Episodes – DOS Game Club

"Rise, son of Cygna. It is the dawn of your seventeenth year. The Elders await you in the sanctuary." If you didn't listen to the 30 minute audio drama first, you'd have no idea what's going on when you first play Loom (1990, Lucasfilm Games). And if you did listen to it, you probably weren't any less confused. And on top of its unique magical fantasy setting, there's an unfamiliar music-based user interface to grapple with! Loom is probably one of the stranger Lucas point & click games, but its definitely not without its charm and therefore well worth checking out.

Florian has been counting all of our regular "one game a month" episodes, and it turns out we've hit 100 of them! We started this club back in March of 2017 with the first DOS game that came to mind, which happened to be DOOM (id Software, 1993). In hindsight this was a bit of a big game to kick things off, so even though we did have a great time with our very first guest Mike ("toasty", who was on the Cricket episode not that long ago), much of the Doom rabbit hole was left untouched. We've long felt it would...

We're back with a big one, in more ways than one! Normally we do a different game every month, but between December and February we've focused on Ultima Underworld for three months in a row. This was mainly done to give ourselves a chance to catch up, as we've been lagging behind with the podcast a fair bit. But also it's not easy to beat an open world RPG like Ultima Underworld in a single month, so this way everyone had a chance to check it out and see what's what with this groundbreaking title.

Enjoy!

We've featured a lot of different kinds of sim games over the years. We've piloted fighter jets, space ships, a ww2-era bomber and even giant mechs. But never before have we gone under water! In a lot of ways, 1993's Subwar 2050 by Particle Systems and MicroProse could be described as "aquatic Wing Commander". But even though it might be a little light on its story, there's a surprising depth to this game (pun unintended!). Being submerged under the oceans brings its own unique atmosphere, and it turns out Subwar 2050 manages to capture it well and turn the experience...

The Serpent Riders have made the kings of Parthoris their puppets and their undead legions are swarming the land. Only you, the Elf Corvus have the power to - you know what? The story probably isn't one bit more important than it is in DOOM, the masterpiece that this month's game is based on. Heretic was the breakthrough success for Raven Software, though, the company that would later become known for games like Jedi Knight II. But Heretic is remembered fondly by many fans, as well. Rightfully so? Or did it just ride the wave of DOOM clones, even...

UK studio Revolution Software might be most famous for their "Broken Sword" series of adventure games, but before they released those they had found quite some success already. After their first game "Lure of the Temptress" in 1992 did well, they had higher ambitions for their second game: "Beneath a Steel Sky". Working together with comic artist Dave Gibbons they developed a dystopian cyberpunk world in which you play Robert Foster, a fugitive who tries to stay out of the hands of the law, together with his robot companion Joey. Heavy stuff! Luckily there are plenty of jokes sprinkled throughout...

When we started DOS Game Club back in 2017, one of our earliest members Mike ("toasty") asked us if there are cricket games for DOS. Being a keen cricket fan, this was a genuine interest of his. Or perhaps he was joking. Either way, the thought of checking out some DOS cricket games lingered in the back of our minds ever since. How does cricket even work? Let's find out!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") is first of all of course Mike ("toasty") himself. He was a guest on the very first episode (on DOOM) and...

Niccolò Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat, author, philosopher, and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince (Il Principe), written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death.

None of this is in any way relevant for Microprose's 1995 strategy game "Machiavelli The Prince", in which you assume the role of a Venetian merchant prince between the year 1300 and 1492. In fact, the game is a remake of 1994's "Merchant Prince" by Holistic Design, in which Machiavelli is never mentioned at all. What is very "Machiavellian" however is t...

!!!Newsflash!!!

A huge City Minecrawler is
headed straight for
the gaming community of
DOS Game Club, DGC

And you are Kurt Hectic, janitor on board the space station Jim Dandy and Earth's only hope. So get into your "Doctor Hawkins' Amazing Coil Suit" and strap on your "Doctor Hawkins' Incredible Ribbon Chute" and start skydiving down towards the planet, evading incoming missiles and start kicking some alien rear ends, not least thanks to the world's smallest nuclear explosion.

Is Shiny Entertainment's 1997 DOS classic still worth a play today? What does...

In 1992, Nintendo released Super Mario Kart and all we PC gamers were terribly envious of our friends with a Super Nintendo. In 1994, Beavis Soft came to rectify the situation and gave us our own Mario Kart clone "Wacky Wheels".

People rejoiced and everybody thought it was a really great game. But was it really? Or were we just happy to see the PC finally being able to handle games console players had had for several years at that time?

While obviously a clone, there are several major differences between the original and Wacky Wheels. Is...

