25 Essential DOS Games of 1989 

I cut my (gaming) teeth on those old DOS games. Sometimes they were a real pain to get to work. Modifying the autoexec.bat file, creating boot disks etc. but they were awesome games.

It's cool to see you shout out Anna Rudolph. She's very cool, has a great sense of humor.

This series is so good! Nostalgia trip deluxe. SimCity and Street Rod are the games I played the most from this year. Although we didn't really start playing them until 92-93-ish.

Oh boy did I love Warlords! My brother always won, but we spent days playing it.

I loved the Hero Quest games when they first came out. Great to see it as your first mention.

I came here for Harpoon, M1 Tank Platoon, Indy 500, F16 Combat Pilot and Battle of Britian! As an Amiga gamer back then, this is where I played these iconic games!

Rockstar, I have it still installed. Stick with LSD and booze and you actually live long enough to see your albums on top of the charts.

HOW dangerous? RICK Dangerous.

17/18 months has gone.. :) You have come so far.. Still gonne be watching and supporting all new stuff but decided to sort out my subscriptions while im on the move.. :) Thanks for everything Poland

20:08 Gunsel sounds like the name of an Alabama child of Hansel and Gretyl

It's incredible that we had a truly 3D racing sim before the 1980s were over.

Harpoon was great, my first ultra detailed wargame simulation I played. Warlords was so fun ,and so addicitve.

Thank you for this series, it reminds me why the Amiga was such an important part of history. Why I loved it so much. (Intel outside)

I am surprised you didnt include the other similar flight game F29 Retaliator. loved that game. Could never figure out how to land, so i had to deliberately take enough damage so that as i destroyed the last enemy, I could safely eject and let the plane crash without getting court marshaled.

38:30 oh boy, the peasants of Hitachi don't know yet that in a couple centuries they will be producing construction equipment and magic wands

19:14 that Blue LEGO brick was used to get bigfoot to step on it to make it scream and reveal its location

The first Sim City and Space Quest 3... i did not need more game the entire year 1989.

I actually had an amstrad cpc 6128 around this time, got into the pc gaming about 1992. Awesome time to start, the lucasarts and sierra adventure games were all there waiting for me😁

Great retrospective. So many games on your list that I remember fondly. I have a particular soft spot for Curse of the Azure Bonds which was one of the most enjoyable development projects I've ever been a part of (I was lead PC dev). It was a classic 'content mostly' where we had all of the core systems in pretty solid shape and we were building on top of what we already knew how to do. Awesome team. Super fun project.

Nice video! Especially thanks for the name of the game constantly visible on top right corner, so when I skip some part I always know the name of the game.

24:26 "No one cared who I was until I put on the wizard hat"

Old memories came back, thanks. We had a C64 in Hungary, which we smuggled through the iron curtain around 1987 or 88, I remember we could not have any legal games on it, so in Hungary there were a widespread copy centers for games. I remember getting Warlords, which was my favorite. And I remember we had Indiana Jones, but due to lack of English knowledge, we had no clue what to do there.

man, bringing back the memories. Loved Neuromancer so much when I was kid back then. I played it on C64. Same for Curse of Azure Bonds before the rest of the FR series started to go down the hill in quality in terms of RPG gameplay/open world choice.

Wasteland is one of my favorite games of all time. It had the feel of 80's post-apocalyptic imagery. It is understandable that "you had to be there" for this one to really click, and most people just know the "spiritual successor" Fallout series, and sadly the sequels Wasteland 2 and 3 just don't fit into that setting being a product from not only decades later, but with heavy influence from Fallout itself. Anyway, I'll always love the first one.

Love this channel!!! And I am not a fan of nostalgia in general but your comments are so spot on and just seeing games I basically forgot come to life again is great thank you and keep up the good work!

I played a lot of these games on the Amiga didn’t get a PC until 96.

Dang I had 9 of these, and watched my buddy play 4 more on his IIGS

I loved Sierra games in the 90's. I played them when they were updated from tying to mouse. Leisure Suit Larry, King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Gabriel Knight 3. The ability to transfer your hero between games in Hero's Quest was cool. Good times :)

Woo! Wasteland! A game that inspired two important series; Fallout and Hero League of Hoboken

Mars of Titan was my favourite RPG of the time - so open, so many choices! Close 2nd would be the Buck Rogers RPG, Matrix Cubed! And who knew Neuromancer the game would end up becoming Cyberpunk 2077, the game, and Wasteland ending up being Fallout New Vegas!!!?

So awesome seeing my name on the start screen! Good job on the video. Did you know that wings of fury was also released in japan under the name “wings” in that game you fly a japanese plane and bomb american soldiers :p I wish i could play Space quest. I love the setting. But the random deaths always freaked me out :(

Warlords playing with a bunch of friends was great fun in multi-player. We played that one on the Amiga though. Did not even know there was a PC version back then.

Ark2doh came out in 89? Damn, no wonder it works so well on a 286.

