BASIC Game Jam in January

We've often mentioned on the show that DOS Game Club came to be because a bunch of nerds met in a game jam community. If you haven't heard about game jams, Wikipedia has you covered.

While we've covered the outcome of game jams in the past, we've never hosted our own, despite the fact that several of our club members started their own game jam website years ago. But this is all about to change!

To remedy this situation, we decided to host a DOS BASIC Game Jam! Many of us started out programming on various BASICs (in GW-BASIC or QBasic on DOS or in case of some of our ancients in Commodore BASIC, Sinclair BASIC or Locomotive BASIC), so we thought this would be an accessible, on-topic and extremely nerdy thing to do.

What, When and Where?

The goal of the jam is to make a game in BASIC that runs on DOS (that means it can be any of the interpreted BASICs for DOS or one that compiles to DOS). There is no theme or genre you have to stick to, and the rules are very relaxed. You have all of January to make your game and upload it.

In February, we are going to make the Jam submissions the subject of the club: Members get to play all the games and eventually we'll talk about all of them in the podcast episode for the month.

As mentioned earlier, some of our friends made their own Game Jam Site, Alakajam! It has gotten a bit quiet over there as participation in their jams sadly has dwindled over the years. But this is exactly where we are going to host our BASIC Jam. In order to participate, you'll need an account on the site and submit your game to the event by the end of January.

Alakajam is a non-commercial project and the creators have no interest in using or selling your personal information, just in case you're worried about this kind of stuff.

Need Help?

Of course this jam is not only for BASIC veterans but also for beginners (it's even in the language's name)! Since BASIC is a bit obscure these days (mild understatement), it can be difficult to find good introductory material. If you are stuck or just want someone to take a look at your code and give a few hints, feel free to post about it either on our forums, the Alakajam blog or our IRC.

Rules

We have written down the exact rules on a separate page.

Abuse

Abuse. Not the most fortunate name for a video game, but hey, it was 1995 and nineties edginess was in full swing. According to developer Crack dot Com (another very nineties name!), it's the player who's being abused here, knowing full well that pressing the buttons in all those levels is going to bring down hordes of howlers on you, and doing it anyway. It also went well with Crack, they said. Okay...

What you get is a dark and grimy run and gun platformer with something that was almost unheard of on DOS at the time: you move with the keyboard and aim freely with the mouse. Throw in gorgeous lighting effects, a whole arsenal of weapons, a jetpack, a built-in level editor and hordes of very alien-looking mutants dropping from the ceiling, and you've got a game that was made in just six months on a dare.

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we have no less than four guests. Lukasz ("Red Hexapus") is back on the show, after previously joining us for Earthworm Jim. On for the first time are Zack ("Zacktorial"), who hosts the official OverClocked ReMix podcast, and Åke ("forslund"), who found us through our Mastodon. We're also joined by Metin ("metinc"), who is working on his own fork of Abuse and brought plenty of fun findings from the original source code.

We also received a voice message from Watchful, who is still going strong with the Windows Game Club. Thanks Watchful! If you also want to send in a voice message for a future episode, please e-mail it to club@dosgameclub.com

[ download mp3 ] (117 mins, 134 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast and for digging up the old magazine reviews, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

Sid Meier’s Civilization

Ah, Sid Meier's Civilization... It's hard to overstate just how epic and ambitious this game was when it first came out in 1991. The intro starts with the very formation of planet Earth itself. The seas split, the continents are formed, life evolves and eventually after billions of years it all culminates in you choosing one of 15 civilizations to lead into a glorious future. The year is 4,000 BC. The map is entirely shrouded in darkness. You have little more than a settler at your disposal. But what you have, is time. 6,000 years to bring greatness to your people, one turn at a time, by founding cities, inventing technologies, conquering your enemies and building great wonders. Whatever happens next is up to you. If that's not an epic premise, we don't know what is!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we have three guests on the show who are each on for the very first time. From the club we have Mark ("slamo") and Mike ("circletheory"). Martijn also invited his cousin Mar onto the show, who first taught him the game back when they were both kids.

We also received two voice messages, one from Gergely and one from Bemoir. And Rusty sent us an email. Thanks to all, it's greatly appreciated! If you want to contribute something for the show, please e-mail us at club@dosgameclub.com

[ download mp3 ] (147 mins, 168 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

Star Wars: TIE Fighter

After having run this club for almost 10 years now, sometimes we worry we might run out of good games to feature. Not that we only want to cover the best or most famous games, but we wouldn't want to feel like we're scraping the barrel either. Anyway, this fear is entirely unwarranted, because even after all this time an absolute gem such as 1994's Star Wars: TIE Fighter is available for us to talk about. This game offers a very enticing premise over Star Wars: X-Wing, its predecessor from a year earlier: instead of the hero, now you're the bad guy! Or are you? Maybe the Empire just wants peace and stability for all and Darth Vader isn't such a bad guy after all. That's certainly what they tell a lowly TIE Fighter pilot such as yourselves anyway...

Sadly our co-host Florian ("rnlf") had to skip this episode due to an injury that left him unable to play this game. Get well soon, Florian! Host Martijn is here with a big group of guests who are all excited to talk about TIE Fighter. First of all we have Brian ("SpaceGameJunkie") back on the show. We also have Eric ("Shnoogie"), who's joining the podcast for the first time. Then we have Jason ("Angel"), who's in charge of the Tie Fighter Total Conversion project (see links below). And last but not least we have Rik, adaptive music composer and a good friend of Martijn for many years who hasn't played a ton of old PC games, but TIE Fighter being the rare exception!

And on top of all this, we've also received no fewer than three voice messages! They are from Firefokker, Evil Taco and Watchful. Thank you very much for sharing your insights with us, we always enjoy hearing your thoughts on the games we're playing. If you want to share a voice message for a future episode, please e-mail them to club@dosgameclub.com

[ download mp3 ] (198 mins, 226 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

Pool, snooker and billiards

It's time for another multi-game month! After skiing, pinball, cricket and golf, we sat down for a nice game of computer pool. And snooker. And billiards. Basically anything where you use a cue stick to hit a ball on a table. Turns out there are quite a few of these for MS-DOS, but perhaps not as many as you'd think. So we looked at all of them and found some really special ones indeed!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we have DGC members Richard ("Pix") and DRS ("dr_st") on the show. None of us are pool experts really, but we're trying our best!

[ download mp3 ] (122 mins, 140 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!