After successfully keeping the Holy Grail out of Nazi hands, Indiana Jones returned in 1992 with a brand new adventure. And unlike 1989's The Last Crusade, Fate of Atlantis is not based on any of the films, but instead presents us with an entirely original story!

With two playable characters (sometimes), three possible paths, randomised and optional puzzles (a few), a lush iMuse-powered soundtrack and full "talkie" voice acting, this is definitely LucasArts' most ambitious point & click adventure to date. But is it fun? Let's find out!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") are DGC...

You're in a Nazi prison, with a dead guard on the floor in front of you. You take his gun. Now you can fight your way out. This is the exciting premise of 1992's Wolfenstein 3D, developed by id Software and published as shareware by Apogee.

Now we all know Wolfenstein 3D was not the first FPS game ever made, or the first FPS id Software made, or even the first Wolfenstein game. But it's definitely one of the most foundational games for the first-person shooter genre, so all the more reason for us to finally check...

You start out with a single city on a map that's mostly covered in a fog of war. Use the city to produce units. Use the units to explore the map, seize more cities as you grow your army and eventually conquer the map by beating the AI. Sounds familiar? Before Sid Meier's Civilization there was... Empire, a very early example of a turn-based strategy war game, that turned out to be quite influential on the genre.

Originally developed by Walter Bright in the 1970s for the PDP-10, later incarnations of the game were released for various...

Do you ever feel the world is just too... nice? If so, perhaps Dungeon Keeper scratches that itch, because even though it's a classic game of heroes vs demons, in this case you are the demon! Dungeon Keeper was a big hit for Bullfrog Productions back in 1997, but by no means their first. After Populous, Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Theme Park and many others, they were truly at the peak of the powers when Dungeon Keeper hit the shelves. Does that mean the game holds up now though? Let's find out!

Joining Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") are...

Can you believe we're 90 episodes into this show and still haven't looked at Lemmings? Lemmings! What a classic! When Lemmings (by DMA Design, published by Psygnosis) arrived on the scene in the early 90s it was an instant hit. Everyone's played this game, apparently over 15 million copies were sold over the span of its life time. Amazing, let's check it out!

Joining Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") is Simon, from LemmingsForums.net. He's been active in the custom Lemmings levels scene for many years and is even responsible for his very own Lemmings game, called Lix. Please...

We've done Prince of Persia, we've done The Last Express. So when The Making of Karateka was released in late 2023, we figured this was the perfect opportunity to have a look at Jordan Mechner's very first published game. Originally released in 1984 for the Apple II, the PC got a port of this game in 1986. So get ready for some CGA graphics, some PC beeper sounds and a game that runs way too fast at default Dosbox settings.

Joining Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") for this episode are DGC member DRS ("dr_st"), whose first time it is...

For the Halloween season we try to pick suitably scary games, so back in October (welp) we took a look at Realms of the Haunting (1996, Gremlin/Interplay). This game ticks a lot of boxes: haunted mansion, ghosts, scary monsters, but also... Time travel? A psychic partner? Interdimensional portals? Building a bong?? It's no exaggeration to say this game covers a lot of ground, as well as genres, as Realms of the Haunting is best described as a, uh, first-person shooter full-motion video point & click adventure game. And despite this was a major production of British powerhouse of gaming Gremlin...

Everybody know The Secret of Monkey Island. But few people have ever heard of Donkey Island. This game was made by two Czech teenagers on their school computers in 1994 and ended up being the first commercial game to be developed and published in Czechia. Besides a sub-par and, frankly, weird German translation, this game has so far only been available in Czech language - until Emmy and sonneveld came along and decided to translate the game to English and make it available to everyone for free!

So join us on our journey to find out why being...

There is one game that showed everybody that the PC was starting to become as viable a gaming platform as any console on the market. While DOOM was an entirely new experience, Jazz Jackrabbit replicated the experience players had on their SNESes and Mega Drives. Its protagonist even became a mascot for PC gaming at large.

But how does this 1994 game by Epic MegaGames (now only Epic Games, apparently they're not Mega anymore) hold up today? Is it still good? Or do you need to put on your rose tinted nostalgia glasses? We played the game in...

You're in some sort of cave. A red light eminates from the northern wall, while a green light pours in from the cave's exit. This is Azra, a strange far away world where many dangers loom. You are an acolyte of the Scarlet Lady's Red Court, and have no memory of how you ended up in this cave. But while the game's world and characters are mysterious, the presentation is instantly recognisable as that of a 1980s Sierra adventure game. However, this DOS game isn't 35 years old... it's brand new!

In July we took a look at...