I wish we had a modern version of neruomancer :( mean streets was a bit rough but must be played to enjoy the rest of the tex murphy series

Remember how i cant sleep after try simcity in childhood ;D amazing feelings and its never back. Now i have powerfull PC and can buy any game but no wanna play =(

17:21 *in a German voice* "Zeer gonna need za bigger U-Boot"

Rick Dangerous was my first Amiga 500 Game i played.

Nice batch. Familiar with several of them but Sword of the Samurai is one of the curveball games that influenced me a lot. I've made several attempts at recreations of it over the years. Never finished any of them of course.

Wasteland was my first rpg and totally hooked me on the genre and the post apocalyptic setting as a whole. Totally agree on the impact and importance of the game. Played almost all of these and the fallout series for untold thousands of hours. Another great video.

Harpoon was an amazing game for its time. And really, it's more simulator than game even. There were literally hundreds of things you had to keep in mind unless you wanted to get trashed. Set a good formation for all naval groups, super important. Speed for all units, too fast for ships and formations becomes nonfunctional and subs can hear you from FAR away, too slow and you become easy to target with longrange missiles... Etc... I can brag that i've won all the original game scenarios as both sides. Basic truth, if you're given enough Backfire bombers, you can ALWAYS win the scenario. Never played on PC though, just Amiga. Sword of the samurai was a great game. Basically, it's the ancestor of Total war series, minus the RPG stuff. Battle chess... *lol* You just played it to see all the different takeouts. And wow, someone brought up Space rogue. I had that on the C-64 and it took me ages to figure out how to finish it. But i had a lot of fun hunting pirates in the meantime.

Help, I'm looking for a game I don't know the name of. It was a DOS RPG. You had four characters ( I think). You start in a medieval town and you head into the sewers. There are levels upon levels of tunnels. Sometimes the walls change appearance as you descend. I think mostly it was Grey stone walls covered in green slime/mold. You encounter more normal enemies in the upper levels like " ruffians" or " thieves". As you descend you begin encountering skeletons, vampires and other supernatural creatures. If you died you had to return to a monastery on the surface to get your character revived for a payment of gold. If you inspected the walls of the tunnel ( you couldn't see it) but text would tell you that someone has written " help" on the walls. When I reached the end of the demo, I think I had to save a nude woman who was being held captive near some dimensional portal. This is really bugging me. I got to find this.

Mines of Titan! I played Mars Saga on C64 a lot. I have yet to try the DOS version. I really should buckle down and play it. Thanks for video, always awesome.

I spit my coffee out at "stinky feet"

It took me 6 hours to unpack the floppies to play Pool of Radiance on my Tandy 1000. Each random battle took 5 full minutes to load. It crashed at the end and there was no support. King's Quest 1-3 & Space Quest were fantasy gold. Starflight 1 & 2 were fire and 'No Man Sky' may as well be the ultimate sequel. Where is today's battle chess?!? It's the original wizard's chess! *sigh* See also: boulder dash & the kobayashi alternative

So many great games, but I admit I have my rose-tinted glasses. I was given my first pc in 1987, a monster with a whopping 512k of RAM. These games were played, replayed, & traded with friends. Copy protection was in its infancy, so my friends & I made sure not to buy duplicate titles and instead make copies for one another. Wasteland was very similar to The Bard's Tale series, so familiarity with one helped with the other. There is a remastered version which gives it smoother visuals without functionally changing the game. I recommend it for those who find the original offputting. It & 1990's "Dark Knights of Krynn", a Dragonlance "gold box" game are on my PC now. Space Quest was so much fun, but there were times when I couldn't figure out how to interact with the objects onscreen. There were no wikis & walkthroughs, so we had to go to a BBS & post a question, then hope for the best. I apologize for the extra long comment. It saddens me that Mechwarrior didn't make the cut for essential games of '88. One great thing about these old games is so many are available via abadonware sites, if you don't want to pay Steam $10 for a 35-year old game.

4:44 instant karma

Sword of the samurai and Warlords my favorites!

Great year for games

Rick Dangerous was a heap of fun but seriously hard

I know you don't usually show sports games, but "Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs" was something special at the time. A revolutionary game, that no other basketball video game had come close to doing before. This game was the closest thing we could imagine to the real thing, and essentially the first game in what would become EA's NBA Live game series.

I was 20 in 89, so many of these titles bring back great memories, all of the flight sims, Indy 500 I couldnt make it a lap without popping a tire - and Curse of the Azure bonds - a buddy and I took turns playing, one slept while the other played and then we switched, just to get to the ending. good times

BattleChess & SimCity are the only truly legendary ones in this list!

Sword of the Samurai was love

HQ1 so very good!

More games I'd forgotten about since I never got a chance to play them myself. IBM compatible PCs were rare at the time and usually reserved to working environments. Not that I really knew english well enough to really get much out of most PC games at the time anyway, I played my first more serious RPG with a finnish-english dictionary in one hand.

Rick Dangeorus... literal try and fail. Still was awesome 😄 Didn't know Hero's Quest, I played King's, Police's, Space's... but not Hero's 🤭

DOS era and the 1990s saw a boom in space and scifi games. Amazingly people only talk about arcade and FPS and not scifi games. There were incredible games during DOS era and during the war of the videocards during late 1990s.

