The official MS-DOS thread

[IntelliMission]

@schuwalker Great story! Thank you for reminding me of games like The Train, Secret Agent David Wolf and Countdown. I haven't played any of those, but they look fun.

 

I'm in the middle of a Start Trek: Judgement Rites playthrough and I must say: the game is not bad, but the puzzles are a bit annoying. As a fan of graphic adventures, I recommend Space Quest I, IV and V instead (if you want the same theme), Full Throttle (you said you skipped that one, time to catch up!) and some hidden gems: Fascination, Ween, Lost in Time, Future Wars and Amazon: Guardians of Eden.

Edited May 2, 2021 by IntelliMission

[IntelliMission]

Speaking of graphic adventures, I just finished Sam & Max: Hit the Road today for the second time. The first was in 1995!

 

Here's my review: it has very good graphics and music, and the puzzles are quite decent, but constant failed attempts at comedy, the slow pace your character walks across the screen and a couple of interface problems lower the score a bit.

 

In case anyone wants to play this game, you will find useful to know the interface and design problems in advance:

 

- You can control the binoculars to spin the platform left and right, but you need to place the cursor inside a circular sector that looks like an indicator, but is actually a movable lever. And once there, press the left and right buttons of the mouse. Nobody ever tells you about this in the manual or the game, so this is a clear interface failure that should have been spotted in the testing stage.

 

- The game is full of drawn objects that you can't pick up or even look at. While most of the objects in the game are clearly visible, a couple of them appear like they're part of the background when they actually can be picked up. This is a problem, because the use of those objects is pretty obscure and you never know you need them. One of them totally looks like a non-interactive part of the background and other merges with the rest of the objects in the room (sometimes you don't know when you're clicking in an object, in a character nearby or in a door, because the "interactive zones" in this game are a mess).

 

- There is a new room at the end with a pool in the background and it turns out you can visit the pool, but you need to click in one particular place of the pool because it is covered by a giant object. And then you must wait for the characters to walk outside of the screen and then return. It feels unnatural, it took me a while to see that exit.

[schuwalker]

50 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

@schuwalker Great story! Thank you for reminding me of games like The Train, Secret Agent David Wolf and Countdown. I haven't played any of those, but they look fun.

 

I'm in the middle of a Start Trek: Judgement Rites playthrough and I must say: the game is not bad, but the puzzles are a bit annoying. As a fan of graphic adventures, I recommend Space Quest I, IV and V instead (if you want the same theme), Full Throttle (you said you skipped that one, time to catch up!) and some hidden gems: Fascination, Ween, Lost in Time, Future Wars and Amazon: Guardians of Eden.

You'll love Countdown. It reminds me of Mean Streets which I played tons of. I'm pretty sure I played one of the Space Quest games before but couldn't get into it - might have to give it another go.  I forgot to mention, I did play and finish the first Syberia game; played the second and thought it was a awful on the puzzles.

 

Seeing this post reminds me of some games which were a pain to run with the SoundBlaster card. Stellar 7 was so damn finicky with that card, Rocketeer was another.

 

Some other games I forgot to mention I played: License to Kill (pretty fun) SSI Dragonstrike, Wing Commander (my buddy Chad was a big fan), Neverending Story II, Price of Persia II, Nova 9, Grim Fandango and Battlehawks 1942

Edited May 2, 2021 by schuwalker

[IntelliMission]

Wow, I just watched a quick gameplay of Fascination and... some MS-DOS games are really better without voices and with the ADLIB sountrack. Like really, really better.

 

I'm really against voices in graphic adventures, especially when they're terrible. Regarding the music, there's something about the ADLIB version of those sountracks that makes them better than the other versions (sometimes they are different songs altogether, like in Fascination!).

 

The floppy version of Fascination has exactly the same sounds as the Atari ST version, and it's pretty neat. The CD version has different, more annoying music and terrible voices.

 

I'm pretty sure this happens in multiple games.

[youxia]

Countdown was one of the first games I actually played on PC. The digi-gfx was pretty impressive. Didn't get far back then, but been playing it recently and got stuck in a stupid maze. These really can be a bane of adventure games.

 

I also can't stand voiceovers. Not sure why, but they just do not agree with me, even the quality ones.

