Fond memories of the first The Settlers

[Evil Taco]

#11037

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! 😀

[Fede]

#11060

I also played a lot of Settlers back in the day, although the version I had was called Serf City. Since I had it pirated didn’t know about that was possible to click both mouse buttons at the same time, so I couldn’t do some actions, once I learnt that the experience was much better.

[Evil Taco]

#11073

Serf City here as well; apparently it’s the U.S. title of the first game. I guess we sailed over the Atlantic for that particular loot. Yarrr!

[Fede]

#11075

I live in Argentina, so I’m on the right side of the Atlantic ;). And getting a big box game at that time was nearly impossible here, so it makes sense that it came from the U.S.

[carbontwelve]

#11167

I first played The Settlers at a friends house when I was eight or nine in the late 90s and became hooked. A few months later I recognised the game art on a box in Game and asked my parents to buy it for me.

It turns out I had bought the sequal The Settlers II and while my Dad enjoyed playing through the entire story line, I enjoyed maxing out the levels, building everywhere and on one occurance managed to get to a point where all production in the game just stopped.

I haven’t played it in years, but for a period of my childhood it consumed hundreds of hours of my time.