The "unidentified game from your childhood" thread

[CaptainBreakout]

On 9/6/2019 at 8:11 AM, Zap! said:

Lol, no I always lived in NYC. Do you still own a copy?

I believe I do, although it's still on a 5 and a quarter.

 

I never bothered to transfer it because... Sheese... 7th grade subversive hacker humor is a pretty embarrassing. It's more fun to talk about then actually experience, believe me!

[Jason Abromovitz]

On 1/20/2010 at 4:40 PM, Propane13 said:

Oh yeah!

 

Game 1: Apple 2 game, I think (I believe it was green-screen).

 

You enter a museum, and I believe it has like 4 or 5 floors.

Type S to search. I think other commands did other things.

 

You walk around, and have to get to the top floor of the museum.

Now, I do remember that there was a coffin. You could enter that, and it was a secret passage.

There was also medusa (I think on the second floor). Only way to get past her was to find a looking glass and use it on her.

 

Maybe it wasn't a museum after all-- maybe it was some monster game (based on the coffin and Medusa references).

But, I definitely played it in school.

 

Game 2: Also, I think this was an apple game, but I may be wrong.

 

You are given a type of fish. I remember the rainbow trout, chub, and barracuda.

Then, you see another fish. You can do the following:

- attack it and eat it

- swim away

- ignore it

Different situations require different inputs; or you could meet your demise!

 

Any ideas on these 2?

 

-John

 

[bradhig1]

Ibm Pcjr platform game in which you collect numbers to stop the screen from flooding and ride a bucket between levels. 

 

Apple II educational  title in high school.  Select words to fill in sentences I think.  Final score screen had a character in the upper right with a big word bubble across the top of the screen that sometimes read good

[seastalker]

Being close to Halloween I do have a mysterious and disturbing game to discuss. I am no fan of this game but am curious to know if it was some official game or someone's basement homebrew project. Don't read any more of this if you are easily offended.  

 

In the early to mid 1990s, I knew someone who was very computer savvy. In the school computer lab there was a PC and a few MACs. This guy one day was laughing at a screen with some of his friends and I approached to know what the commotion was about. He was playing a disturbing game. I guess you could view it as comical, depending on how seriously you took it. He installed into a secret folder most noobs wouldn't find. It was crude and primitive Pac-man type of game with a southern redneck theme. In this version though were naked human characters (The film 'Deliverance' is a good comparison) where your playable character's goal was not to be caught by a hick and get mounted from behind.  It is not a pleasant game and I had no interest in playing it. I don't remember if it was for Mac or PC but I have seen videos on banned and controversial games like HATE or some Columbine shooting themed game and am surprised whatever game I saw has not been covered. I would guess then that it is some 90's homebrew project.

[Zap!]

On 9/8/2019 at 12:49 AM, CaptainBreakout said:

I believe I do, although it's still on a 5 and a quarter.

 

I never bothered to transfer it because... Sheese... 7th grade subversive hacker humor is a pretty embarrassing. It's more fun to talk about then actually experience, believe me!

If you ever find it and can transfer the file, please let me know.

[Atariboy]

On 7/31/2013 at 5:32 AM, Atariboy said:

I've figured out most of the Apple II games I remember playing back in elementary school like Odell Lake. But there are two I've never been able to track down.

 

In the first game, you controlled a person in a world and the perspective was like a 2D Zelda game. The overworld had a river running through the middle with a raft at the Western end that you could ride towards the East on. And there was a waterfall at Eastern end of the river. And I think there was a bridge that connected both sides of the river.

 

At the top of the overworld was a mountain with a ski lift that you could ride on where I think you started out at in the beginning of the game. At the Southern portion of the overworld was a small dungeon with a dragon. And I vaguely recall some sort of educational tie-in where you enter caves or something of the sort scattered throughout the overworld where you likely did something like solve math equations. I was fascinated by the overworld itself so I my memories aren't strong on the other component.

 

And I remember another game that seemed related. Not sure if the character was the same or the title of the game made me think they were related. It was some sort of carnival game where you went from booth to booth and participated in various minigames that likely had some sort of educational tie-in.