Edited May 2, 2021 by youxia

[IntelliMission]

So I decided to continue with Star Trek: Judgement Rites today, after several months.

 

In case anyone is thinking about playing the game, here's my advice after completing the first 2 missions:

 

- You can set up the difficulty to Easy, where there are no 3D space combat sections. The previous Star Trek graphic adventure, which looks almost like the same game, 25th Anniversary, doesn't allow this. This improves the game drastically.

 

- The puzzles are fine, but you need to do something special in each mission to achieve a 100% score. And here the puzzles are pretty terrible:

    1) In mission one, there is a pseudo dead end and you can very easily lose the opportunity to achieve a 100% score. It's one of those puzzles that you only learn you must do it after dying or getting stuck (or in this case, failing to get the score) the first time.

    2) In mission two, these extra actions for points don't include a dead end, but they are extremely bad designed: you must use one object with a machine (there are multiple alien machines) that the game appears to tell you it's not interactive, and most importantly you need to use other 2 objects in an invisible object (at least in the Spanish version) that the game does not allow you to examine (it's a big machine that the game describes as a "data archive", but there's actually 2 objects in it, the data archive and the power generator).

 

However, the graphics, dialogs and music are great, as well as most of the puzzles. And since I have already played games with a 10% of terrible puzzles that I still love (the Goblins series, Amazon: Guardians of Eden, Lost in Time...), I will continue playing.

 

One thing I'm doing, since I'm completing basically every single graphic adventure released from 1989 to 1994 except for the ones with text input, is taking notes of the "impossible puzzles" in TXT files I attach to each DBGL (DOSBox Game Loader) profile, so I can play the games again with much less frustration when I forget about the solutions of the puzzles in some years (maybe 5?).

[IntelliMission]

By the way, if anyone wants to play an (almost) successful mixture of graphic adventure and 3D space combat, I suggest you try Inca 2 instead (here the 3D combat is mandatory, but it's kind of fun!). Also, the Spaniards are the bad guys in this game, which was hilarious for me as a Spaniard.

[Tanooki]

I own that STTNG game in the strange shape box it came out in, found it at a second had spot (again, had it back in the day) a year or two ago.  I think it had the guide in the box which solves the moon logic puzzle bs they put into that game, but nothing solves the insufferable combat.  What's worse, it's actually not terrible, but the amount of infuriating restarts to get used to it suck the fun right out, but I remember in the 90s getting bored enough just blowing up stuff to figure it out, then it's a fairly competent combat game hidden within that mostly nice adventure.  Kind of a shame GOG doesn't have it since it does have the others from TOS (which I also have boxed up as well.)  I typically dislike these types of games, but those, Indy FoA and Sam&Max I keep around as they were just well done enough.

[Billy Beans]

15 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

So I decided to continue with Star Trek: Judgement Rites today, after several months.

 

 

ST Judgment Rites and 25th Anniv. are both fun games. If you can find the talkie versions, they are even better. Interplay made some great games.

 

The ST Academy games are also pretty decent.

[zzip]

22 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

but constant failed attempts at comedy

I like the comedy in Sam and Max.    While mostly it is mild-amusing, with occasional laugh-out-loud moments.

 

But I get it, comedy is subjective.   There are plenty of things people insist are the "funniest thing ever" that don't make me laugh at all.

[IntelliMission]

In the end I enjoyed the game because it has great music, pretty solid puzzles overall and it's full of Steve Purcell's great art.

 

However, I feel I would have enjoyed it more with no dialogs or story at all (and maybe less repulsive secondary characters). In that regard, I believe another great graphic adventure with (personal opinion) failed comedy, Space Quest V, feels much better to play due to the successful Star Trek feeling, wonderful atmosphere and overall sense of adventure.

 

I just remembered another MS-DOS graphic adventure I left in the middle: The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes. But I must finish Judgement Rites first.

[Tanooki]

On 5/3/2021 at 8:18 AM, Billy Beans said:

ST Judgment Rites and 25th Anniv. are both fun games. If you can find the talkie versions, they are even better. Interplay made some great games.

 

The ST Academy games are also pretty decent.

