Looking for info on some Ancient DOS Games? Then you've come to the right place! My name is Kris Asick; I am an indie game designer/programmer and a web show artist who's been operating under the business name "Pixelmusement" since the mid 2000s.
My main project at the moment is a web show entitled "Ancient DOS Games" where I take a look at all those old PC games few people play anymore. Unlike some review shows which simply try to critique these old games or make fun of them, I add my game design talents to the mix and analyze how these games work, how they don't, how to legally obtain them, and how to get them working on modern computers. I originally started the show on Blip in 2010, but migrated to RU-vid after Blip shut down.
I also do a series called No-Nostalgia Retro Gaming where high-tier Patreon supporters are able to nominate C64 games I have never played before (practically all of them) and then every week all patrons vote on which one I will try out on video! :D
@22:38 Realms of Chaos is a Real mode game instead of a Protected mode game. DOSBox doesn't set the cycles automatically for Real mode games. I've tried this game in 86Box emulating a 286, but it hangs just after showing the Apogee logo. The game uses XMS and EMS, which is a hint it uses Real mode. The beta version of Realms of Chaos has PC speaker sound effects and it uses the same file format as Monster Bash and ScubaVenture. There's speculation Realms of Chaos uses the same engine as the cancelled Monster Bash VGA game.
I didn't realise this game exists. And for goodness' sake, this is an embarrassment on Apogee's name. A mediocre platformer in 320x200 VGA in 1995? There was _Crusader No Remorse_ in the same year, being lightyears ahead in graphics and overall fun.
That's kinda not a fair comparison mind you. Crusader: No Remorse was a full-priced commercial product, whereas Realms of Chaos, despite having a box, was a lower-priced shareware product. :P
Abuse has a special place in my heart. I remember being very excited about it as a teenager, I think mostly because of the unique weapons, but more importantly it was very moddable and became my introduction to programming. It actually had an active modding scene in the early 2000s as well, people were doing some pretty creative things with it. But I think it's very much in the category of "an engine with a game tacked on", because the campaign itself is pretty uninspired - very repetitive and tedious. But from a technical point of view it was quite impressive - the level editor was powerful, a lot of the game logic could be modified and expanded through the exposed lisp files, the art could be edited (I think through a tool called satan paint). I think it even came with a demo of a mod which turned it into pong, which shows just how flexible it was. But I don't think it was enough of a financial success, as the developer went under some years later. Oh well!
That was a remarkably and surprisingly charming game! And with a surprising amount of depth! Not to mention quite a good handling of its limited palette, I feel! ^_^
Ah, this game I actually have a bit of nostalgia for! ^_^ If I'm not much mistaken, the demo version of it came with my copy of Duke Nukem 3D (along with a few other things), and I fondly recall playing it from there. Not that I recall it being a great time--just that it's a memory from a nostalgic period in my life, and not a bad one. And your video does make me glad that I never got the full version! :P One nice touch that I noticed during the video: When the player has the shield powerup, and is crouched within a low corridor, the shield-orbs respect the size of the corridor, altering their movements to follow the walls and ceilings. As to the jumping issue, my guess would be that jumps are mathematically simulated, using the delta-time between frames--meaning that small variances in frame-times can result in small variances in maximum jump-height. Which isn't to say that the jump shown was okay--I agree that it's a really bad idea. Just a guess as to the underlying cause of the variability.
Dark Souls is not technically trial-and-error based, it's pure skill. Exceptionally hard sure, but the game gives you all of the tools and information you need to survive, you just have to make it all happen. Trial-and-error gameplay is when you are NOT given the tools/info you need to discern how to survive and have to GUESS. At least in Dark Souls enemies telegraph what they're going to do so you watch and learn, then dodge, counter, and strike when it makes sense to do those things. :B
I too fell for the "mandatory secrets" trap in Megazeux; I made a game where if you didn't do the optional areas, the final area would be harder than it needed to be. The lesson I learned is that just because you fully know where all the secrets are because you made them doesn't mean everyone else can read your mind and instantly also know.
