Information Nostalgia Sunday: List of Worthwhile DOS Games

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From the GOG.com twitter feed comes a list of "worthwhile DOS games". Only a few of them are RPGs and while I'm sure Codexers can name many more, I thought it could be a nice list for anyone looking to kill a few slow summer hours. Like me, for instance. The list is alphabetical and every entry comes with a screenshot and a short description.

Click here for the list (4000x4000+ JPEG).

Nice list, I've played roughly 75% of those games.

Great image. That is basically the bulk of my childhood right there. Considering how early some of these games were, it makes me realise how young I must have been when playing C64 games.

Another factor seems to be less preamble. I picked up Darklands from GOG just recently and was happy to find how quickly I could just get into things, even get in over my head. No tutorial, no waiting around for things to be explained, just jump in and RTFM or experiment if you don't understand how something works.

Older games seemed to trust you more on this. Doom starts you off in a room with enemies nearby while the reboot loads up on pointless back and forth missions in the name of foreshadowing. Fallout starts you outside the door near rats ready to go while Fallout 3 has you wade through tutorial and character relationships in order to give you motivation you should intrinsically have. In Daggerfall if I remember right you're dumped in a dungeon, whereas in Skyrim you have to watch a freaking movie just to make a character-- each and every time!

Is it possible that newer audiences have just lost the tinkerer instinct? After all, these games were made for people who didn't flinch at using stuff like expanded memory managers and probably knew DOS commands by heart.

Gaming went mainstream and big-budget and lost innovation, experimentation, strange ideas and charm.

it's not... i've been going through my 8 gigabyte archive of old dos games lately and i'm having a great time. last 'new' game i've played was alpha protocol... which was rather meh in comparison. for me it's mostly because games like AP try to be fifty games in one (20 shades of shooter + minigames), instead of concentrating on one strong point. also: very limited replayability, because of unnecessary tedium.

I can't really back up my following claims ona scientific level, but bear with me.

Not only the less imaginative settings, the improved fotorealistic gfx are responsible to a large degree. Take, say, lemmings. In the original there are blocky VGA gfx and from what I have see of the modern remakes you have highres cartoonish gfx. But the things is, it is a game with a distinctive gameplay, so the brainc an focus more strongly on it if you have clearly discernible elements, less gfx "noise". And i think this applies to many modern games, it gets way more complicated for the brain to "play" instead it tries to compute all the gfx details. This in return detracts heavily from the fun of actually playing, mostly unconsciously, and what is left is some weird aftertaste of a so-so or flat-out boring game.

I don't know, it should be possible to make great games that have great graphics too, the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. I think it's more like Wavinator said. People don't have that desire/ability to just do stuff for themselves anymore. They want to be spoon-fed because life is too short and thinking is teh hard. I've said it before, the quality of games (and most entertainment/art forms) didn't just decline on their own, they decline because the people that buy them decline.

I blame the usability shift of going from needing to know how to use memmaker for elite conventional memory optimisation and then slap that shit on a bootdisk to herpderp turn on computer and click pretty icon for the funs
I learned that shit before high school, now there are people with phds going MASS EFFECT BEST SCIENCE FICTION I EVER SHOVED INTO MY BRIAN

another good example of what accessibility has done is the contrast between the console headset-owning multiplayer audience versus specific PC server players, say playing in skyway's multiplayer arma team

oh yeah tell me more about how games are as good as they've ever been and how I don't need to buy them if I don't like them because my wallet is going to make the industry change

The inclusion of Heretic, Hexen, and Wolfenstein 3D is dubious.

What do these games have going for them? Interesting level design? Variety of enemies? Variety of weapons? Skill and thought required in finding secret areas or your way through the level? The need to change or adjust your approach in different areas?

Hell no! Heretic, Hexen, and Wolf3D were all mediocre compared to both the early Doom games. They have absolutely nothing going for them. Especially not Wolf3D.

Except that these shooters aren't realistic. They don't try to be real. They try to be like movies.

you could say that gamers were improvisational directors back then but now they're all actors on a moving sidewalk with teleprompters that tell them where to shoot

Nice list, but why Master of Orion 2 and not the original?
They got the year (1994) wrong anyway as MOO1 was 1993 and MOO2 was 1996.
And they broke their own rules, as MOO2 was released with both a Dos and Windows version.
Oh well, at least they didn't go with MOO3.

Aren't there a good amount of games in that vein, recently come out and being played? Though it's not so much in the pure Doom vein anymore, but more like Quake. At least there's lots of multiplayer games like that, not sure about games with SP campaigns so much.

Wow, that's actually a really nice list. There's only one or two on there that I would say aren't worthy of inclusion. It's interesting to look at how many great games were produced back in the day with limited technology and resources, as compared to today, where dreck is constantly turned out with multi-million dollar budgets. Sigh.

They do have a ton of games on there that had windows versions released though.

Passive Aggressive




Well done graphic presentation,
had a flash memory of the bubble gum card collections of yore,

as exemplified by Mars Attacks!
Pre Poke'mon kid marketing, got to collect'em all … marketing, marketing never changes.

Forced tutorials AND time released tedium, the passive aggressive copy protection choice of the 21st Century!

The powers of !MEH!™ not just sour piratical savor but groom the consumer masses for the nex' product in the pipe line …

It's not he sex, but the SEX APPEAL that sells…. marketing, marketing never changes.






4too

more like purchase protection

i only buy games at full price if they have real replay value (latest purchase: crusader kings 2) and get the single playthrough games i'm interested in when they show up on magazine dvds or in the bargain bin (latest acquisition via magazine dvd: alpha protocol)

Nice list and presentation. Looking at it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

And then comes the rage.

Just played some Abuse. Remembering the game I picked the easiest difficulty, was surprised how little I died during the first levels.

No Gunship. No M1 Tank Platoon. I'm disappoint.

WOW I need to replay this and that and this...

What happened? The same what happened to music, movie, literature, food, clothes industry - money and managers with their MBA's. Shit is awesome - billions of flies can't be wrong.

A noob list for kids born after 1995.
Played almost everything from there, and I can honestly say the entire list is lame, it's just the peak of the iceberg. Propably the only criteria was the shitdosbox compatibility.
At least it had a nice layout.

^
2/5 won't read again