Those are the two I have the talkie-CD releases, back in the day though floppy but I wasn't going to go half baked when I decided to get them again.   The mix of the original cast coupled with original writers for the episodes of those games was just a great fit.

[zylon]

On 4/15/2021 at 7:28 AM, Pokeypy said:

DOS-games??? Not really worth it, I guess.

I mean, that CGA/EGA graphics didn't look good at all, and sound was even worse. The PC beeper sounded even worse than the ZX Spectrum's beeper (which at least had a reasonable volume).

That's simply because back then computers were separated into machines for doing serious work (PCs) and game machines (C64 and such). And it's true, I'd rather write business reports on a 8086-PC with "Word for DOS" than on a C64 connected to a flickering television.

As a DOS machine in the 1980s, the Tandy 1000 may have been bearable as a home computer to a certain extent. The 8-bit-guy has a nice video about it.

You could play with "DeskMate" on an emulator (like DosBox). It's something like early Windows or GEOS for the Tandy. Gives you a feeling, what that machine was about. DeskMate had some pre-.wav sound-files I tried to play, and I have to say, yes, my modern PC does it better than these ancient PCs.

 

 

In the 90s there were the AdLib/Soundblaster cards and VGA graphics, of course. It's easy to reproduce, what that looked like.

Well, there were some nice games like "Wing Commander 3", the LucasArts adventure games, X-Wing, Doom, and of course "Tomb Raider" (I like "Tomb Raider II" best).

To me, the 90s weren't a good time compared to the 80s though (think of the totally depressing "Alien 3" compared to the uplifting "Aliens 2"). So I'm not getting too nostalgic about this DOS-era.

In 1999, there was also "Prince of Persia 3D".

 

Had lots of fun with my Tandy 1000SX, and then later 1000EX, but I never went far beyond the single screen type games found on 8bit stuff prior. Probably still have some boot disk copies floating around.

[IntelliMission]

Star Trek: Judgement Rites has great dialogs and has made me interested in watching the original series. I also love the graphics and the music.

 

The puzzles, however, are generally too easy except for a couple of puzzles at the end of each stage that are too difficult or are badly designed/programmed. The additional actions you can do for points are the worse part of the game, as you never know if you're doing good or bad (sometimes violence is good to avoid the escape of the bad guys, others is bad...). Even with the official guide, I can't reach 100% in stage 3.

 

It's clear that these developers were not too used to graphic adventures, but the level of fidelity with the series is awesome, even if I'm playing without voices because I hate voices in graphic adventures.

Edited May 4, 2021 by IntelliMission

[Billy Beans]

31 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Those are the two I have the talkie-CD releases, back in the day though floppy but I wasn't going to go half baked when I decided to get them again.   The mix of the original cast coupled with original writers for the episodes of those games was just a great fit.

I loved the presentation, how each mission was an episode. I wish they had used the formula for subsequent ST series.

[wierd_w]

On 5/3/2021 at 7:18 AM, Billy Beans said:

ST Judgment Rites and 25th Anniv. are both fun games. If you can find the talkie versions, they are even better. Interplay made some great games.

 

The ST Academy games are also pretty decent.

 

The talkie ISO of 25th anniv is on archive.org.  Just sayin.

 

Since we are talking DOS, consider Startrek academy also.  It came on 4 CDs, and has lots of FMV. Early 3D spaceships, 3D space.  Uses joystick.

[Tanooki]

Both talkies are on GoG if you don't want to warez it, and with all the packed in extras in PDF format.  I think they're $6/ea.

[Lord Mushroom]

I look forward to playing the early X-Com games. You can find them on Steam, if you are interested.

[Billy Beans]

12 hours ago, wierd_w said:

 

The talkie ISO of 25th anniv is on archive.org.  Just sayin.

 

Since we are talking DOS, consider Startrek academy also.  It came on 4 CDs, and has lots of FMV. Early 3D spaceships, 3D space.  Uses joystick.

I liked the Academy games also. That's why I mentioned them.

[Billy Beans]

8 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Both talkies are on GoG if you don't want to warez it, and with all the packed in extras in PDF format.  I think they're $6/ea.

I bought them when they released, but also got one or both of them in an Interplay compilation a few years later. GoG is the way to go though if you don't have a particular DOS game. They make it so convenient since they already have the games running in DOSBox.