Well, generally speaking, a game WILL be harder the fewer extra things you find. The problem is if you make the difficulty without finding those secrets TOO hard. Game balance is a surprisingly tricky thing to do right since if you make the game too unbalanced then you end up with worthless aspects people will avoid, which leads to boredom from constantly using the same strategies every time, yet if you make the game too balanced then players will feel like nothing they do matters and they will lose interest that way instead.
Wow, memory unlocked. I think I found this on an early forray into abandonware sites as a kid... never did get past the big rat though and if gets much harder I'd have had no hope!!!
Yeah, the big rat had me stumped at first until I realized it had different attacks depending on what side of the screen it was on and that the only attack I COULDN'T dodge was its lunge which it only did from the left side, thus the trick was to stay on the right side for the entire fight. :B
I love sword'n'sorcery style, so I was always drawn to this game but trying to play it, given how bad I am at platformers, was a serious knockback to me, every time.
Let's the the obvious out of the way first, you ARE pretty terrible when it comes to platform games, some of your points are very valid, like the one where you can reach that mushroom at a random jump, but other criticism is because you are bad at playing video games, most of your reviews show that without a doubt, so from a "regular" player's perspective, difficult is maybe not as severe as you usually point out.
I guess I should've clarified "one of the last DOS games to use the Apogee name", though really, Apogee Software now is a different beast run by different people... it's all semantics really. :P
@@Pixelmusement yeah, I never looked too far into what they are now but I was surprised to see they're still kicking and that games are still being released under their name
"Are there any spots you cannot survive without knowing ahead of time what's going to happen" - This is what disappointed me about Descent when I actually tried to play it for the first time recently
Descent has spots that will "hurt" if you don't know what's coming, but does not technically have spots which will "kill" under those conditions; It kinda depends on how well you keep your shields going. Descent is definitely not a cakewalk though; I would say it's harder than even this game when set to the same middle level of difficulty. :P
BTW, in the case of Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, I think there are at least 1 or 2 enemy types that only appear in the registered episodes... so, it's not really another typical case of a "level pack" like Duke Nukum was.
True, nor did I say it was like the extremes Apogee titles could reach, I was just pointing out the particular uniqueness that game had, whereby this game was giving me those same vibes. :B
The reason why the game starts out as a text adventure, before switching to a graphical adventure is because it's a homage to The Wizard of Oz; a movie which starts out in black & white and then transforms to colour once Dorothy arrives in Oz. The reason why the filmmaker did that is because colour was unusual back then and the transformation into a fantastical land and a new age of technology was a sight to behold. Ergo; the Labyrinth game does the same thing; text adventures were the norm back then, so you start out playing one and then once you enter the world of the Labyrinth, the game switches to a graphic adventure.
I can't help thinking that these shareware titles in the mid-nineties were supposed to bring the console/arcade look and feel to the PC, but they somehow failed to do so despite the average PC being more than capable for the task. Maybe because of how sprites are designed, how falling objects move, etc. Basically, some kind of uncanny valley feeling. It made me less proud as a PC kid back then opposed to the 16-bit consoles and the Amiga. It seemed like the PC hit its stride with first person shooters and real time strategies.
I would argue many games actually succeeded at this, though to be fair the PC was a very different beast in terms of gaming for the longest time so the kinds of games which turned out best differed wildly between the PC and consoles, especially where 3D is involved. :o
Right, but it doesn't become a necessary aspect of the gameplay until halfway through the entire experience and because it's such a subtle difference you kinda forget it's even happening. :P
Fun fact: Chocolate as we know it didn't really exist in the medieval times. Also that rock boss you had trouble with for some reason reminded me of another NES classic. Like seriously it was like they took multiple Mega Man bosses and made them one boss.
Ah this game. It's got that "I should love this, but I don't." feeling to it. All the pieces are in place, but they don't fit together. But it still lingers in my ever-emptying mind. I have a vague memory of the higher difficulties also turning the game into an auto-scroller. Perhaps that's on a per-level basis?
