LesbiAnts – I wrote about this one before but it’s a very good rpg for the Game Boy where you play as ants. Funny Walk – Very funny adventure game laser targeted at people with a fascination with digitized sprites like in Dark Seed 2. You do not need to play the other two games in the trilogy to understand this. A Circle of Charity – It’s a brilliant game set on an old Windows desktop so of course I’m recommending it WASTE EATER – Wrote about this before too but it’s a great IF game and only 10 minutes long so I don’t want to say too much. It’s cool! Ladykiller in a Bind – Very funny adult visual novel by the developer of other great games like Digital: A Love Story
This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the game Duke Nukem 2, a 2D platformer developed and published by Apogee in 1993. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to help people get started. Duke Nukem is a franchise that is mostly famous for being a first person shooter with a main character that says one liners while you’re blowing everything up, but before this happened, it was a 2D platformer series. The first game was released in 1991 and was a big hit, so a sequel followed in 1993.
Why Should I Play It?
The first two Duke Nukem games are still pretty charming platformers. While they’re a bit dated by today’s standards, especially the first game, I think they’re fun and worth checking out if you enjoy DOS games. It’s also fun seeing the earlier versions of the Duke Nukem character who would become a lot more crude and have more attitude starting with Duke Nukem 3D.
How Do I Get Started?
Because of the long and weird legal history of 3D Realms going under and the Duke Nukem property going to Gearbox, Duke Nukem 1 and 2 are no longer on Steam and GOG. However, they still seem to be on the ZOOM games platform along with a different version of Duke Nukem 3D that’s not on other stores and Duke Nukem: The Manhattan Project. Not to be confused with ZOOM, the video chat service, it is a site similar to GOG that is focused on buying DRM-free copies of old games. I know it’s a little hard to believe this is a real site legally selling games when it looks the way it does and is somehow the only place selling these games, but my understanding is that they somehow signed a contract forever ago that allows them to continue selling them? I don’t completely understand it. In any case, this is the only place where you can legally get the games so I’m linking to it.
Once you have a copy of the game, there’s a couple of ways to play it. If you want to play the game as it was originally shipped, there’s always DOSBox. However, if you would like to play the game with some minor enhancements, I would recommend the Rigel Engine. The engine is a reimplementation of Duke Nukem 2 that offers the following features:
wide-screen mode
smooth scrolling & movement mode with increased frame rate
quick saving
improved game controller support
extended modding features
The widescreen mode and smooth scrolling really do a lot to improve the experience of playing it today so I would strongly recommend giving it a shot.
I didn’t even notice it until I saw it in my GOG library, but I guess a rerelease of Terminal Velocity happened a couple months ago. Apparently buying the game on GOG over 10 years ago meant that I get the new version for free, which is nice. I’ve been playing it for the last day and…..it’s fine. The game was previously on GOG but running on DOSBox but with the new remaster it does the things you’d expect one to do, higher resolutions, adds achievements, improves the view draw distance, and runs natively on Windows. The original game is still included as a bonus too. It’s all fine even if I expected a little more from it. I’m sure it’s nostalgia doing most of the work but I’m having a good time with it. I find it kind of amusing that fixing the draw distance introduces a new issue, that you can see and shoot your enemies far before they notice you.
I’m certainly not upset at all about this existing but I’m not really sure who it’s for. I don’t think I could really recommend the game to people who never played it before since it’s a pretty repetitive game and feels odd to fly around in, and people either already bought the DOS version or they’re busy moaning about the new version on GOG. It’s a perfectly fine update though and I’m glad it exists. I’d love for it to lead to a rerelease of Fury³ and Hellbender, which aren’t available anywhere since they’re Windows 95 games and won’t run anymore. This is probably unlikely to happen since Microsoft seems to have no interest in any of their old games outside of Age of Empires, but I’d love to be proven wrong.
