New: DGC merch!

Over the years people have asked us if they can get DOS Game Club merchandise. Now you can! We've set up a merch shop at: https://shop.dosgameclub.com

Frontier: Elite II

With Earthworm Jim previously and Planetfall up next, you could say we're on a bit of a space-themed streak here. But while those games have lots of other things going on, the Elite series puts the vastness of outer space absolutely front and centre.

When the original Elite came out in 1984 the sheer scale of the game blew everyone away. A whole universe on a floppy disk, who would have thought it possible! It was going to take a lot to amaze the audience again when the sequel was released, a whopping 9 years later. But Frontier: Elite II had kept up with current events. Gone were the wireframe graphics, a new colourful galaxy was there for you to explore. Just request take off permission and fly off, commander!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") on this episode we have two guests to discuss the game. First of all returning DGC member Brian ("SpaceGameJunkie") who as you can tell by the username is all about space games. See the links below to find his YouTube and Twitch channels as well as the two (!) retro gaming podcasts he hosts. Also joining for the very first time is Tane, for who Frontier is one his favourite games. He also made a cool space visualiser inspired by Frontier that's linked below.

We received no voice messages this time (boo!), but if you want to be part of a future episode you can send one to club@dosgameclub.com

[ download mp3 ] (144 mins, 164 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix, who also recorded the audio clips from his retro hardware which you hear in the episode's intro. And thanks to DGC member Console for editing the episode, you're a lifesaver!

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

Earthworm Jim

"It's a day like any other. A crow is chasing a worm, a worm named Jim. Today the worm escapes to safety and the crow eats dirt. Jim looks left, then right. It seems he has given the crow the slip. Jim returns to his normal daily life, cruising about avoiding crows and doing other general worm-like things. Jim is suddenly struck by a very large ultra high tech indestructible super space cyber suit." This is all the backstory we get from the manual to explain why a worm is walking around in a space suit. And to be fair, it's all we need!

Earthworm Jim (1994, Shiny Entertainment) is the kind of 2D platformer, with its cartoony graphics and smooth animations, that was becoming quite commonplace on the consoles of the time, but was still pretty rare to see on the PC. As a product of the 90s it's full of bizarre humour, only elevated by its eclectic soundtrack. There's no doubt this game has a great production quality. But is it fun to play? Let's find out!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we are joined by two guests. First of all DGC member Wouter ("Jefklek") is back, who previously was on the Heretic episode. Newly joining the show is Lukasz ("Red Hexapus") who turns out to be a big fan of the game, so that's always good.

Once again DGC members Watchful was so kind to send in a voice message, for which we are very thankful. If you also want to send in a voice message, you can email them to us at club@dosgameclub.com

[ download mp3 ] (117mins, 134 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix, who also recorded the audio clips from his retro hardware which you hear in the episode's intro. And thanks to DGC member Console for editing the episode, you're a lifesaver!

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we can't do this without you.

Loom

"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.

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") for this podcast we have three guests. First of all returning veteran DGC member Esko ("Firefyte"), who has been speedrunning Loom for many years. Joining the podcast for the first time is DGC member Eino ("Evil Taco"), we love it when we get new people on! And last but not least we are joined by Mads from the Retro Asylum Podcast, who did a podcast on Loom themselves a few years ago.

On top of all this, DGC members Watchful, Juan ("Reidrac") and Christian ("stdevel") sent in a voice message. Thank you so much, we love hearing from our listeners! If you want to send in a voice message too, you can e-mail them to us at club@dosgameclub.com

[ download mp3 ] (161 mins, 185 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix, who also recorded the audio clips from his retro hardware which you hear in the episode's intro. And thanks to DGC member Console for editing the episode, you're a lifesaver!

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we can't do this without you.

Revisiting DOOM

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 be good to correct this by diving into Doom again, and a 100th episode anniversary seems as good an occasion as any, so here go!

This month also saw the creation of the biggest DGC community project yet: a full episode of custom Doom levels!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") on this episode of the podcast we have three fantastic guests, who are all not only keen long-time Doom players, but also Doom content creators. The custom content and community aspect of Doom is especially an area we felt was left unexplored in our first episode, so we tried to focus on that specifically.

First of all joining this episode is long-time DGC veteran David X Newton, who has a fantastic YouTube channel that's for a large part filled with videos related to Doom. We are also joined by Scwiba, a prolific and award-winning Doom level designer who focuses mainly on levels that are compatible with the original vanilla Doom. Last but not least we have Jazz Mickle, a wide-ranging artist who does everything from graphics to music to games, including a ton of different Doom things such as maps, songs and tools.

And on top of all this we received two voice messages, both from long time friends of the show. The first is from Watchful and the second from Spoonboy. Thank you very much for sending these in, it's always great to hear from club members!

[ download mp3 ] (132 mins, 151 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix, who also recorded the audio clips from his retro hardware which you hear in the episode's intro. And thanks to DGC member Console for editing the episode, you're a lifesaver!

And finally thank you, the listener, for sticking with us for so many years. Here's to the next 100 episodes!