There's a handful of auto-scroller levels in the game, as you can see in the footage, but most are not and would be impossible if they were due to the winding paths. :P
I dunno I asked before, but have you thought of rick dangerous, has it been up for vote? 11:00 in the vid. because that game is a memory game disguised as a platformer. basically every screen has at least 1 thing you must just know, sometimes 4+ per "screen"(the engine does vertical scrolling) and in later levels it gets even crazier in that you have to start moving as you enter a screen. still got a cult following tho, maybe just due to how it is, it burrows into your brain if you keep playing it - and the level design isn't accidental on that one but very much on purpose introduces a/b choices that you have to just take a chance at the first time you encounter that screen, but also so that you do feel like you made some progress in an usual play session. (don't bother trying the pooky or whatever cheat that would give you unlimited lives on a c64 if typed into high scores in that game, it doesn't work on pc)
10:46 There's a devilish twist on needing to know what's about to happen, which your commentary just reminded me of. A platformer I played years ago had an extremely difficult passage filled with crushing blocks with proximity detection that would move into new positions and remain in those, i.e. they wouldn't self-reset after a timer had run out. I discovered rather quickly that those blocks also wouldn't reset upon losing a life and returning to the last checkpoint (you could only see a small part of the passage at any given time). Worse still, depending on which precise path you took through the passage, you could trigger some blocks and not others. This meant that on each run through the passage, which was continuous at high speed without any platforms along the way to rest on, I had to memorize the precise configuration the blocks were in if I wanted to stand any chance the next time around. I had to devote some runs exclusively to getting the blocks back into a combination that wasn't completely impossible to survive and train myself to rotate through multiple strategies for the configurations I saw as remotely survivable. It felt like simultaneously doing time-sensitive precision platforming and solving a combination lock. To make things worse, every death cost a little bit of energy (across checkpoint resets), of which one had plenty of this far into the game, but eventually, it would begin to run out, increasing the pressure further, because losing it all meant backtracking and grinding to get it back up. Probably the most difficult thing I've ever experienced in any game, and I've played some hard ones.
Being that all of the consoles and arcade machines were limited by the number of sprites, size and pallete of sprites, and background tile pallete and size, and these weren't, since almost everything was by the CPU, I consider these commercial products, and pretty good ones.
Very little "successful" shareware came from solo devs in the 80s and 90s. Not that there was none but most successful shareware came from small dev teams. Even now, few people work solo and hit a measure of success. It's not impossible, just rare. (Which I say knowing full-well that solo-dev is the path I'm following with my own stuff; I don't want to be solo-deving forever, I just lack the money to pay others to help.)
14:51 Oh dear lord. This is reminding me of the infamous Yoku Blocks from the Mega Man series (Yes. That's the official name of the disappearing blocks in that series) and that's NOT a good thing. And yeah. I think this qualifies as a guide game in one way shape or form. Given that you NEED to find the secrets.
I dunno why but this game aesthetically feels like one of those really low-rent EA Mega Drive games you'd see in those wonky looking cartridges. It's a vibe I guess.
Graphics are really nice. Old arcade game levels were normally made like this, not seeing where you jump. I really hated that. But those were the times when i had the nerves and the time to beat such a games :) .
Also arcade games were INTENTIONALLY designed to munch down your quarters with unfair segments. Arcade games are actually the worst when it comes to difficulty being illegitimate; Heck, some arcade games run a timer in the background which keeps track of how long it's been since you've died or used a continue and jacks up the difficulty the longer that timer goes for! It actually becomes EASIER to beat those games if you just intentionally die and burn continues on a regular basis, which may be free emulated but cost REAL MONEY back when the game was brand new in arcades! D:
Let's hope Alice will never learn French from her sister. I'm French Canadian and "gigot" is never use to describe a "living" animal like the mutton (sheep). It ia used to describe a cut of meat, I think it's a shank (of lamb). She's literally saying "this lamb shank is happy".
This game looks sick, I tend to follow lots of C64 games but I never saw this one. It's really creative and deep, intuitive to use, and doesn't seem to be needlessly cruel in either puzzles or action. This legitemately could be a top 5 games on the platform material.
I mean, those are technically not the same thing, but then looking closely at what Alice is doing here in the game, yes, she is "crawling" not "crouch walking". :P
