There’s a bunch of you young whippersnappers around here who didn’t grow up in the era of DOS. You had to type in commands for just about everything and you had to know how to input them so you didn’t accidentally explode your computer. My friends and I would have network parties (much like people do today), but in the era of DOS, getting them all networked could take hours. It took a mid-level computer science degree to get them all functioning so you could play a really great game of Warcraft 2 (the last great Warcraft game, in my opinion.)
Hell, this was before you played First Person Shooter games with mice. It was keyboards all the way. (In fact, I didn’t make the adjustment to using a mouse for FPS’s until Quake came out. And then it was a necessity.)
DOS even came with a basic programming language (aptly titled BASIC) that just about anyone with half a brain could program in. I would spend hours and hours writing my own “choose your own adventure” games to play in basic. I learned how to program dice rolls and random events, wrote elaborate stories (most often in the Warhammer 40K Universe) to guide players through. I’d save the finished programs onto floppy disk and take it to all of my friends and have them play through. It was an ambitious time, full of creativity.
I wouldn’t even begin to know how to do that now. I bet some 5 year old could design it in Flash, though Flash seems like it’s going the way of the 386 and DOS as well.
But going back even further, there were even older games that I was able to cut my teeth on that all came on giant 5″ floppy disks. I would play Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune on my 386 for hours.
But that time is long past, sadly. It’s an era unique to it’s own.
And we have a guest bot, Sponsor-Tron, that offered to provide you with a little bit of background on the Good Old Dos Games of days gone by:
Let’s face it, everyone plays computer games now. You don’t have to be a hardcore gamer these days, and games range from the graphically intensive to online casinos. Back when computers were not as souped-up and fancy, in a time where playing a computer game was a novel thing, the good old DOS games ruled. These games were made for 1970s and 1980s-era personal computers and gave gamers their first tastes of virtual fun. DOS games were created for play on the x86 microprocessor structure that was among the most popular for over three decades. DOS games spanned the genres of interactive video entertainment, with first person shooter games, sports games, strategy games and card table games, among tons of others. All of the DOS games were relatively simple to play and offered hours of fun to a burgeoning video game generation. Back then, games could be simple and still provide hours of entertainment, which is something lost in our current ADD generation of gamers. Here are some things that every gamer should know about the good old DOS games of years gone past.
The Good Old DOS Games – Shareware
Many of the DOS games of the late 20th century were offered on a shareware basis. Typically, that means that the first few levels of the game were available for free, but the rest must be paid for. Back then, one simply needed to borrow a game disk from a friend and install it on their own PC to have access. Many of the best DOS games gained popularity in this way. Some were a mix of shareware and paidware. Return to Castle Wolfenstein had versions that you play through to a certain point for free, but then had to buy a full version of the game. This economic model has been cribbed in today’s day and age for sure.
The Good Old DOS Games – Games
The good old DOS games that you remember from the late part of the last century included great titles like Asteroid, Wolfenstein, Doom, Mystic Towers and Super Street Fighter II. These classic games entertained a whole generation of gamers and set the foundation for game standards to come in the future. A simple control set and interface made these games a cinch to learn and nearly any age group could play them, although they were often mostly used by the most tech savvy consumers. But as some experts have observed, the good old DOS games helped draw interest in computers and was a large component of consumers’ motivations to buy computers at all.
The Good Old DOS Games – Getting More DOS Games
If you are really into playing the good old DOS games, you may want to go beyond the basic titles and explore the archives contained on the internet. There are a few sites that maintain large collections of old school DOS games. You can log on and download the games from these sites and check out message boards to interact with other DOS enthusiasts. There are even newer versions of games that were released back in the day, updated every few years or so by the developers. There is a world beyond Crysis and online blackjack!
Editors note: The best repository of DOS games I was able to find was this one. They have in the FPS arena Dark Forces, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and more. Since I’m on a Mac, I have no idea if they’ll work or if it’s just a malware scam, but the place looks legit. If anyone has any suggestions, please do it in the comments.