<insert list of DOS-based MUGEN games of great LFN ignorance>

that's all i've got.

Penthouse hot numbers. I had a pirate versión that I was never able to make work. I remember that it needed some specific vídeo card, but...

Star Rangers (Interactive Magic). I still have the CD ROM somewhere. it always complained about memory. It didn't matter how much memory was installed (from 8 Mb onwards), nor how much was free. It never worked.

Both games were tested in a 486 DX2/66 (8Mb, Trident 9400CXi), another 486DX2/66 (16Mb, integrated ET4000) and a Pentium II 333Mhz (128Mb, ATI Rage and later a Voodoo Banshee).

Apart this games, I don't remember having DOS games that didn't work in DOS.

Zup wrote:

Penthouse hot numbers. I had a pirate versión that I was never able to make work. I remember that it needed some specific vídeo […]
Show full quote

Penthouse hot numbers. I had a pirate versión that I was never able to make work. I remember that it needed some specific vídeo card, but...

Star Rangers (Interactive Magic). I still have the CD ROM somewhere. it always complained about memory. It didn't matter how much memory was installed (from 8 Mb onwards), nor how much was free. It never worked.

Both games were tested in a 486 DX2/66 (8Mb, Trident 9400CXi), another 486DX2/66 (16Mb, integrated ET4000) and a Pentium II 333Mhz (128Mb, ATI Rage and later a Voodoo Banshee).

Apart this games, I don't remember having DOS games that didn't work in DOS.

Update: Both games seems to work fine in DOSBox.

I've downloaded Penthouse Hot Numbers from an abandonware site. Installation don't work, but the game can be played without installing it.

Star Rangers works without trouble (installation and game), but it needs to be mounted with -t cdrom option.

It was tested with stock DOSBox 0.74. The VGA card is configured as S3, memory is configured as 16 Mb extended and 16 Mb expanded.

Update 2: Tested again with PCem v14, and they worked. The test machine is a 486DX/33 with 8Mb RAM, a Trident 8900D (first I've tested it with a ET4000) and MS-DOS 6.22. I wonder why they didn't work back in time...

For me, Syndicate Plus and Hi-Octane. Both work fine in DOSBox and when started from Win9x, but freeze when started in pure DOS. Even tried on three different machines, all with the same result.

Muz wrote:

Any of you have this problem? The game won't start all in DOS. Machine is Pentium 3, 65MB of RAM, OS is Windows 95 OSR. […]
Show full quote

Any of you have this problem? The game won't start all in DOS. Machine is Pentium 3, 65MB of RAM, OS is Windows 95 OSR.

Wing Commander 3
VESA DRIVER Present -- SVGA Possible
.
.
.
.
.
(Don't start)

Wing Commander 4
(Film freeze sometimes, CD-ROM drive struts)

Jane's USNF

UNSF had a patch that shipped on the CD (at least the copy I bought way way back) which allowed the game to start on more than 32MB of Ram. Its’ file name was like unsf11 I think. Not sure why the CD wasn’t just mastered that way to begin with. It only seems to affect Real Mode DOS, I don’t remember that game starting in 95/9x.

There was a later Windows version, but that should be UNSF 97, not to be confused with the DOS only original.

In general, a lot of games relied on funky memory management and refused to start in protected mode or emulation.

Where to download the patch?

janes usaf is a windows game

There are lots of old games that won't run for various reasons. By definition, a DOS game should run in DOS, so there must be some other issue

Jetfighter (the first one) is a game I have fond memories of, but apparently it relies on something specific to the 386 or 486, so I can't run it on newer hardware (except maybe dosbox)

Davros wrote:

janes usaf is a windows game

Probably why it won't start in DOS. 😁

I hardly believed that there was any DOS games won't start in DOS, until I truly encountered one.
Battle Cruisers 3000 A.D. v2.09 Freeware.

It failed in DOSBox, Win98 real-DOS in QEMU and I found others had also reported it failed in DOS on real machines. It seems to me as utter brain-dead that a DOS game would prefer anything else other than real-DOS. It is shipped with DOS/4GW Professional 2.00 and perhaps that is too buggy compared to typical 1.97 and 2.01a that shipped with most DOS games. Even worst, it shipped with an internal DOS4GW stub which I can't replace simply by dropped in a newer version.

Yeah, I have a copy of USNF and had trouble with it a couple times, especially in DOSBox. I apparently got it to work at some point.