 

I remember planning to remember the title of the first game after 6th grade since I wanted to hopefully revisit it someday when I could really play it instead of just in short bursts on occasion. And I think I did manage to remember it for a few years but that has long since passed and several hours from time to time over the years glancing through lists of Apple II games online has never jogged my memory.

 

Anyone have any ideas what these two games were?

 

On 4/18/2014 at 3:40 PM, sirlaitier said:

 

Did you ever find this out? I suddenly had a flashback to playing the first game you describe, and your post is the only evidence I can find that this game even existed! For some reason I'm remembering the character you played as not having arms. Am I way off base?

 

We can do this!

Finally found it. Has been an off and on search of over 20 years to finally track this one down.

 

It's called Tink!Tonk!: Tonk in the Land of Buddy-Bots (A name I do not recall at all) and was developed by Angelsoft and published by Mindscape in 1984.

 

 

 

https://www.mobygames.com/game/apple2/tinktonk-tonk-in-the-land-of-buddy-bots

 

The related game I remember is called Tink!Tonk!: Tink's Subtraction Fair.

 

 

There are also two other games in the series that my elementary school in the early 1990's apparently didn't have.

Edited January 20, 2021 by Atariboy

[carlsson]

Cool. Just recently I sold a different Tink!Tonk! game for the C64, but based on your description I would probably never have caught it.

Edited January 20, 2021 by carlsson

[Tanooki]

I've got one.  And while it sounds like Hamurrabi it's not.  Plays very similarly, had ZERO graphics, entirely just text based in DOS using multiple colors.  You have your land, you can expand/lose it based on crops, population, fights can happen that cost people, etc.  I think it had kingdom in the name, but if it was the name that's so vague it just doesn't turn up.

 

Was part of a free CD of games from a Headstart 500 CD PC in Christmas of 1990.  I have an image of the disc (greenish #3), not that it would help since I for years have been unable to locate it as even ebay doesn't turn results which SUCKS.

[fimbulvetr]

I'm trying to remember the name of a game that I played back in the 80's at my aunt's house. It was a maze game, and there was cheese and mice, and perhaps a cat, but I can't remember if you were supposed to keep the mice from getting the cheese, or if you were the mice trying to get the cheese. I think you were trying to protect the cheese from the mice. It was definitely not "A-Maze-ing" on the ti99/4a, as that was one of the few games I had for my ti99 at home, and played it a lot. I think the one at my aunt's place had statistics along the side. Unfortunately, I can't remember the type of computer she had either, but I know it wasn't a ti99. 

 

Ring any bells for anyone?

[CaptainBreakout]

How about Radar Rat Race on Vic-20?

 

 

 

[fimbulvetr]

Hmm. I seem to remember being able to choose how many pieces of cheese there were and difficulty settings though. 

[carlsson]

Any chance it could have been Mouse Trap? https://www.mobygames.com/game/mouse-trap/screenshots

[fimbulvetr]

20 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Any chance it could have been Mouse Trap?

No, that doesn't look right. There were no dogs. Plus it was on a computer rather than a console. 

[fimbulvetr]

Actually, the more I watch the video, the more I think it was Radar Rat Race. I also just remembered that the computer had "Alice in Videoland" on it, so it had to be a C64.

 

Man, I don't remember the music being so annoying in Radar Rat Race.

[CaptainBreakout]

2 hours ago, fimbulvetr said:

 

Man, I don't remember the music being so annoying in Radar Rat Race.

Hahaha.. yeah I know what you mean.  I used to play that at my best friend's house, and I just remember thinking the music was ok... Not painfully off-key!

 

The video I sent is the VIC-20 version tho.

 

There's a C64 version of Radar Rat Race too.  Do a youtube search of it and see if that's more familiar.

 

[fimbulvetr]

Yeah, the C64 version looks right.

 

There are a few games I loved as a kid and played endlessly which I just can't stand the repetitive music of anymore. What my poor parents had to put up with...

[S.Maxson]

On 1/21/2021 at 6:50 AM, Tanooki said:

I think it had kingdom in the name

 

Kingdom is actually the name:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/kingdom

 

[Tanooki]

5 hours ago, S.Maxson said:

Kingdom is actually the name:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/kingdom

 

Possible, that says Commodore64/PET though I was thinking DOS.  If that is it, some of the wording looks similar, I'd need to figure out the developer as the name is just so generic.