This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the Marathon trilogy, a series of FPS developed and published by Bungie in the mid-90s. Since we are apparently getting a new PVP-focused Marathon, I thought I would write up this intro for people who want to check out the original trilogy and see why it has so many fans even decades later. The Marathon trilogy is a sci-fi FPS series that starts with you playing a security officer trying to repel an alien invasion of your colony ship. The three games, Marathon, Marathon: Durandal, and Marathon: Infinity, were released in 1994, 1995, and 1996 respectively. With the exception of Durandal, the Marathon games were exclusive to the Macintosh. Due to it being technically superior to the Doom engine and the Macintosh being known as a platform with less games, this was seen as a big win for users of the platform and partially why it has a devoted fan base to this day.
Why Should I Play It?
If you’re a fan of Bungie or older FPS, I would strongly recommend this game. The comic book-like artwork for all the characters is very charming, the gameplay mostly holds up, and Bungie fans will enjoy the story told in these games, which was a novel feature for FPS during this time.
How Do I Get Started?
Luckily it’s very easy to get these games for free. In 2005, Bungie said it was ok to freely distribute these games and the open source engine Aleph One makes these games playable on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can download all three games here and it’s very easy to install the games and get them running.
Tips for Playing Marathon
There’s a couple things to keep in mind while playing the game that will help you from getting frustrated since it is an older FPS and doesn’t follow all the FPS conventions that we know today. First, please look at the keyboard mapping in options before playing. Some of the key mappings are a little odd and you might want to change them. Using terminals, doors, and switches is essential to completing the game and understanding the plot, and by default it’s at the Tab key. The game also relies on Save Terminals for saving your game, so you are unable to save at anytime through options. Terminals are also used for other things like advancing the plot and restoring health. At the bottom of your screen are two bars, a red health bar and a blue oxygen bar. At parts of the game you have to travel through areas with no oxygen and you will have to quickly move through them as your bar depletes. Hopefully knowing these quirks ahead of time makes it easier to get into, because it’s a fascinating trilogy and I think Bungie fans who like retro games will enjoy it.
This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the game Loom, a point-and-click adventure game designed by Brian Moriarty and developed and published by Lucasfilm Games in 1990. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to inform people what the best version of the game is and help get started playing.
Why Should I Play It?
Loom is a must play for fans of point-and-click adventure games. Unlike other games from the era, including other adventure games by Lucasfilm Games, there is no inventory and all the puzzles revolve around spells you cast using musical notes created by your staff. It’s a fascinating system for an adventure game and was a joy to play as someone that was a fan of other Lucasarts games. The game also features wonderful art in the EGA version and the version of Swan Lake that plays throughout the game is very well done. All the puzzles felt very logical to me and it’s shorter than other games by Lucasfilm Games, making it easy to recommend to people new to the genre as well. I only played the game for the first time a few years ago and felt that it held up very well. There are no deaths or (as far as I know) any dead ends you can hit in this game, which makes it another reason why it’s a great game for adventure game beginners.
How Do I Get Started?
Unfortunately, the version available on Steam and GOG is not the one people generally prefer, which is the EGA version of the game. While the EGA version has less colors, the art is still superior to the later cd-rom VGA version, which is the one available today. In addition to this, the VGA version made room for the voice acting on the cd by cutting many lines of dialog, closeups of characters talking, multiple puzzle solutions, and censored some cutscenes. My recommendation would be to download the EGA version of the game from your illegal software download site of choice, but buy the VGA version of the game on Steam or GOG so you still own a copy legally. If you are curious about trying the game with 256 colors, I would recommend finding the FM-Towns version. While it does not have the voice acting that the cd-rom version has, it does not cut nearly as much as that version.
Before you start playing the game, I would strongly recommend listening to the audio drama prequel here. This was a cassette that came with the original release of the game. It’s fun to listen to, provides some important background information before you play, and it’s only 30 minutes long.
