I remember playing a bunch of these as a kid. I'd grab them on 3.5" disks from a dollar store, if I remember correctly. They were just "shareware" or demo versions. Monster Bash, Halloween Harry, Jazz Jackrabbit were all awesome and some of my earliest memories on my Dad's 386. Another one I liked when I was young was Hocus Pocus. Great video!
I remember many of these - Commander Keen, Bio Menace, Duke Nukem, Halloween Harry, and Monster Bash among others. Essentially anything from Apogee was guaranteed to be a good platformer. Others I enjoyed include Hocus Pocus (with that game's soundtrack, the OPL chip was rockin'), Captain Comic, Crystal Caves, and Magic Pockets
So many good ones here. Really brings me back to when I was a kid. Some honorable mentions - Secret Agent Man, Scorched Earth, Tyrian, Skyroads, Raptor, and The Incredible Machine
Really great video! My Christmas present arrived in the mail today, a Sound Blaster Awe 64 for my Windows 98/Ms-Dos PC, I can't wait to play some Dos games with sound :)
Seriously I've been trying to remember the name of BlackThorne for maybe 10+ years after having played a demo of it when I was a kid... thank you so much!!!!
I have to thank you... I have been searching and wondering since I was a kid what Dos platformers I had played. I had vague images and many memories, but no names or even aspects of the game that I could recall properly. No longer! You showed me some of these games taht were lost to my childhood memories!!thank you so much! I played Monster Bash a lot!
I loved some of these games as a kid! In particular, Commander Keen, Bio Menace, Duke Nukem, Jill of the Jungle, Halloween Harry. Platformers were my favorites back then and I had NES, Game Gear and a bunch of DOS games.
@@you_tube6733 some of the DOS games I have to see to remember. The title you suggest doesn't ring a bell for me. Some of these games are 30+ years old and I played them 30+ years ago.
I wonder what the future for gaming holds, I sometimes think that we've reached our peak, then I remember, people then thought that was their peak. Lord knows in twenty years how things would be.
I have played at least half of these, many of my favorites are included here. Commander Keen is arguably the king, but i just love Jazz Jackrabbit... The second one was even better, but not a DOS game anymore as it came out in 1998. Another quite fun game for me was Crystal Caves. Very basic, but full of detail. Great to hear about some games i never heard of, thanks mate.
Man, the memories ... Great list of amazing games. Prince of Persia was my favorite PC game for a long, long time. Your "Essential DOS Games" playlist keeps getting better and better. Are you looking into racing games and flying sims? There's also some hard to classify games, like Metal Mutant (loved that game, even tough it was hard as nails), and some rather interesting (although mostly not good) arcade game conversions to DOS. Great work, Pete.
Prince was BULLSHIT! Fucking impossible game to beat! Even when I sat down, in my gaming prime, and thought "Right then! It's time! Not stopping till I beat this fucker!" I STILL didn't manage it! Simply not enough time in one hour to do so, and I refused to use a guide to help me. That's cheating. Great game, legendary important moment of gaming, but far too dificult.
@@TheVanillatech I actually managed to beat the NES version of Prince without cheats, but I can't remember if I did beat the DOS version without the "megahit" cheat. I love the game anyway. At the time, I had never seen anything as cinematic as Prince on a computer (or console). I still play some versions of Prince from time to time.
So many great games on this list! Commander Keen, Jill of the Jungle, and Duke Nukem 2 give me so many childhood memories. I'll have to try some of these that I'd never heard of! Ones that I'd also suggest: Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Crystal Caves, and Pharaoh's Tomb.
@@onaretrotip Added to that, Challenge of the Ancient Empires (which is more like a puzzle-platformer) and Dangerous Dave. And I have to confess, I loved Dark Castle back in the day as well because castle.☺ -edit- oh and Realms of Chaos!
Vinyl Goddess from Mars, Dangerous Dave and Mystic Towers. Also Supaplex and Cosmo"s Cosmic Adventure were my games back then:) Sad to see none of them on this list.
Oh wow not thought of some of these for years! Cosmic Cosmo was a classic as well, worthy of the list I'd say. And Secret Agent, I loved that game! Great video mate!
I remember buying the Waxky Wheels shareware ay Radio Shack and seeing all of these Apogee titles advertised on the BBS info file. I never knew as a kid what a BBS was. I missed out on some great games.
