DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Post by **fastbilly1** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 10:15 am

Being a PC and Nintendo fanboy we probably shouldnt talk, but if you want to relive the experience and buy an old DOS computer, I have had good luck at garage sales and on the Craigslist free section. When you explain to people that the computer is 20 years old and that their cellphone is more powerful, they usually drop the price to sub $10. And if you get lucky and find an old techie, they will often just give it to you (atleast in my experience).

Unless you want a specific model, thats when things get tricky and sometimes expensive. Case in point, I want a IBM PS/2 Model 25b with dual floppies. And it is hard to justify to my wife that I need to spend over $200 on a 25 year old pc that is only 8mhz...

Post by **CRTGAMER** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 10:31 am

TheRev wrote:Tempted to track down an old PC from 1995 just to play these old classics. I COULD do DOS Box but it just isn't the same.

I thought the same, even had multiple removable hard drives to make my older PC 486 truely DOS 6.2 only. I had it setup with multiple boot in the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files to boot different HIMEM and EMS memory configurations dependent on what the game would need. Sometimes the Sound Card IRQs would give headaches when a game needed 10 instead of 5 or 7. It died during a flsh to bios update.

I do miss that old Desktop though. I think one of the fastest in the older AT design, a VA-503+ with an AMD-K62 400Mhz. Also had both 3 1/2" and 5 1/4" floppies to install all the older DOS games. ATs do not have the ATX soft power switch, the front button completely shuts off the power supply. At least on my wife's older ATX tower which has a floppy drive, I can still play with the removable hard drives of DOS 6.2, Windows 98 and Win XP.

I find DOSBox is more trouble free, most games work well without dealing with all the memory config issues. It even has built in support for various Soundcards of the day including Adlib, Soundblaster and Gravis. Could not do that on the old PC without swapping out soundcards. In addition a USB 3 1/2 works just fine with DOSbox.

Post by **RyaNtheSlayA** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 12:43 pm

TheRev wrote:
MrPopo wrote:The master race thing was there back in the DOS days, it just wasn't brought up because it was blindingly obvious that PCs were decades ahead of consoles.
But it was different then. Back in the day there were genres you could only play on consoles and genres you could only play on a PC or Mac. It was a different time.

Find me a plethora of RTS, twitch shooters, and point and clicks on console.

They still have very different libraries and people they cater to. Just because you can get almost all the games that come out on console, on pc, doesn't mean that the games that only can exist on the platform magically disappeared.

Post by **Pulsar_t** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 1:06 pm

Yea DOSBox and VirtualBox got you covered, no need to keep extra shit around if you don't have to. Is there a list of games that received modern ports/engines to run on today's OS's? Some of the titles I can think of

XCom
Duke Nukem 3D
Doom et al
Red Alert et al
Sierra and LucasArts games
Shadow Warrior
Descent
Fallout 1+2

Moar! Give me moar!

Post by **TheRev** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 1:41 pm

Gotta love Shadow Warrior, the new one is a bit too PC if I recall though. But the Original is a classic and it's one of those things I wish I had come up with.

fastbilly1 wrote:Being a PC and Nintendo fanboy we probably shouldnt talk,.

I won't use it against you.

RyaNtheSlayA wrote:e.

Find me a plethora of RTS, twitch shooters, and point and clicks on console.
[/quote]

There are a few Point and clicks on consoles. I know Monkey Island is on XBOX live.
But those 3 genres are genres I could care less about. I'm all about Fighters, Shmups and old school platformers/Arcade games.

Website · Post by **BogusMeatFactory** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 1:44 pm

TheRev wrote:
There are a few Point and clicks on consoles. I know Monkey Island is on XBOX live.
But those 3 genres are genres I could care less about. I'm all about Fighters, Shmups and old school platformers/Arcade games.

Best PC DOS fighting game of all time....One Must Fall 2097....'nuff said.

Post by **RyaNtheSlayA** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 2:21 pm

TheRev wrote: There are a few Point and clicks on consoles. I know Monkey Island is on XBOX live.
But those 3 genres are genres I could care less about. I'm all about Fighters, Shmups and old school platformers/Arcade games.

Fair enough. But those are the genre that are most notable for being very PC centric. Fighters, shmups, and arcade games have typically been the console playground.