Once you have the game downloaded and have listened to the prequel, you are ready to play. The game runs well in both ScummVM and DREAMM. If you’re unfamiliar with DREAMM, give it a shot. It was created by Aaron Giles, a former employee at Lucasarts, and is an emulator exclusively for Lucasarts games that aims to be a more accurate emulation of these games, including using the original save and load menus.
Tips for Playing Loom
There’s a couple things to keep in mind while playing the game that will help you full appreciate it
Take Notes The spells you learn in this game are not saved to any sort of in-game notebook, so make sure you write them down instead of trying to memorize it all. Many of the spells are randomized so you will not be able to just look it up in a walkthrough later.
Hints Are Ok! If you’re struggling with a part of the game and it’s getting in the way of you enjoying the game, it’s ok to look up hints! I think this guide on UHS Hints is good for giving hints for what to do next, without giving away the entire solution.
Here are some games I played this week that I think a lot of people missed but are pretty cool.
Firmament After many years in development Cyan, the creators of Myst, finally released their newest game. I’m still playing through it but it’s really everything I would want from a game by this studio. The puzzles have been very solid. it’s a beautiful game, and I’ve been enjoying the world building. I heard some complaints from people saying it’s too easy but given that Cyan gets so much criticism for all their other games being too hard, it just feels like they can’t win at this point. I’ve also been playing this on desktop, where I heard the VR version is a little buggy but they’ve been working on bug fixes this last week and pushing updates quickly so hopefully that’s resolved soon.
Blue Suburbia Blue Suburbia is a demo for an upcoming game by Nathalie Lawhead. The game is about their experiences in the games industry. They go into more detail about that on their blog so I won’t bring it up here but I thought Blue Suburbia was an incredible experience and I’m interested in the full game. It’s technically very interesting too and wild to see playable Bitsys implemented in the Unreal engine.
VIVIDLOPE VIVIDLOPE is a fun puzzle game that feels like a lost Dreamcast game. They perfectly nailed everything about the aesthetic of games from that era and it’s just a well made game outside of that. It has a demo if you want to try it out.
There were a couple games I haven’t played but seem really neat. HRO looks like a fun interactive fiction game set in space. I enjoyed the stream I watched of it. Glypha is a remake of a Joust-inspired game from the Macintosh era and I’m glad they kept the black and white graphics. Hand of Doom is a first person rpg that does a fantastic job capturing the weird aesthetics of mid 90s PC rpgs. The same dev made a game for the first Dread X collection in a very similar style (this may just be an expanded version of that?) and I really liked it at the time.
This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the series Blake Stone, two first person shooter games developed for DOS by JAM Productions and published by Apogee. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to the series to help people get started playing the games. The two games are sci-fi first person shooters made with the Wolfenstein 3-D engine where you play as a British spy named Blake Stone and must stop the evil Dr. Goldfire. The first game, Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, was released one week before Doom in December, 1993. The second game, Blake Stone: Planet Strike, was released a year later in 1994. Planet Strike is a sequel similar to how Spear of Destiny is a sequel to Wolfestein 3-D, where there are not any major overhauls but it changes the graphics for the enemies and makes a variety of little changes. The first game had strong sales until the technically superior Doom came out and Planet Strike struggled to sell with it still using the dated Wolfenstein 3-D engine. The development studio shut down fairly soon after the release of Planet Strike.
Why Should I Play It?
Even though it was quickly overshadowed by the superior game Doom, I think there’s still a lot to appreciate about this series. It has a lot of features that weren’t in either Wolfestein 3-D or Doom such as vending machines, friendly NPCs you can interact with, a silent weapon for not alerting other guards, being able to travel back to previous levels, and it did some things before Doom like an auto map and textured floors and ceilings. If you’re a fan of retro FPS, you will probably enjoy playing this series.
How Do I Get Started?