Rick Dangerous series is legend. First played it on my Amstrad CPC 464 back in the day. One of those games where you simply HAD to die a million times, and force your young brain to remember every single trick and trap to get through. Loved the second game too, played the DOS version on my 486 years afterwards. Also Abuse, Blackthorne and Flashback were legendary on PC. Fade To Black was 3D, but I kind count that as a platformer too. It's a great genre. And I'm glad it's stood the test of time, thanks to platformers relatively low hardware requirements making them still viable on consoles. Games like Inside, Ori & The Blind Forest, Broforce ... keeping the scene alive! FUN FACT : When I built a Pentium machine back in 1995, I gave the 486 to my mother so she could type letters etc for her work. I also installed Duke Nukem 2 and Bio Menace (a Duke Nukem ripoff). After discovering it, I caught her playing right through the games, like a master, shooting aliens and collecting keys etc! Hilarious!
Yeah, Rick Dangerous really is one of those games where you have to die a lot to learn the layout. As you say, a lot of modern platform games adopt this same design.
I like how Sega 32x was basically a DOS game console. We got Doom, Blackthorne, that one cave man racing game, pitfall etc. I'm convinced the system could have handled Sam and Max hit the road with flying colors and even The Dig if they implemented mouse support. Possibly even a Windows game like Sanitarium, that system was not weak. Such a waste of potential.
Great to see more appreciation for how good Halloween Harry's music was - and still is - especially the title & intro music! And Jill of the Jungle's music, too. It's a valid criticism of the graphics that Jill's sprites were low in pixels, but I remember it visually standing out as one of the few full 256-colour VGA platformers of the time, at least on my PC, as Apogee really liked to stick with that 16-colour EGA palette. Those jungle environments, enhanced by the audio, were the real stars of the show. Looks like you covered all my favourites! The only other platformer I'd've mentioned is Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure. Even though it seemed to be aimed at a younger demographic than usual and was pretty shallow in terms of lore & storyline, it is still "peak Apogee shareware platformer".
I'd put Hocus Pocus and Xargon in this aswell because Xargon is just a better version of Jill, and Hocus is one of the most beautiful 2D platformers until like, Jazz Jackrabbit, and its music is fking amazing aswell!
Can't forget XARGON if you're going to mention Jill of the Jungle! That's the one I grew up on. :) The religious private school was disgusted to find "one of the students" installed it on their Windows 3.1 elementary school computer! 🤣
I always saw Blackthorne as the spiritual sequel to Flashback (a game which had a vomitive remake some years ago), since Fade to Black did the mistake of changing the player interface from 2D platform to 3D polygons. Never finished Flashback, but thankfully now we have walkthroughs online to learn the game was a mix of Total Recall, Running Man and They Live.......(talking about games no one could finish.......I'm watching you SILMARILS games!)
Yeah, as a puzzle platformer, it could've been in either, but it was in my DOS puzzle games video. Played that to death on my Amiga as a kid. Superb game.
When you were talking about Monster Bash, you mentioned the kids weapon as "catapult," i pictured him rolling along something akin to a trebuchet. I laughed at that mental image. I didnt realize slingshots were referred to as catapults. Crazy.
I played many of these game. But the one I liked the most back in the day was Halloween Harry. I played so much of the first episode, which I got through a shareware CD. Good old days.
@@onaretrotip back then when i was a kid, i always got handmedown computer parts from my brother. One Christmas i got a CD ROM drive. 1x, full tray eject, ridiculous by todays standards. But i also got this CD with demos and shareware games. A treasure trove for me back then.
Played Keen, Jazz, Monster Bash, Duke Nukem, and at least a demo for Jill of the Jungle back in the day. The only game I would add would be Crystal Caves. MegaMan was also pretty good although DOS wasn't its true home.
I definitely remember loving the visuals for Halloween Harry. Duke Nukem is definitely a good platformer, but when I played it, it did feel a lot like all of their previous platformers. Prince Of Persia, I played on the NES. I didn't play a lot of it, though, because I was only okay at it and wasn't willing to invest effort into gitting gud.
I would go for Skyroads, Ski or Die (excellent port), Lemmings, Rise of The Triad, Epic Pinball, Doom, Hocus Pocus, Commander Keen in Goodbye Galaxy, Warcraft II Tides of Darkness, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Star Wars: Tie Fighter and Monkey Island 2: Le Chucks Revenge
Wonderful games I almost played them all, except prehistorik and the last game. I do miss the Disney platform games, like Alladin or the Lion King and Skunny was also one of my favorites
1) Aladdin 2) CDMan 3) Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow & the Flame 4) Test Drive 5) Dangerous Dave 6) Battle Chess 7) Wolfenstein 3D 8) Sky Roads 9) Lionking 10) Digger
Finally someone who mentions Digger, later copied as DigDug or something like that. Once played, you never forget the background music 😂🤯 But as also replied, it cannot be classified as a platform game
IT’S ALL COMING BACK TO ME NOW! Had forgotten about Alien Carnage, but now I remember actually kind of not liking it because it was so smooth😂 and, I would be willing to even pay for Netflix if they made a Commander Keen series, imagine!
