Settlers 1 & 2 are quite the idler / clicker games, aren’t they? 😀
I played the first game quite a bit. Nowadays I don’t really care for this kind of gaming, not so fond of just waiting around for things to happen. But back in the day, playing on the 486SX in our living room, it was really pretty chill, figuring stuff out, figuring out the chains of production, and watching the campaigns to conquer enemy territory play out veeeery sloooowly.
I played the game only in two ways: first off, I put hours and hours in the single player sandbox. I don’t think I even took a look at the mission-based campaign, and I was kind of amazed years later when a friend played through the campaign reporting his progress in IRC. I had totally written off that the campaign could have any appeal to anybody, in my mind. Curious to hear more experiences and opinions!
The other mode was very cool. It was the split screen mode! I don’t even remember if it was a co-op or versus mode, but I’m pretty sure we at least never seriously went head to head with friends. We probably didn’t have very long lasting games, but I distinctly recall playing it a few times, not just once out of curiosity.
Why I remember this? It’s because the game supported two different control methods for the split-screen. First one we figured out was mouse + joystick. I was happy to “take the bullet” and play with the Gravis Gamepad. But the other was that the game supports two mice! I happened to have a regular PS/2 mouse _and_ then a mouse I could plug into serial port (with an adapter), and we were able to make that work! Isn’t DOS gaming just awesome.
I also remember a session where I accidentally tipped a mug of tea into the keyboard, we unplugged the keyboard and were able to continue our Settlers session. 😀
I recall Settlers 1 had a high res / SVGA option which might have been a bit slow, and a low res VGA option which I remember I played more with, at least the split screen was definitely VGA in my mind.
I’ve only played The Settlers 2 a little bit over on a friend’s PC. It required a touch beefier machine that what I had at home. A proper multimedia 486DX2/66, just one step ahead of our 486SX, but the steps were big for PCs in the 90s! I have bought the game on GOG but I’m not sure if I feel the inspiration to play it for the club in January, let’s see. Maybe I can get the kids interested in a session or two, that could be really fun.
One last heretical note: I think it’s pretty cool The Settlers 2 just recently got an official Amiga port! 😀
.