[Reaperman]

Two things I'm looking for:

 

I'm looking for the name of an MSDOS Ballblazer-type clone game, which I believe was freeware or maybe shareware(?). I found it on the FTPs back in the day.  It was the same ballblazer arena concept, but more mid-90's modern.  It looked fairly similar to doom/wolf3d in that it allowed real turning, and the arena was enclosed in squared-off early 3d walls. I recall it moving pretty fast.

No it's not ballblazer champions or masterblazer. very much a freeware clone, which I believe will make this harder to locate.

 

edit: and speaking of finding it on an ftp--holy cow ftp.funet.fi is still alive, and is like a time capsule. I don't immediately see it, but it might be here, this was one of my favorites.

 

-----------------------------------

I'm looking for a very fast MSDOS directory tree navigation tool.  As a kid, it was called 'v' but my father may have renamed or batched it to shorten it.

Visually it looked *very* similar to the built-in 'tree' command but was interactive. No frills, default msdos colors.

After keying in 'V,' an unexpanded directory tree appeared.  up/down arrows would move up down directories, right would expand a layer of the tree under that folder (if it could expand) and the enter key navigated to the folder and dropped out of the program.

Rather than a cursor, it highlighted the active folder name in red(?) iirc.  As in red background behind the characters, not the text itself.

It's a lot faster than norton commander, but naturally does a lot less.

I haven't tried xtree yet.  It seems to have way too many functions, but I don't immediately see a commandline switch to turn 90% of that garbage off--I can't rule out it being an xtree batch, but the name isn't familiar (as in no xtree folder).

 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by Reaperman

[Reaperman]

well, I found my ballblazer clone.  it's 3D CyberPuck or 3D BALL BLASTER (Link)

 

I had to edit the memory test out of the start.bat file--interestingly that batch file seems to contain a lot of the looping/logic for how the overall game flows.  I also think I remember having to edit that as a kid.  Also for whatever reason it doesn't like my fake soundblaster (crashes machine), but I've been looking for an excuse to get an older/better one.

 

This guy doesn't seem to like the game, but his points are fair, and he's the only one on youtube who bothered to get it running smoothly in dosbox.  I still like it, and just killed most of an hour on it "making sure it was the right game"

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by Reaperman

[S.Maxson]

On 1/30/2021 at 2:18 PM, Tanooki said:

Possible, that says Commodore64/PET though I was thinking DOS.

  

I seem to recall seeing it in one of those "100 BASIC programs in BASIC for your BASIC computer running BASIC" books from 30+ years ago. I had an Apple ][, but I think the book was generic BASIC. I don't know if that helps you, but there might be code floating around somewhere if you're only interested in playing the game and not the specific version you remember.

 

On 1/31/2021 at 12:37 AM, Reaperman said:

I'm looking for a very fast MSDOS directory tree navigation tool.

The only one I remember other than Norton Commander was called DOSBoss. I don't know if had the expanding trees you're describing.

[0078265317]

I remember playing some space like game long time ago on my friends commodore 64 back in the 80s.  Don't remember the name.

[CaptainBreakout]

4 minutes ago, 0078265317 said:

I remember playing some space like game long time ago on my friends commodore 64 back in the 80s.  Don't remember the name.

Well, that still leaves about half of 20,000 games.  Any other details?  Was it on a cartridge maybe?  Space ship shape or color? Was there a map, was it a shooter, any details at all?

 

 

[0078265317]

1 hour ago, CaptainBreakout said:

Well, that still leaves about half of 20,000 games.  Any other details?  Was it on a cartridge maybe?  Space ship shape or color? Was there a map, was it a shooter, any details at all?

 

 

Similar to omega race but no box in the middle.  Small white ship.  Black background white dots like stars probably.  Left to right side scrolling game.

[CaptainBreakout]

Hmmm. Too bad C64 is not my forte.  Reminds me of Star Blazer (Apple ][) or Parsec (ti-99).

 

Any C64 experts in the house?