butterburp
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butterburpParticipantThat’s the only thing about these old style adventure games. You can get into an unwinnable situation and not know it. If you’re running around in circles for hours, you don’t know if you’re just missing something, or if you made a fatal mistake and have to start over. I ran into that with Ballyhoo many years ago…haven’t tried again. For sure it’ll happen again with Planetfall, but I gotta try anyway!
butterburpParticipantI’m also late, probably won’t be playing this too much but I wanted to check it out briefly. Not an easy game! Even the first couple of enemies on the easiest level take a bunch of shots to kill. More than once I’ve given in to poor sportsmanship and just wasted all my ammo and started over.
By the way, if you just let HEEM stand there and don’t do anything for a while, he’ll do all kinds of silly things. Amusing.
Lastly, one of the extras in the GOG version is a .HLP file which you can open in Windows 3.1, if you have it in Dosbox (or a real retro machine).
butterburpParticipantProgress report: I’m up to about 2 hours now and still only have half of the flute unlocked. The average time on GOG for the whole game is only 3 hours, so I am way behind! Might have to crack open the hint book pretty soon…adventures are not my strong suit. But it’s fun trying. [EDIT: Took a few hints but I finally got the 5th note. Now well past 3 hours of play.]
Oh and I got sucked into the tornado lol. I thought I was a goner…
butterburpParticipantSo I’ve played for about half an hour so far, this is going to be interesting! It reminds me of Ocarina of Time on the N64. I’ll probably finish off the VGA version before daring to check out the EGA and the missing grue. I know the VGA graphics aren’t as good, but so far I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
butterburpParticipantMay 12, 2025 at 4:17 pm in reply to: What’s your DOOM origin story, and what Myths did you grow up believing? #10004The height of Doom’s popularity was…maybe 1994-95? At the time, I mostly just watched other playing, as I get scared easily. Plus I only had a 386-40 with no cache and a lousy video card, so playing would have been like swimming in jello anyway.
Fast forward about 12 years and I finally got curious enough to check it out on Dosbox. While everyone else was busy spending $3000+ to get Crysis to run, I enjoyed an old classic for the first time. I didn’t mind the outdated/pixellated graphics at all – I found them quite charming. Also, I had great fun going right up to the radioactive slime bins and blowing myself up, haha.
Nowadays I tend to play the more peaceful Chex Quest instead, but I can totally see why Doom is considered one of the greatest games of all time. I look forward to exploring it more, probably with liberal use of the various cheat and warp codes!
butterburpParticipantKris Asick (Ancient Dos Games on Youtube) mentions that one of the missing scenes in the VGA/GOG version is a rather gruesome one. Probably all the more reason for most people to play the EGA original! I’m a scaredy cat, so I’ll stick with the new one.
butterburpParticipantLOL when I saw “first boss” I thought you meant on Level 1. I was about to proudly share my “secret” of ignoring the green ships and just rapid firing at the MCP cone thing, then making a U-turn to the exit. But y’all figured that out already. 😀
Truth be told, I haven’t even made it past the 4th level on easy. I can say about both Descent and Doom, I still have not made it past all of the levels, even in the shareware versions, 30+ years later. (I will put in a plug for the intro music on S/W Descent. I like it much better than the music in the full game – the extra “bongos” make me think of chimps in the jungle for some reason)
butterburpParticipantAh, the article mentions Tank Wars. Loved that game. It’s the same as Scorched Earth but not as advanced or graphically nice, and faster paced in general. As with SE, a nuke that goes off can take up half the screen, complete with a screechy BOOM through the PC speaker. Man it is glorious.
TW allows up to 10 players rather than 8. It’s fun to set all of them as “Mr. Stupid” (aka Moron in SE) and watch them fire off in all kinds of random/nonsensical directions, sometimes blowing themselves up.
butterburpParticipantWelcome Nic! I’m semi-new too, actually joined back in 2018 and disappeared till now. It’s fun to revisit Doom, complete with the original non-WASD control scheme. Being a more peaceful sort, I sheepishly admit I’m more familiar with the kiddie version Chex Quest, but the original is great too. I like using the warp code to try out different levels.
I also like reading people’s glory-days stories of “running” Doom on a 386SX-16 with the smallest screen size, or plunking down 3 grand on a 486-66 for the sole purpose of playing this game. Shows you how popular and revolutionary it was at the time.
butterburpParticipantIt’s interesting! Reminds me a little of Superman 64 but hopefully won’t turn out to be as horrible. Soundtrack is very movie-like and adds suspense. I’m still puzzling my way through the practice room. Might have to cheat a bit and check Youtube…half the time I don’t understand the instructions.
I vaguely remember one version of MDK (or maybe it was a demo) that refuses to run if it doesn’t detect a Pentium chip. DOS version runs ok if configured properly. The performance test in options allows you to time Dosbox cycles just right. For example, on my machine about 58000 matches Pentium 90 speed, at least for this game.
butterburpParticipantThe only shareware game I ever tried to register was Invasion of the Mutant Space Bats of Doom. The author was accepting registration fees well into the 2000’s…but seemingly never fulfilled those orders. That goes beyond curse into flat-out ripoff territory.
Also common is where the shareware version itself is “cursed” in some way. The later titles in the Tommy’s Toys series (a bunch of ASCII games) have a 60-second countdown timer that has to tick down to zero before you can actually play. That doesn’t make me want to register – it just makes me mad.
Gog and Steam sell several full versions of former shareware titles, and I’d have to say Epic Pinball is one that I would have been delighted with, if I had registered it back in the day. Even the shareware version (with only the first table) always kept me coming back for more, and there are many other tables that are a joy to play, including a Jill of the Jungle-themed one. And the soundtracks are awesome.
butterburpParticipantYeah I think the campaign is specifically written to go easy on the first few missions. When playing free for all, I have to follow the build order here to the letter or I get mauled:
http://cade.datamax.bg/war2x/wc2strat.htmlAs for multiplayer, if anyone’s brave, there seems to be a server here: en.war2.ru
I hasten to add I have NOT checked this out, but I do see at least one video on Youtube about it, so there’s a good chance it’s legit.
butterburpParticipantI wouldn’t be sorry at all – I learned some really interesting things about Warcraft. Thanks for sharing!
butterburpParticipantWow Hunter, thanks for sharing these. It’s awesome to see the original packaging and all!
You know, this is a good opportunity to ask the community about something I’ve always wondered. What options might work for people who join in on a game late, but still want to discuss it? Maybe they were busy that month, or they’re newcomers, or they just want to go back to the game.
Obviously I don’t want to detract from the main conversation with the game of the month, but it’d be nice if people who are late to the party on older games can still participate. Thoughts?
butterburpParticipantNot to take attention off the main game of the month, but I’m totally up for trying Starflight – let me know if you decide to go for it!
butterburpParticipantAny chance of bringing this game back on the ballot, since it came so close in November?
(On the other hand, HOMM is no slouch either and I’m looking forward to playing it this month!)
butterburpParticipantNow that I’m middle-aged-or-somewhat-higher, I have to say…wow! I don’t have much brain power after work, haha. But I’m playing this game for the first time and it’s a lot of fun. I don’t feel the need to solve every puzzle. Sometimes it’s fun to just push the mice and cats around and watch them fly!
butterburpParticipantAaand here’s the result…
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butterburpParticipantI have the GOG pack which starts with Even More IM. Here’s #60, it is not a successful attempt but it ends up catapulting the mouse off the screen, breaking the fish bowl and punching the cat, haha.
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