Jump to content
IGNORED

Looking for an old DOS / ANSi / ASCii / CGA type game..


Recommended Posts

I remember my first PC.. 286 compatable. I found it in the back of Computer Shopper (back when they were a HUGE catalog like thing and not the stupid little magazine they are today).

 

I remember back in the 80's or 90's Shareware was all the rage. Every place carried those cheap disks and you could get a bunch of games for only a few dollars each. These would be floppy disks with typed labels on them. Everything from games to cooking utilities, etc.

 

One game I used to enjoy was a detective game. I remember it used ASCii characters from the keyboard and possibly ANSi. I can't totally remember. I believe you moved a smiley face around the screen.

 

You had to solve the mystery in only so many moves or time. I believe you could die somehow, but I kind of forget.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember my first PC.. 286 compatable. I found it in the back of Computer Shopper (back when they were a HUGE catalog like thing and not the stupid little magazine they are today).

 

I remember back in the 80's or 90's Shareware was all the rage. Every place carried those cheap disks and you could get a bunch of games for only a few dollars each. These would be floppy disks with typed labels on them. Everything from games to cooking utilities, etc.

 

One game I used to enjoy was a detective game. I remember it used ASCii characters from the keyboard and possibly ANSi. I can't totally remember. I believe you moved a smiley face around the screen.

 

You had to solve the mystery in only so many moves or time. I believe you could die somehow, but I kind of forget.

If you used it to push pieces around a maze it might have been Sokoban. I've never seen the original ASCII version though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't help you with your question, but my best friend and I used to LOVE reading those old computer shoppers. Those things were HUGE!!! You could knock someone out with one of those. I remember us reading an issue and being surprised that hard drives were geting so cheap that they were almost down to $1 per megabyte. MEGABYTE!. Considering that $100 will not buy you a 1 terabyte drive, that means that they were 10,000X more expensive when we thought they were getting cheap!

 

Did that magazine even have articles, or was it nothing but ads?

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sokoban is not a detective game. LOL! This game was like Clue.. you had to solve a murder. You walked around in a house if I remember.. drawn with ASCii or ANSi characters. There was a few rooms like kitchen, living room, etc. I think there was a secret door.

 

I like Sokoban, though. I used to have Boxxy Boy for my Turbo Grafx.

 

I remember my first PC.. 286 compatable. I found it in the back of Computer Shopper (back when they were a HUGE catalog like thing and not the stupid little magazine they are today).

 

I remember back in the 80's or 90's Shareware was all the rage. Every place carried those cheap disks and you could get a bunch of games for only a few dollars each. These would be floppy disks with typed labels on them. Everything from games to cooking utilities, etc.

 

One game I used to enjoy was a detective game. I remember it used ASCii characters from the keyboard and possibly ANSi. I can't totally remember. I believe you moved a smiley face around the screen.

 

You had to solve the mystery in only so many moves or time. I believe you could die somehow, but I kind of forget.

If you used it to push pieces around a maze it might have been Sokoban. I've never seen the original ASCII version though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Far as I know, no articles. I loved Computer Shopper. I'd always look for good deals in them. They were probably 300 - 500 pages!

 

I got my first 286 from a local company in there. It was a company that manufactured computers, not selling to public, but they agreed to let us buy one. It was in a office type location. I went to get an 8086, but they sold us a 286 since they had just come out. I think I might have had 20MB storage lol. Like 1MB ram or some crap. Cost my Dad $1500!

 

I can't help you with your question, but my best friend and I used to LOVE reading those old computer shoppers. Those things were HUGE!!! You could knock someone out with one of those. I remember us reading an issue and being surprised that hard drives were geting so cheap that they were almost down to $1 per megabyte. MEGABYTE!. Considering that $100 will not buy you a 1 terabyte drive, that means that they were 10,000X more expensive when we thought they were getting cheap!

 

Did that magazine even have articles, or was it nothing but ads?

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

my first pc was a 286 clocked at 12.5 Mhz with 1mb memory and cga graphics and a 3.5" diskdrive. My first box of 10 hd disks my dad bought cost a whopping 45 euro. Remember buying 720kb disks later on and melting a hole in the case, so the diskdrive thought it was a 1.44mb disk, so you could format it that way.

Later i bought a 256kb vga isa card for around 45 euro and had the money to buy the display for it one year later. Later bought a adlib sound card and a broken 40mb hdd that you still could use as a 30mb hdd by making partitions around the bad spot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Seob probably already guessed it... but if you like that kind of game, you might want to look into the ZZT and Kroz series, as they use very similar mechanics, and were quite popular at the time.

 

You might also be interested in MegaZeux (Unfortunately, their website seems to be kind of screwed up at the moment). It's basically a modern, fan-made engine for creating such games... though it has much more advanced features such as higher colour depth and actual music support. Some of the games that the community has made for it are very impressive.

 

--Zero

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

By the way, I did recently locate the game.

 

post-6095-127725456657_thumb.gif

 

Sleuth for DOS. Man, these days I suck at the game.

 

By the way, this DOS game rocks:

 

http://www.abandonwaredos.com/abandonware-game.php?gid=MTA3Nw==

 

Rockstar.. you are in a band, you make music videos, gig, make albums, tour, do drugs, rest, go on vacation, etc. Pretty fun. My friend had a #1 hit song called "Do Me In The Dumper".

Edited by yuppicide
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

By the way, I did recently locate the game.

 

post-6095-127725456657_thumb.gif

 

Sleuth for DOS. Man, these days I suck at the game.

 

By the way, this DOS game rocks:

 

http://www.abandonwaredos.com/abandonware-game.php?gid=MTA3Nw==

 

Rockstar.. you are in a band, you make music videos, gig, make albums, tour, do drugs, rest, go on vacation, etc. Pretty fun. My friend had a #1 hit song called "Do Me In The Dumper".

 

hey, i remember that game, i have it on my PC XT in 1984. But at this time i didn't mastered English (not even really today in fact.. but at least i can read!) so it didn't really played.

 

It think i played also at the game called ROGUE that was ASCII as well.

 

I made big progress in English by playing at King Quest 1. I searched all words in a dictionnary. ... arf... good old time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I never knew the name of the game. Good work hunting that down! I vaguely remember being irritated by a turn limit/time limit but it's been a LONG time. We're talkin' Tandy 1000 long time!

 

Wasn't my favorite but not bad by any means. Somehow

or
always got put back into the disk drive :) Edited by theloon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Throughout my early career I used to aquire games (copy2pc was a very good command) but one ascii game I loved (and still do) was called 'Sprites', no idea who produced it as it's only a single exe file. Basically a scolling maze game (up and down - you ony saw a 9th of the maze at any one time) with portals placed in various locations and coming out of these were little retangular faces. They would make there way around the maze. You had to guide your self (a big face thing) around and shoot this liitle things (before they shot you) and try and destroy the portals - the higher the level the more portals. Great fun as you could be concerntrating on destroying a portal and a sprite from another would come up behind you.

 

Don't forget the old text adventures from infocom like the Zork series and HitchHilkers. S'pose they could be called ascii games as they only used text characters.

 

And...the ulitmate keyboard killer (and when ibm keybaords used to cost £80 a peice) though not an ascii game was Microsoft Decathlon.

Edited by HollowPoint123
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...