It’s easy to get the games running on modern computers. If you don’t have the series, you can buy them on GOG or Steam. While they run well in DOSBox, I recommend the BStone Source Port. This adds a some nice features like customizable key bindings and improves the graphics a small amount. Just download the latest release here
Tips for Playing Blake Stone
There’s a couple things to keep in mind while playing the games that will help you avoid some headaches people can run into with this series, and to fully appreciate them.
Search for Secret Walls If you’re unfamiliar with early 90s FPS, one important thing to know is that they frequently had secret rooms filled with health and ammo hidden behind walls. The way to discover these is pretty much by spamming the Open Door button while walking along walls.
Save Often You will want to save regularly. Encounters with enemies can go poorly and may require reloading, especially since there are some enemies that can drain your health very quickly.
Read the Manual There’s nothing too important in here. I just think the comic they included as the backstory is kinda neat.
This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the game Realms of the Haunting, a first person shooter and adventure game hybrid developed by Gremlin Interactive and published by Interplay in 1996. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to the game to help people get started playing it. Gremlin Interactive was a British software developer that had been around since the 80s. In the mid 90s they developed a 3D engine that they used for a first person adventure game called Normality and then used the engine to develop their FPS/adventure hybrid Realms of the Haunting. The game plays a bit like a 90s fps but also features inventory items and puzzles, mazes, and journals to read. The game reviewed very well at release but as far as I can tell, was not a huge commercial hit. You can read a good review of the game and its history here.
Why Should I Play It?
If you’re someone who has an interest in both adventure games and first person shooters, I think it’s worth playing. While the game isn’t without its flaws (see review I linked to above), there still hasn’t been anything like it since then. Even with the massive retro FPS revival happening right now, I haven’t seen anyone developing a game that lists this as its inspiration even though I think the FPS/adventure combination is very novel. There’s also a lot of FMV in the game which I find very charming. You can listen to the Adventure Game Club talk about it here
How Do I Get Started?
It’s easy to get the game running on modern computers. The game runs pretty well on DOSBox if you already own it. If you don’t have the game, you can buy it on GOG or Steam. I strongly recommend the UK to US patch. The patch allows the user to change the difficulty and also the key bindings. This is really important because by default the controls for this game are pretty clunky and you may want to switch the keys to what every other FPS uses.
Tips for Playing Realms of the Haunting
There’s a couple things to keep in mind while playing the game that will help you avoid some headaches people can run into with this game, and to fully appreciate the game.
Save Often You will want to save regularly. Encounters with enemies or traps can go poorly and may require reloading, especially since there are points in the game where the game isn’t generous with health pickups. As far as I know, there are no softlocks in this game that require you to restart the game because of something you missed or action you took.
Don’t Save on Moving Platforms There are a couple parts in this game where you have to do some platform jumping. Due to the clunky controls, people will be tempted to save each time they make a successful jump. Do not do this! There is a bug in the game that will cause you to fall to your doom as soon as you load a save on a moving platform. Just save before and after each platform jumping segment and use multiple save files.
Conserve Ammo Even though there’s technically no softlocks, the game can feel like it’s impossible to complete if you’re not careful about your ammo and health. Early on in the game, try to use your melee weapons when possible so you’ll have lots of ammo. Also consider redoing an enemy encounter if you lose a lot of health.
Read the Manual When I played the game, I didn’t realize you could easily switch weapons using keybindings and I played the entire game switching weapons through the inventory screen. Don’t make the same mistake I did! This great review of the game at The Genesis Temple mentions that there’s also a patch floating around that gives the game WASD + mouse controls.
It’s Ok to Use Hints! Adventure games can be tough and puzzles that make sense to one person may not be easy for someone else. If you’re feeling frustrated by being stuck on a puzzle too long and it’s becoming less fun, consider looking up a hint. I feel like the guide on UHS Hints is good at helping the player without giving too much away.