Making commercial games for DOS nowadays is not a good business model, right? Hadrosaurus Software is hard at work proving this claim to be totally wrong. Their games Acronia and The Aching (which we played in July) are getting a lot of attention from the DOS gaming community, and rightfully so, we think.

Company founder Clarissa and The Aching creator Tamsin were so kind to take the time to talk to us about DOS game development from a technical, business and personal perspective and shared some interesting and funny anecdotes.

Enjoy!

The late 80s and early 90s were filled with "true 3D" polygon-based first-person driving games. There was Hard Drivin' in the arcade by Atari, Geoff Crammond released Stunt Car Racer, Spectrum Holobyte published Stunt Driver, to name a few. But the one game that proved to capture the hearts of many and remains being played competitively to this very day is 1990's Stunts (aka 4D Sports Driving), developed by Distinctive Software ("DSi"), famous for making such games as Test Drive as well as Grand Prix Circuit, which we covered in episode 2 of this podcast.

We dove deep...

The original Speedball from 1988 was already a highly acclaimed futuristic sports game, lauded for its action-packed arcade-style gameplay and superb audiovisual presentation. But when the Bitmap Brothers released the sequel in 1990 for Amiga and Atari ST they truly outdid themselves. Both horizontal and vertical scrolling at a blistering pace was an achievement rarely seen on home computers at the time, let alone combined with an excellent AI. It's still remembered as one of the Amiga's greatest games.

But less well-known perhaps is the 1991 PC port, also by Bitmap Brothers. How does the DOS version hold up to...

The official Terry Pratchett-approved Discworld point & click adventure game has been pinned on our forums for over two years, as April 2023 would have been his 75th birthday, had he lived to experience it.

Although Pratchett was initially apprehensive about the project, after been shown early demos he gave his approval and by 1995 the game was released to much fanfare. It was a big production, with famous British actors and comedians providing the voices, such as Eric Idle from Monty Python voicing Rincewind, the protagonist of the story.

All in all a very interesting game and...

"It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, and space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet." - Sound familiar? Well, in our game of the month, you play Kyle Katarn for whom this theft of plans is such an easy task that he can do it as the first level!

But obviously, the Empire has other evil plans, or shall...

In 2119 the United Nations Seedship Calypso was launched. Headed for Beta Caeli, the farthest star yet attempted, this ark ship holds thousands of people in cryogenic sleep ready for colonising this remote system. Ever since the first interstellar war with the Centaurians broke out in 2043, the future of Earth and therefore the human race has been under threat. In 2135 the faster UNS Tantalus was launched with the same destination as the Calypso. Despite leaving years later, due to its faster engines it was projected to arrive 21 years before the Calypso would. But when the Calypso arrives and its crew...

Europe, 1943. World War II is in full rage, the United States joined the war effort and are now supporting the British air raids against German occupied western Europe with their legendary B-17 Flying Fortress bombers. Can your crew help end the war by successfully bombing strategically important targets while German fighters and Flaks turn the sky into a death trap?

Microprose's 1992 flight simulation is special in many ways. While other sims let you focus on one job and often on dogfights, a B-17 requires a much larger crew of ten soldiers - and you can take over...

In 1995 Blue Byte released Albion, an ambitious 2D/3D scifi/fantasy RPG, exclusively for MS-DOS PCs. It's made by some of the same people who previously, under the banner of Thalion Software, made Amberstar and Ambermoon, an ambitious series of RPGs that shares some cosmetic similarities with Albion. But despite this overlap, Albion is very much its own game and story.

The story revolves around Tom Driscoll and Rainar Hofstedt, who take a shuttle from the interstellar spaceship Toronto to the remote desert planet of Albion. It's the year 2227 and the DDT corporation is planning to stripmine...

This is a special extra bonus episode! In December we played Albion, the 1995 fantasy/scifi RPG by Blue Byte. We had the chance to speak to Erik Simon and Jurie Horneman, two of the creative forces behind the game.

We discuss everything from the early days at the German demoscene, Thalion software, developing Amberstar & Ambermoon, the move to Blue Byte as well as everything that went into Albion and the legacy it left.

Sadly Florian ("rnlf") wasn't able to get into the game and decided to skip this month, but host Martijn ("Tijn") is supported...

In 2097 the World Aeronautics & Robotics corporation (W.A.R.) is looking for a suitable representative to watch over Ganymede, the Jupiter moon that will soon be colonised. The Board at WAR has decided that the applicants for the position, being equally qualified, should fight for it. Now, the ten applicants must choose which Human-Assisted Robot (H.A.R.) will be their weapon and beat the others in a one-on-one competition.

This is how the manual of One Must Fall: 2097 describes the backstory of this iconic DOS robot fighting shareware game that is the subject of this month's...