My favorite from 1989 is the original Mechwarrior. it is very processor speed dependent I like it best on a 12-16mhz 286

I played 7 out of the 25...

Magic carpet II Whipeout Terminal Velocity Microprose F-117A Civilization II Colonization Abuse Another world/Out of this world Need for speed 1 Iron fist 2 Commanche gold Doom Doom 2 Redneck & rampage Heretic Hexen Hexen II Cannon fodder Wolfenstein 3D Spear of destiny Etc etc etc

I was wrong in my previous assumption. This is not a good or great video, it's an awesome one. The perfect thing after a tiring work day. :) Oh, I wanted to add something about Hero's Quest. It had to be renamed later due to a copyright clash with another game. It became Quest for Glory. Quite a nice game. Ooh, Neuromancer! I read the book and apparently forgot it completely. :D And of course I'm adding all the space and sci-fi games to my list. I've heard of Space Quest and almost tried the first one, but died instantly. So I'll have to try the series again armed with a walkthrough and quick parser typing skill. There is a point in Mean Streets where you talk about the boss' wife's crippling stare and a cyclops comes up on the screen. Perfect timing! XD And your review of Rockstar! is a real comedic gem, poetry and all. :D The game itself is something else. Your grandma and mother inviting you to wild parties and offering you drugs? Wow. XD And also, nice choice for songs. :D

I just started playing wizardy 8 again...smdh

1992. That's the first golden year of DOS. Most of the games from 1989 were either better on the Amiga (usually because the sound quality was much better) or not very good. It wasn't until 1992 when it really clicked; games could safely assume some kind of half-decent sound card, a faster CPU than an Amiga (particularly the old amiga 500's that games still had to target because they were so omnipresent), a VGA screen and a hard drive. This year also dropped the 3 killer games; wolfenstein 3D, Ultima underworld (the most ahead-of-it's-time game ever created by a wide margin) and ultima VII.

Rick Dangerous was great fun… on the Amiga. It was ugly as sin on PC. I vaguely remember Mars Saga & I know it was a great game but I really don’t remember much of it & I don’t know why? It”s funny to look at A-10 through modern eyes & see what we were happy to put up with back then. The frame rate was abysmal (on hardware of the time) but still seemed amazing to us for it’s 3D simulation, untextured “buildings” & all. 😄 I can say the same for F16. Still, Steel Talons on the Atari Lynx was very similar & I loved it at the time, playing it more than anything else, it just seemed more impressive on a handheld device. Arkanoid 2 is sometimes a little overshadowed by the first game in people’s memories but it really was the better game. I don’t know Neuromancer? I’m curious from your description? I really wanted to get in to the early Space Quest games but as you know, text parsers can go %£#& themselves in the @&#£ with a big solid +%*#&@ covered in sand paper & vinegar. I was just going to say Wasteland was the inspiration for the Fallout series but you got there first. 😄 M1 Tank Platoon is excellent & definitely one to play if you’re in to that sort of thing. Indianapolis 500 was super impressive for it’s day. It’s more sim than I like but the graphics were a marvel for the time & so were the physics. Street Rod’s racing was a bit frustrating but modding the cars & seeing results really was what made it a great game. Starflight 2’s UI was frustratingly clunky for me but I get it’s appeal to others. I din’t know Sward of the Samurai but I love Pirates, I’ll try to get around to it. Battle Chess was epic on the Amiga in it’s day, even though it took a loooooong time to make it’s moves. I actually have it now on Evercade of all platforms. Their Finest Hour was epic in it’s day, or at least felt it for me as flying a Hurricane or a Spitfire felt like wish fulfilment of boyhood dreams. Realistically through modern eyes it may not seem the same but it still gives me the feels. Wings of Fury was dated even in ‘89 but actually was fun to play. Mean Streets was interesting & fun for the day. The graphics are a bit janky by modern standards but it actually looked great at the time. Space Rogue was Elite with extra steps & was a great game for it. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a classic & for good reason. It looked great & did a good job of story telling but it didn’t have replay-ability for me after I felt I’d experienced the story in full. Still it’s absolutely one to recommend to anyone who hasn’t played it. Yeh, 1989 was a fantastic year for games & I’m with you in regard to this being the birth pf modern gaming. There are some absolute classics here & even a couple I haven’t played.. great video, thanks.

Wings of Fury!!

I was waiting for Colonel Bequest...

40:01 Hotline Samuraiami

Maybe it would be fun to do a list of the worst games youve come across

I think the PC was still quite crap compared to the competitors, with one exception being the flightsims where it already seem to the others.

Anyone know of a modern Starflight i can pick up??

Whats the game in the thumbnail?

or...you were bored...depending on your gpu or sound card 🤣

No wing commander?

WARLORDS!

Amiga games were more better.

Nice flashbacks, but don’t use upscaled snippets. That’s blasphemy towards the old games.

Indiana Jones looks so out of place

rick dangerous had 256 colors, why do you show this miserable EGA crap ?

please, don't upscale footages with AI...