Post by **Ack** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 4:03 pm

TheRev wrote: But it was different then. Back in the day there were genres you could only play on consoles and genres you could only play on a PC or Mac. It was a different time.

I'm trying to think of which genres you could find on consoles in the 1980s and 1990s that you couldn't find on PC. There are genres I prefer on consoles, but even fighting games could be found on computers. Conversely, many of the great computer games eventually saw console ports.

I'll give examples at the bottom of this post of genres that people don't think really appear on PCs or consoles.

TheRev wrote: Console fanboys tend to just be childish. But PC gamers have been down right nasty to the point of me wanting to find them and punch them in the face. My Best friend is turning into one of those people.

Although to be fair Nintendo fanboys annoy the shit out of me.

Aren't you a Sony fanboy?

Personally I find the "PC master race" jokes hilarious, being someone who plays both console and PC games. I find the "PC gaming is dead" claims to be far more annoying, as not only are they tossed around as a console-biased reaction, but they're also just flat out wrong.

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

Anyway, onto the real meat and potatoes. A couple of things to understand about these lists that I'm about to provide:

1. They are including games from all regions.
2. Console includes the major Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft lines, but also things like the 3DO. I did not include the CD-i.
3. Computers include the PC, Mac(and earlier Apple products), MSX, Amiga, Atari ST(and earlier Atari computers), Spectrum, Commodore 64(and other Commodore machines), and even the X68000.

I've added these rules to give folks an idea of the plethora of games they may not realize are available to them across the whole range of machines in question.

RyaNtheSlayA wrote:Find me a plethora of RTS, twitch shooters, and point and clicks on console.

Console RTS

While nowhere near as large as the list of available RTS on PC and Mac, consoles have seen a good smattering, including quite a few big names, over the years.

Console Point and Click/Adventure

I intentionally didn't include the games that appear on things like CD-i, though you'll find quite a few 3DO games in here. Also, this list is across all regions, so quite a few of these saw console release but only in places like Japan. It's interesting to note that the Wii and services like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network have helped to contribute to this.

TheRev wrote:There are a few Point and clicks on consoles. I know Monkey Island is on XBOX live.
But those 3 genres are genres I could care less about. I'm all about Fighters, Shmups and old school platformers/Arcade games.

Computer SHMUPS

It's actually easier just to link to the shmups.com pages reviewing computer-based shmups:

I suppose it's kind of a copout to only provide links to lists, but it should give an idea of the numerous shmups out there for computers.

Computer Platformers

This list is nowhere near complete for platformers, but as you can see, there is a surpringly large number of them spread across the history of gaming, including quite a few ports of popular arcade and console franchises. And with the recent focus on indie games and browser games on PC, we're seeing more coming out.

Computer Fighters

There's a market for indie fighters out of Japan, and tools like M.U.G.E.N. and Fighter Maker have sparked interest in computer-based fighting games over the years. A few of the big series have released a couple of games for computers of various types. There's also a lot of the old classics. And a lot of really terrible fighters too.

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

So there you have it, folks, some lists of possible choices for genres on machines you don't typically think to find them on. If you want to go more specific, I figure it'll take some research on your end, but it's always surprising to find out whether the old stereotypes are true. I hope this helps settle the discussion on whether certain genres are represented.

Post by **TheRev** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 4:53 pm

Add MAME to the PC list and the genre lists grow quite a bit.

My laptop broke about 2 weeks ago, Hell if I know what did it in, so i'm a bit jadded with PCs in general, But I still get that warm fuzzy feeling from thinking back to the good old days of DOS when not a whole lot could go wrong.

Post by **MrPopo** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 6:36 pm

TheRev wrote:Add MAME to the PC list and the genre lists grow quite a bit.

My laptop broke about 2 weeks ago, Hell if I know what did it in, so i'm a bit jadded with PCs in general, But I still get that warm fuzzy feeling from thinking back to the good old days of DOS when not a whole lot could go wrong.

config.sys
autoexec.bat

DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Re: DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Re: DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Re: DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Re: DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Re: DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Re: DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Re: DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Re: DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Re: DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique

Re: DOS Gaming when PC gaming was truely Unique