Here’s some games on Itch.io that came out last week that I liked
8th Knight
8th Knight is a game created for the TweetTweetJam. The goal for this jam is to create a game in 500 characters. Generally people go with PICO-8 but other things are allowed too. It’s just a fun little procedurally-generated platforming game and I enjoyed reading the source code on the Itch page
PocketBolo
PocketBolo is a remake of the shareware game Bolo Ball from 1992 created for the TIC-80. It’s a pretty straightforward remake, I just had fun revisiting a game from my childhood.
Four Color Art Jam Zine
Technically this is a zine, not a game. But it collects a lot of games and art from the Four Color Art Jam where people made games and art using four specific colors. I thought it was a really cool way to highlight submissions from the jam and now I kinda want to do something similar for the DOS Games Jam.
Lets Make a Froggy Games
While this is a pretty simplistic game with some cute art, the highlight of this is actually the development stream that was done to help beginners learn Unity. You can check out the game, stream, and project assets here. The developer has made a few games I really like such as Cr1me Fr0g and By the World’s Wind which are on their Itch page.
This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the game Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands, a first-person point-and-click adventure game developed by Zombie LLC and published by Activision and released in 1996. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to the game to help people get started playing it. During the 80s, game developer Infocom created many text adventure games, with Zork being their most famous series of games. Towards the end of the decade, Infocom made some poor business decisions and it also become tougher to make text adventures commercially viable so they were acquired by Activision and eventually closed. However, this didn’t mean the end of the Zork series and there were three commercial Zork games released in the 90s, Return to Zork in 1993, Zork Nemesis in 1996, and Zork: Grand Inquisitor in 1997. At the time Zork Nemesis was a bit of a divisive game, it did well critically and sold well but a few fans were put off by the game’s darker tone, which was a change from the heavily comedic tone of the previous game or two in the series. Some people were also put off by the game being influenced by Myst, a highly popular adventure game at the time. It seems like people have come around since then and appreciate the one-off change in tone, which still has dark humor but isn’t as silly as the games before and after it.
Why Should I Play It?
If you’re an adventure game or Zork fan, I think it’s worth playing. I think Zork fans will appreciate the change in tone while still feeling like a Zork game but even if you’ve never played a Zork game, fans of the genre should find it enjoyable. There’s a lot of variety in the environments, the plot is interesting, the acting in the FMV scenes is the right level of camp, it has an incredible soundtrack and for the most part the puzzle feel challenging but fair. If you’ve never played a Zork game before, the game does make references to the world established in previous games and you might get a little more from the game if you’ve played other Zork games, but it’s very standalone and doesn’t rely on playing other games to understand the story..
How Do I Get Started?
It’s easy to get the game running on modern computers. If you already own the game, you just need to copy the files to a directory and open it with ScummVM. If you don’t have the game, you can buy it on GOG or Steam and copy the files into ScummVM from there. The versions on those sites use DOSBox and I heard people say they ran into some bugs from there. I also strongly recommend the subtitles patch. The sound mixing in the game is sometimes a little off and it makes it hard to hear dialog while playing the game. The patch also makes the audio puzzles a little easier, which may or may not be a plus for you depending on how you feel about that style of puzzle.
Tips for Playing Zork Nemesis
There’s a couple things to keep in mind while playing the game that will help you avoid some headaches people can run into with this game, and to fully appreciate the game.
Save Often You will want to save regularly. There’s a few points where the player can die and a reload is required. As far as I know, there are no softlocks in this game that require you to restart the game because of something you missed or action you took.
Take Notes During the game, you will come across journals and other things that are used in puzzles in other parts of the game. I highly recommend having a notebook or paper to write notes and diagrams in so you have something to reference for these puzzles.
It’s Ok to Use Hints! Adventure games can be tough and puzzles that make sense to one person may not be easy for someone else. If you’re feeling frustrated by being stuck on a puzzle too long and it’s becoming less fun, consider looking up a hint. I feel like the guide on UHS Hints is good at helping the player without giving too much away.
