Personal DOS gaming history

Interon · Post by **Interon** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 8:36 pm

I've played DOS games since 1992.

Everyone else tell us when you started playing DOS games.

Post by **Wally** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 8:37 pm

maybe when i was about 7 or 8 i played lionking and aladdin also tried to start playing commander keen (started from 4) and didnt realised there were other seqeuls.

Also i loved EGAsharks

Dopefish · Post by **Dopefish** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 9:40 pm

My family didn't get a computer until 1994.

Post by **wardrich** » Sun Mar 21, 2004 10:28 pm

I've been playing DOS games since around 91 or so (in Kindergarten). I got my first home PC in 1996 (t'was a p1 166mhz PC... 64mb RAM, 1gig HDD, CD-ROM... win 95) It was SO good!

I knew more than ANY teacher (and students in my grade) about computers all through elementary school... bastard that I didn't get the tech award @ grade 8 grad. I still hate the bitch that got it. She did NOTHING but use the fucking digital camera. I helped the janitors, the librarian, my teacher, the school's network admin.... all in grade 8. :Angry: :Angry: :Angry: :Angry: :Angry: sorry about that, I got a bit caught up there. I still know more than most of my teachers now (in highschool).

-Richard-

Core_12 · Post by **Core_12** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 9:14 am

probably somewhere beetween 4 and 6. that'd be... 88-90. got my own computer at the age of 7.

Post by **Dogbreath** » Mon Mar 22, 2004 5:37 pm

I'm been able to use a computer since before I remember-so realistically it would probably be around 1990. The first games I remember playing (though I played other toddler games before) were Ancient Empires and zzt.

My family has been using computers since the 1970s ('73 my dad says when he first used a University comp) and I cannot remember a time when I didn't have one.

Core_12 · Post by **Core_12** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 8:55 am

My first Dos games were Supaplex, and Crystal Caves, if I recall correctly. And Liero.

denrix · Post by **denrix** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 9:05 am

my first dos games were some games taht were bundled with my QBasic copy, which was in itself bundled with DOS...

one of them was a Scorched Earth clone (two King Kongs that throw bananas at each other, while trying to avoid the skyscrapers and stuff). icky stuff indeed.

Bobo · Post by **Bobo** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 11:57 am

I loved that King Kong game!!!

I played "Golf", captian comic, police quest, space quest, wolf3d, and my dad had duke3d, but never let me near it.

I was about the kindergarden age back then...

Ro@m · Post by **Ro@m** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 2:18 pm

does under computers count C64?

Bobo · Post by **Bobo** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 3:57 pm

BTW: I (father) had a Leading Edge 60hz prossesser. If memory servers me right, and we also had Star Trek or just Trek, either one.

Post by **Dogbreath** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 4:10 pm

Nibbles and Gorrilas... another one of the "first" games.

Interon · Post by **Interon** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 8:35 pm

David and I altered the Nibbles source code in elementary school to make the game play different! We did similar things with Gorillas!

David held a Nibbles Tournament in the school. He made everybody run at 100 speed. I don't know what happened after because the people crowded me out. It was David's idea and I only saw the first little part of it.

Post by **wardrich** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 10:27 pm

My first DOS game was some Sesame Street game I played in Kindergarten, however the first DOS game I OWNED was Descent: Destination Saturn.

-Richard-

486 player · Post by **486 player** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 11:02 am

'88: Alley, Space Commanders, Panco, Gomoku <-- :Angry:

Eugene Esterly III · Post by **Eugene Esterly III** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 6:18 am

I've only being playing DOS games since 1996 because I got my first PC in 1996, an old 486 comp running at 66 MHZ & Windows 3.11, my current comp is a Gateway 3.20 GHZ comp running Win XP.

Rikki · Post by **Rikki** » Sun Aug 14, 2005 10:51 am

Around 91, borrowed a neighbours ICL DRS M30 workstation (8086, 1mb, 20mb HDD etc, VGA colour) and played Roger Rabbit, Captain Comic etc. Then got Commander Keen on a cover disk and it went from there.

R.

GameMaster.EXE · Post by **GameMaster.EXE** » Sun Aug 14, 2005 10:58 am

I first started playing around when I was nine on my win95.........still have it.

Virax_Clone · Post by **Virax_Clone** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 2:36 am

I've been playing since we got our first computer in 1991. Commander Keen was the first game I ever played on the computer, and I'm still as big a fan as ever, if not bigger!

I'm building a comp that will dual boot DOS 6.22 and Windows 98SE, so I can run all my DOS games and stuff on it. I'm so hyped to be able to play Lemmings again, one of my all time favorites up to this very day.