British photographer John T. Parker travels to the isolated New England town of Illsmouth in 1910, to take pictures of Halley's comet. During the previous passing 76 years before, Lord Boleskin had made some interesting discoveries, but he subsequently went insane. Parker has three days to finish Boleskin's research before the comet passes in the sky, and it quickly becomes clear the quiet town is not what it seems. A strange cult assembles at night in the forest, a mysterious lighthouse is kept closed off to strangers. What is going on here? Who can he trust?

This is the...

Did you ever want to be in control of the entire hive mind of an ant colony? How about taking over the house of some jerk who doesn't even acknowledge your existence and runs you over with his stupid lawn mower? Still not enough? How about gruesome, explicit and very flowery descriptions of death?

In 1991, Maxis released "SimAnt", a genre defying and to this day unique gaming experience, packed with knowledge about ants. It's not an educational title and yet playing it, you somehow learn a lot about these little creatures.

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn"...

Evil creatures beneath Waterdeep? We can't have any of this. Time for our party of heroes to investigate. But what's that? Just as we enter the sewers, the corridor behind us collapses and we're trapped down here. Will we survive? Find our way out? Will we succeed in our quest to cleanse Waterdeep of whatever is really going on here?

This is the premise of Westwood's 1991 Dungeon Crawler "Eye of the Beholder". We haven't covered any Dungeon Crawlers on the show before, and after more than five years, it's finally time to delve into this iconic genre...

Robert Cath hastily jumps off a speeding motorbike onto the Orient Express, as it departs from Paris on the evening of 24 July 1914. He's been invited to join the train by his friend Tyler Whitney, who apparently has made a remarkable deal and wants to tell Robert all about it. But as soon as Robert enter Tyler's cabin, he finds him on the floor... murdered!

Those are the opening scenes of The Last Express, a 1997 first-person adventure game directed by Jordan Mechner (Karateka, Prince of Persia). What follows is a story of early 20th century mystery drama, all...

Evil dictator Dr. Funfrock is ruling the remote planet of Twinsun with an iron fist. And now that talk of the legend of Sendell has been forbidden, you have even been sent to prison for having strange dreams. What a mess! Luckily your ancestors have hidden various magical items for you, which give you a fighting chance to beat Funfrock and save the planet.

This is the premise of "Little Big Adventure", a top-down isometric action adventure game developed by French studio Adeline Software and published by EA in 1994. The team is largely made up of veterans...

FMV cutscenes with very quirky humour? Check! Ridiculously over the top scenario? Check! Giant acid-squirting scorpions vs. six-wheeled flame thrower ATVs? Check!

In 1997, Beam Software released the first game in the KKnD series. Is it just an unimaginative Command & Conquer reskin clone? Or did it bring something unique to the then still young real-time strategy genre?

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") is club member Björn ("TigerQuoll").

This month our shoutout is slightly different, pointing you to a brilliant interview series that Caroline Delbert did with game developers who entered their games i...

You're seated in the cockpit, twelve meters above ground, your Mech's 75 tonnes stomping heavily on the desert ground. You're getting close to nav point beta, no sign of the enemy, yet. "Enemy Mech Detected!", your computer tells you in a sterile, cold voice.

You arm your missiles and lasers and fire your first salva as you turn your Timber Wolf to the left. More hostiles show up on your radar - this is going to be one hell of a mission. The first of the enemies' missiles miss you by half an inch as you fire all...

There isn't much we need to say to introduce you to Quake. It's Quake, after all.

Quake may be one of the most important games crossing the bridge between the "old" and "new" gaming worlds. It still came out as a DOS game, originally, as shareware, rendered fully in software. But it was also there to give us online multiplayer, modding, machinima, speed running, 3d acceleration, e-sports and so many more things.

It didn't invent those things, but coming at the right time, when the Internet finally became widely available as well as consumer-grade 3D...

Real life isn't real enough for you? You need the daily treadmill also in your gaming? Well, we got something for you! In Sierra's 1991 game Jones in the Fast Lane, you get to live your spectacular life as an absolutely ordinary person whose biggest goal is to become assistant manager of the paper company factory.

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") are new Club members Amy ("SummerB") and Jon ("BogusMeatFactory").

Also a big thanks to DGC member "FireFyte" for sending in a voice message! It's much appreciated. If you want to send in a...

Update: In case it wasn't clear already, this was an april fool's joke. We made an English language podcast about Jones too and will keep the show in English of course.

--- Original post: ---

It's 1 APRIL again and that means we look at the game we played in February, which in this case is Jones in the Fast Lane.

Now as is so often the case, we're once again joined by an international cast of guest for this episode. And this got us thinking: rarely is English the native language of the...