The Great Garbage Caper

 

[bigfooted]

The Incredible Machine (TIM)
Leisure Suit Larry
Maniac Mansion
Dune II was also great, I soldered an AD/DA converter for it so I could have some better sound. It cost me 1/20th of a soundblaster. The signal to noise ratio was horrible but still...

 

[leprechaun0]

Night Raid
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/night-raid/

http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1

 

[KrisOhn]

Also, I forgot to mention Dangerous Dave.

I'm fairly convinced that Dangerous Dave was one of the hardest games ever produced.