I'm also collecting the King's Quest series this year. I just need to find KQ4 in box with manual and stuff on GameTZ. =\

Funny how I have a top of the line computer now and I've spend about $80 building a DOS machine.

JKSM · Post by **JKSM** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 5:06 am

For me, dos gaming all started a long time back when my dad bought a 386 computer. My first dosgames were Scrabble Deluxe, Crimewave and Xenon2. All these came with the 386. At that time, there were only these games besides the Windows Entertainment Pack (WEP) games that PC sellers like to bundle up with new PC (one CD rom - licensed version of Windows 3.1 and another CD-ROM WEP). Following this, got Alley Cat, Prince of Persia, Lemmings & Oh no more Lemmings, Pushover, The Simpsons & Magic Pockets as well as a CD-ROM of shareware games (include Crystal Cave, Secret Agent, Bio Benance, some kind of interesting game on doing a blood test - though it's a simple shareware but it's quite educational). Most of them my sister bought. Not bad, my sister buys to play the games and I get to enjoy too.

Then I got from school this dos shareware clone of the arcade game, Hexavga. It's a Columns game variant. The Computer teacher was so nice, seeing that we had free time before the class started, she copied the game into our school PCs. I brought a copy home. Anyway, it would have been nice if more teachers were like her.

3 cheers for her. Otherwise, I would have ended up getting bored to death by playing Minesweeper and Solitare while waiting for class to start.

Funny thing is that I had so few dos games than I had Apple II games so sometimes I ended up playing the Apple II games. The dos games graphics look terrific to me at that time after seeing the monochrome Apple II games. It was especially a delight after playing Karatake on Apple II and finding the dos game, Prince of Persia having the same character and produced by the same company and creater and having an even better gameplay. I really treasured the few dos games that were available and enjoyed them. Sadly, I haven't ever completed the dos games except for Crimewave and Prince of Persia. It was an extremely joyful experience completing the game by myself. The rest of the game I couldn't complete because I got stuck and after spending days on them I still could not solve and gave up. At that time, there were no access to walkthroughs or cheats unlike these days it's so accessible cia the internet.

I still remember buying the shareware version of dos game, Brix on a 3 1/2 inch floppy costing $12.90. It's really too high a cost for a shareware game. At that time, I did not have internet access and no CD-ROM drive. Only have a 5 1/4 inch & 3 1/2 inch drives. However, I can truely say that I enjoy finishing all the 112 shareware levels of Brix and solving them all without any help.

Many years later, after upgrading to a Win 95 Pentium with access to internet, I collected a lot more dos games by downloading sharewares & freeware through the internet and buying those 40 to 200 shareware games on one CD-ROM plus a lot more other games. As the collection grew, it became like a hobby similar to collecting stamp. Buy and keep but hardly use.

My dos favourite games, I have kept them and even tested them on each newer PC that I used. When I started working and was given a Pentium III Win 2000 laptop on loan for work, I tested on it too.

Then about 3 years ago when I have this Pentium 4 with Win XP, I tested the old dos games on it too. Happy to say that there are still a few rare dis games that can be perfectly playable on all machines without any emulation such as dosbox needed. For these games, the programming really can stand the test of time.

Too bad I never got to try Win 98 but from what others say about it being better than Win 95, it's not so much of a regret. I liked my Win 95.

Sad to say some very old dos games could not even be played properly even in under dos of 386. Now that there's emulation like dosbox, I should try those games again. One thing I hated about some dos games was that I could find any way to quit the game such that in the end I had to hit Alt-Ctrl-Del to terminate or reboot the PC.

Nowadays, with dos emulation like Dosbox, all one needs to do is close the dosbox window to end the game.

Over the past few years, it was really a delight to find bargains of old dosgames in computer game shops or even bookshops.

What I enjoyed more was finding level editors to old dos games and being able to create some levels myself or playing levels created by others. Too bad not every game had a level editor.

It's also very interesting to see dos version evolve into windows versions for game sequels. So far, I bought all the Lemmings titles and Incredible Mahine titles that ever existed for PC. The are 2 titles where one can see how the graphics, sounds and menu changes over the years from dos to windows.

It is also interesting to find out that games that were available for old PC such as Commodore 64, Apple II, Amiga etc were also available in dos.

Sometimes I wondered whether I would ever complete those dos games that I started on before. In the past I got stuck. Now with walkthroughs, I can continue. However, the problem would now be that I don't have much time, not in the right mood, need to practice to get back the game skill and also need to remember where I got stuck. It's just too tedious to start all over again, knowing that you used to get stuck on level 60 or 70 of a 100 level game.