[Keatah]

Loving revisiting my old Canopus Total3D-128V videocard. A real killer in DOS 2D. It was originally purchased for my old Pentium-II 266. To properly replace the CirrusLogic ISA board I temporarily borrowed from my 486. I was impressed with how well it scaled up in both 2D and 3D. It'll scale way past a 266MHz PII and benefits from a Pentium III 1.4GHz nicely. It's a feature-complete card made by Canopus (a then respected name) and sports Composite & S-Video in/out. It's only 4MB and PCI.

http://web.archive.org/web/19970706013810/http://www.nvidia.com/product/riva128/index.html

http://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheet_pdf/sgs-thomson-microelectronics/STG3000X.pdf

 

Nvidia got very very lucky with this chip. As their first two chipsets were failures. Especially that quadriatic rendering funk. WTF? Anyhow, Nvidia made texturing across the bus work reasonably well. Intel/Real3D tried that with their i740 and failed miserably despite being the maker of both the graphics chip and Northbridge. Suppose that's a classic case of someone else knowing your product better than you do. It was huge risk to texture across the bus. But it made for an affordable product that saved Team Green!

 

[IntelliMission]

Interesting... Did any game took advantage of that 2D card?

[Tanooki]

On 5/6/2021 at 8:09 AM, Billy Beans said:

I bought them when they released, but also got one or both of them in an Interplay compilation a few years later. GoG is the way to go though if you don't have a particular DOS game. They make it so convenient since they already have the games running in DOSBox.

I did the same, but the original big stack of floppies non-talking versions.  JR was like on a dozen disks and damn did that take time to install but was SO worth it.  2-3 years ago I started chipping into wanting to get back my old PC game collection I paid for vs the stack of #oldwarez I had too.  Here and there I'd grab identical releases, but in some select cases, where there was improvement like the two ST TOS based games, I went for the disc releases.  JR added an entire added true final stage since disk release just kind of oddly ends, and yeah, both had full original cast speech which is awesome.  A few cases of pick ups rare ones where the warezy stuff I had still hasn't had a re-release since I bought, like Silverball2Plus! for one example.  The next one I think I'll pick off will be Speed Racer in the Challenge of Racer X which is really the only good SR game ever made, drives very nicely, and wisely uses all the special car functions of the Mach 5.  I don't have a large collection from a players/collectors perspective, but I do have a good deal of jewel cased, a few floppy, and various boxed releases up on a shelf here.

[Keatah]

7 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

Interesting... Did any game took advantage of that 2D card?

Nothing was advertised as doing so. Everything in 1996 - 1998'ish was all laser focused on 3D. Anything that did 2D, especially DOS stuff, would have automatically performed well out of the box.

 

The only outward indicator was it had a 230MHz RAMDAC, and the ZX revision in 1998 had a 250MHz RAMDAC.

Edited May 7, 2021 by Keatah

[Billy Beans]

12 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I did the same, but the original big stack of floppies non-talking versions.  JR was like on a dozen disks and damn did that take time to install but was SO worth it.  2-3 years ago I started chipping into wanting to get back my old PC game collection I paid for vs the stack of #oldwarez I had too.  Here and there I'd grab identical releases, but in some select cases, where there was improvement like the two ST TOS based games, I went for the disc releases.  JR added an entire added true final stage since disk release just kind of oddly ends, and yeah, both had full original cast speech which is awesome.  A few cases of pick ups rare ones where the warezy stuff I had still hasn't had a re-release since I bought, like Silverball2Plus! for one example.  The next one I think I'll pick off will be Speed Racer in the Challenge of Racer X which is really the only good SR game ever made, drives very nicely, and wisely uses all the special car functions of the Mach 5.  I don't have a large collection from a players/collectors perspective, but I do have a good deal of jewel cased, a few floppy, and various boxed releases up on a shelf here.

I've never played the Speed Racer game. I might have to check it out. I sure hope it drives better than the original Test Drive. That game was very taxing.

 

I just recently re-discovered James Bond - The Stealth Affair from Interplay. I'd forgotten how much fun that game was. It got lost in the mix back in the day and didn't get much attention. A graphical adventure that's very similar to Sierra's quest games.