There is still that big Sierra catalog, GameArts included 😀 Just cut off at the SCI1 point (which would be anachronistic anyhow)

Other than that, learn to love Sopwith, Nethack, and many many coin-op ports 😀 😀 😀

Hmmm, right. Silpheed would be my favorite, i like Thexder but that game is so much better running on a Tandy.

I just remembered some Jordan Merchner titles like Karateka and Prince of Persia. And of course i could i forget the rest of the Taito ports? Although i mentioned Arkanoid... Oh and Ivan Iron Man's Offroad Racing. Grand Prix Circuit and Cycles should do well in Turbo mode i guess...

California Games should be fun too!

And of course the early Apogee stuff such as the Kroz series, Monuments of Mars and Pharaoh's Tomb. Thor might be too slow though. Disregard the Keens and Duke Nukems era and after.

SEGA games also count too, PC versions of Thunderblade, Shinobi and Alien Syndrome, should be fine on XT.

The XT in my mind is the usual CGA with no sound card configuration. I've never used a turbo 😀

I probably spent much of 1990 shooting down boatloads of Heinkels and Stukas playing Their Finest Hour. 🤣

Some games that I remember of:
Night Mission Pinball
Moon Bugs
Championship Boxing (Sierra, 1984)
Sokoban
Bushido
Night Stalker
Lode Runner

While you can, i would recommend to NOT play Golden Axe, on XT.

I had an 8MHz 8086 (Amstrad PC1512) in 1990. Most of the games I played on it were CGA, since there were very few that took advantage of its EGA-incompatible 640x200x16 mode.

Excluding those already mentioned, in 1990 I was probably mostly playing:
Bruce Lee
PSI-5 Trading Company
Beast
Willy the Worm
Packman by by G. E. Leikam
Hopper
The Game with No Name
Winter Games

Other particularly memorable games that were out in 1990 that I later played on this machine:
Lemmings
Battle Chess
Ultima VI
Sim City
Flight Simulator 3
Blockout

Plus lots of others, mostly shareware things from magazine cover disks.

carlostex wrote:

I'm interested in games that require a 4.77Mhz CPU specifically but also games that CAN work and play OK on a 4.77MHz or even in a 10/12MHz NEC V20.

A game like Monkey Island from 1990 might work at 4.77 MHz, but it will be so excruciatingly slow that you really, really won't want to. Perhaps some nice text adventures from Infocom et al?

So the year is 1990, you have an XT, or even a Turbo XT and you can't upgrade.

You would be rich enough to afford a much nicer console to meet your gaming needs. 😵

We had our very first PC in 1987 - a 8088 XT clone 8mhz CGA, upgraded to EGA a couple of years later.

I remember most new games coming out in 1990 were too demanding for the venerable XT - most of them started to support VGA, FM sound, and some started supporting expanded memory as well (Wing Commander 1 comes to mind), thus making owning an AT machine mandatory to play. Eventually my parents replaced our XT by a 386SX16 with VGA sometime around 1990.

That being said, i have very fond memories of our XT clone, with its shoddy keyboard (the space bar would keep falling apart because of being repeatedly bashed); its very loud speaker that you couldn't turn off, and its less than accurate joysticks.

Here are some of the games I remember playing on it:

CGA Booter Games or Early DOS:

Arkanoid
Boulder Dash
Burger Time
Tapper
Dig Dug
J-Bird
Styx
Moon Patrol
Striker
Zaxxon
Decathlon
California Games
World Games
Winter Games
Summer Games
Sierra Boxing
Macadam Bumper
Dark Side
Gato
Pitstop II
4x4 Off Road
Crazy cars
Le Manoir de Mortevielle
Defender of the Crown
The 3 Stooges

EGA Games:

Rick Dangerous
Techno Cop
Targhan
Grand Prix Circuit
The Cycles
Test Drive
Test Drive II: The Duel
DeathTrack
GhostBusters II
Zak McKraken
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
Maniac Mansion
Monkey Island

I think it's really cool that you are building an XT and would love to do it too at some stage, but I find the project a bit daunting as it doesn't seem as straightforward as slapping a few parts together and coming up with a Socket 7 machine that just works. Also, I think an XT is not really complete until you pair it with a CGA or EGA 9pin monitor and these seem to be impossible to come by these days 🙁

OOph, 1990... hard to rmember from then, I was 10, hmmmm I know I had an IBM 8088 XT but I don't think I played the XT much, I played my Commodore 64 much MUCH more, however what I did play on the XT was I believe only CGA games most of which were shareware. When I finally got a 386 thats when my PC gaming realm expanded alot. However I still have more memories of my Commodore 64 gaming days than the early PC days.