The ones of these that I spent the most time with were Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Jill of the Jungle, and Prince of Persia. A couple of the titles in this video are new to me, so I'll have to check them out.
Woah! Some of these titles look great and most of them I've never heard of. Cyril Cyberpunk, Jazz Jackrabbit & Prehistorik 2 being among those that look right up my street. The original Prince of Persia was balls hard! I remember my friend hiring it out for his Master System and we got nowhere on it lol.
Thank you so much for this video!!!!Been looking for Alien Carnage for many years, but couldn't remember the name. I remember playing it in around 1994.
it was real, after all those year, it wasnt a fever dream, monster bash, its scared the shit out of my 5yo self, great great memories, thanks you so much
I remember getting commander keen and duke nukem episodes on random disks back in the day. not sure if they came from markets, or cover disks. but the windowed look felt very strange coming from playing my amiga. Jazz Jackrabit is one ive always wanted to play, looks nice and fast! I wish i knew of blackthorne when i was younger. looks so much better than flashback! alien Carnage looks my kind of game! too many Rick Dangerous mentions, i must play it now! 👍
Yeah, I wish I knew of Blackthorne back in the day too, but (as I said) I only discovered it way later. Ha, Rick Dangerous is great. I finally managed to pick up a boxed copy for the Amiga via Sinisteve; it'll be in my next pickups. Thanks, Eddie!
There was an old DOS platform game which was in an anthic, magical setting. The player could throw a boomerang and some sort of magical thunder and was able to evolve the weapon. The graphics were similar to jill of the jungle, but it was a different game. Not sure what was the name of the game and I was never able to find it 25 years later.
Oh dear, so many of these when I was a kid. There was another Commander Keen game, I think released before 4, which had the newer graphics but you threw seeds at enemies which turned them into flowers I think. From memory the latter games were better.
Ah can't believe I missed an MS-DOS video. They're my favorite on your channel. Haha I've played most of these but OMG i had completely forgotten about monster bash. That was my game back in the day lol. Ahhh the nostalgia. Halloween Harry! Another that i loved but had forgotten about.
Great video and great retro trip for me. Almost played them all. Really loved Jazz Jackrabit and Black Stone. And I loved Zool on my Atari ST ;) Thanks for this great vid!
@@onaretrotip ohh... didnt know. There was a PC gaming specialized magazine named PC Expert that came with a full game and another cd full of demos on every edition. One of them was called "Universo Animado" (portuguese for animated universe) and the demo disc came with a lot of cool games. Zombie Wars was one of them, but it had Megaman X, Arcade America, Guimo, Torin's Passage, Worms 2, Sonic 3d, Dr Riptide, Pitfall The Mayan Jungle, Time Commando... Those times were fun.
One of my absolute favorite DOS games back in the day was Bomb32.exe (Tank Wars). It was always great to grab a bunch of buddies to sit around one computer and see who could get the big nuke first and who was the idiot that obliterated himself with the wind being a factor.
I just wish I knew how to fool these games into thinking I have a floppy drive. It's not like these "3D prints of the save icon" are extremely accessible media these days.
Only prehistorik and cyberpunk I never seen..and I never knew Halloween Harry was renamed but otherwise I grew up playing every game on this list. One good one you left out was Hocus Pocus! Oh and earthworm jim!
@@onaretrotip Rise of the Dragon was another interesting one I was remembering today though it's like 98% point and click and 2% terrible platforming lol but TIL there was a Sega CD port with voice acting, albeit worse graphics.
I would recommend also: the lost vikings Doofus Titus the Fox Abuse Johnny Bazookatone Another World Earth worm jim Metal mutants Risky woods Hocus Pocus
DOSwas a gaming platform for me my uncle had a partition on his hard drive with all of a fairy gifts including all of the games on this list I had an nes but I didn't play very much, I had a game Boy but I only played that on vacation and for my sixth birthday I got a Genesis
I’ve really got to give Prince of Persia a chance, I’ve always found it clunky but everyone raves about it! Some decent looking games there Pete, will definitely give some of them a try
Yeah, it's worth a bash. It obviously isn't as impressive now, but I know you love a challenge and love to beat a game, so PoP is perfect. You only have an hour to complete it, so it's fun to give it a go every now and then when you have time.