Great thread and many suitable games already mentioned here, XT's are my sweet spot since I actually still owned one in 1990 and was struggling to find software that could run on it. Risking to repeat some titles, here are some additional games that I believe weren't mentioned before and we used to play back then:

1 on 1 (M. Jordan vs L. Bird)
007 license to kill
4D sports driving (stunts)
Aaargh!
Arcade volleyball
Barbarian
Bouncing babies
Bushido
Bubble bobble
Crystal caves (EGA+ only)
Dangerous dave
Donkey kong
Double dragon 1+2
England (footbal game)
Exterminator
Forgotten worlds
Frogger
Galactix (not the shoot 'em up, the platform of 1987)
Golden axe (not in EGA, too slow on an XT)
Guerilla war
Hard hat mack
Home alone (EGA+ only)
Ikary warriors
Impossible mission 2
Italy '90
Joust (not Joust VGA, the 1983 game)
Lakers vs Celtics
Last ninja
Metal mutant
Night hunter
North & south
Off shore warrior
Outrun
Paperboy (probably #2 too)
Platoon
Rampage
Pyramids of Egypt
Renegade
Rick dangerous 2 (even in CGA, it's not only #1)
Robocop
Rush 'n attack (aka Green beret)
Saboteur 2
Savage
Solomon's key
Spy hunter
Star control
Star goose
Teenage mutant ninja turtles (1989)
The last mission
Tomahawk (1987)
Wings of fury
Xenon 1+2

There are a lot as you can see 😉 I intentionally left out of this list every adventure/rpg/similar not demanding game of the era since they're too many and easy to spot. You can add almost every sierra+lucas adventure of that time. All these are playable on a 10MHz 8088 (we used to play them for real), even better on a NEC, but for some something more powerful would make a difference.

We had an IBM XT with a 4.77 MHz CPU. Here are some games that I don't think have been mentioned yet.

Oubliette by HESware. My favorite Rogue-type game.
NFL Challenge by XOR.
Ultima III by Origin.
Phantasie by SSI (?).

You can even play > '90 games like Railroad Tycone / Civilization / Centurion albeit somewhat slow.

I could on my IBM PS/2 Model 30 8086 with V30.

Chopper Commando
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iIlW9k3lrc

Grab a terminal program, hook your XT to a newer machine with a serial cable and null modem adapter, load Leif Bloomquist's BBS server on the newer machine, and "dial out" of the terminal program on your XT to some telnet BBSes. Play some door games. Or MUDs.

Anything by SSI or Infocom.

Great games being mentioned.

I think Monkey Island will play fine on a 10Mhz XT, specially on a NEC V20. Using XT-IDE and CF cards will make my XT experience much more enjoyable.
Stunts will run like a slideshow on an XT. On the other side of the coin, Indianapolis 500 will run well with minimum details. A testament to the programming prowess of David Kaemmer.

In general i think stuff heavily programed in C language will struggle on an XT. Indianapolis 500 is AFAIK 100% assembly, very optimized game that in my opinion looks still amazing today and still can be played nicely on an XT.

Trying to remember some stuff we played on our Amstrad PC1640 (8MHz 8086, EGA/CGA) that hasn't been mentioned.
Mach 3 (samples over PC speaker!)
Buck Rogers (very similar game style to Mach 3 IIRC)
Freddy Fish
Wizball (maybe this is an opportunity to try out slow and turbo speed)
PC Pool
Flightmare
Spacewar (why hasn't this been mentioned yet?)
Popcorn (Breakout clone, mouse recommended)
688 Attack Sub (not sure if we played it on the XT)

When I think about this scenario, it makes me realize I'd probably regain a lot of interest in programming.
I guess at some point, the complexity of modern operating systems and the plethora of graphically intense multi-million dollar games killed my enthusiasm.

shamino wrote:

When I think about this scenario, it makes me realize I'd probably regain a lot of interest in programming.
I guess at some point, the complexity of modern operating systems and the plethora of graphically intense multi-million dollar games killed my enthusiasm.

There is a small scene of programmers making new games for old systems (what's the opposite of VOGONS? NGOVOS?) See http://www.deathshadow.com/pakuPaku and http://bluepandion.tumblr.com/tagged/magiduck for PC/XT/CGA-specific examples. I'm planning to make one myself as well.