What does your PCJr have in terms of graphics?

Oh and I wonder... actually no... I don't think the DOS version of Stellar 7 would work on a PCjr would it? That game is incredibly sensitive to speed differences.

There's also Alpha Waves another game incredibly sensitive to speed timing.

Rogue is a fun text-mode game, and it's freeware too 😀

The PCjr has an "enhanced" CGA, this graphics mode came to be called Tandy Graphics because the Tandy 1000 series used it and after the PCjr failed to catch the public eye and stopped production in '87 all PCjr references in Tandy's adverts and games disappeared. This makes it incompatible with A LOT of IBM PC compatible software, it also cannot run Tandy 1000 software unless you modify it slightly so it runs in true Tandy graphics mode.

collector wrote:

Alley Cat? There are a handful of Sierra pre AGI games ported to PC, like Adventure in Serenia (Wizard and the Princess), Ulysses and the Golden Fleece, the original Oil's Well, Mickey's Space Adventure and Winnie the Pooh.

For early stuff I compare platforms in looking for the better version.

Alley Cat

pcjr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5a6jKUkjlA#t=5m40s

atari

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQaXs8TTmLg

Sopwith, Spacewar, Space Commanders II (actually a Space Invader clone), Spyder, Dig-Dug, Paratrooper, Striker and Xonix are a few I remember enjoying immensely on systems that old. Of these listed, Sopwith seems to age the best as far as fun factor goes.

I was never a "ITS ALL ABOUT ALLEY CAT!!!" gamer. 😀

As for 'newer' games on that platform, you could give PakuPaku, Chopper Commando and Kentris a try. 😀

collector wrote:

Remember that the SCI0 games have higher requirements than AGI. That is why Sierra developed both AGI and SCI versions of KQ4, so that those that could not meet the high hardware demands of their new engine could still play the game. The packages state a 286 minimum requirement, though you could run it on somewhat underpowered machines with less than ideal results. Some of the early SCI0 games did ship with drivers for Tandy and less frequently PCjr.

QfG was the last SCI0 game, but the systems engineers had added elements of SCI1. The SCI game list on ScummVM's Wiki erroneously lists it as SCI1 EGA, but that is only because the about message says SCI1. Internally, the interpreter IDs as SCI0. According to Cory Cole the game was in development near the transition to SCI1, but Ken wanted it out of the door before Christmas, so they could not wait. Staying with SCI0 also let them keep the parser for II, but the SCI1 elements made it a more demanding game.

All SCI0 games ship with drivers for the Tandy, and most shipped with drivers for the PCjr. Fortunately by 1988 there were CPU accelerators available for the PCjr.

The interpreters for the 16-color versions of the point and click SCI1 games like KQ5 can run QfG II where they couldn't run a "pure SCI0 game like HQ/QfG.

Alley Cat uses for colors for the PC and PCjr., but the PCjr. can change the colors in the palette, and Alley Cat takes advantage of this, making it look nicer on the jr.

Also Sierra's GAMEARTS releases have Tandy support IIRC, so Zeliard, Thexder/Firehawk and Silpheed should work.

leileilol wrote:

Also Sierra's GAMEARTS releases have Tandy support IIRC, so Zeliard, Thexder/Firehawk and Silpheed should work.

PCjr. Graphics /= Tandy Graphics
Thexder and Silpheed will work, but Silpheed needs a 2.x version for a PCjr. video driver. Thexder 2 and Zeliard do not have a PCjr. video driver, so he will get Venetian Blinds with an unmodded PCjr.

ah. I never had a PCjr, topic title is a bit misleading. My experiences reflected in this thread have been mostly IBM 5160.

Title threw me a bit at first, too.

Lucasarts adventure games will also work without a mouse. Just move the cursor with the arrow keys.
Another classic that might work on your system is Zaxxon. Outrun CGA and Montezuma's Revenge are also worth trying (the last one ran too fast even for a 286).

LucasArts games will run just fine with a joystick controlling the cursor. I'm not sure Outrun even works on a PCjr., even in CGA mode.

Zaxxon does run, I forgot to mention that. 🤣

What? No mention of Bouncing Babies? This is one of the first games I ever ran on an XT clone from a 360KB diskette.

Norton Commander wrote:

What? No mention of Bouncing Babies? This is one of the first games I ever ran on an XT clone from a 360KB diskette.

So, that's the real name of it. It ran too fast even for a 286 at the time. I've always known this game as "Fuego".

jwt27 wrote:

Rogue is a fun text-mode game, and it's freeware too 😀

The stupid little text-mode game "ATC" (Air Traffic Controller) is quite addictive. The original text-mode Tetris game is also good fun. I used to play both games a lot on an old 8 Mhz DOS box.

Castle adventure is a goodie

StarQuake, Hard Hat Mac, and Pango are three great CGA "slow computer" arcade games.
I also had fun with the Up 'n Down racing arcade game port and Lunar Lander, though that was more for lack of games.
Caverns of Zoarre was a DnD/Telengard RPG alternate kind of like Rogue that also soaked up time and killed me often.
StarFleet I: The War Begins as a highly complex and fun "old" star trek game (or simpler NewTrek/Trek'88,etc.), and sequels including StarFleet II (same), and StarLegions (ground combat like Empire in the same universe).
And Begin2 "The tactical starship simulation" runs on an 8088 in CGA/Text mode as I recall, as did the classic StarFlight I & II.
Chopper Commando, lots of youthful hours spent there - like Sopwith with helicopters.
Snack Attack II, Cosmic Crusader, and Space Strike by Michael Abrash back in the day.
Attack on Altair, some PacMan/MsPacMan, Star Empire, Temple of Apshi, Xonix, Crossfire, and Defender/Stargate are ones I ran into later that seem fun and were from that era.

All of these were on a 5160 PCXT, so PCjr may through a wrench in the works, though I assume it's compatible to the vanilla CGA 5150 for the most part. Pretty much these are the games I play when I fire up my XT.

And I assume you've looked through PCjr lists (filtering out later tandy games), like: PCjr Cartridge Games, PCjr/Tandy Video Mode, PCjr/Tandy Sound Support

edit: remove some previously mentioned games, and if you are interested in text adventures, Nord & Bert Couldn't Make Heads or Tails of It should probably be on your list. 😀
edit2: Oooh, and no one mentioned the Kroz series yet! Lots of fun. And if Kroz, then definitely Caves of Thor, ZZT and even MegaZeux should work, I think.
edit3: ...must stop thinking about this and editing... but Trek, Elite, and Snipes were favorites, how could I forget to mention them...

Elite gets garbled when you shoot unfortunately, same with games like Battlezone and Arctic fox although the computer is plenty fast enough to run them.

That's too bad. Hm, I "fixed" StarQuake's unplayability on VGA many years ago by patching the CGA port calls into no-ops. Basically it tried to slightly enhance graphics with some effect by directly writing to the video port with CGA specific commands. I wonder if these other games do something similar and it just throws off the PCjr video card? Being an "effect", it didn't affect gameplay in the slightest.

If you were interested in giving it a try, I had just grabbed a hex editor and searched for OUT opcode bytes: 0xE6 & 0xE7 & 0xEE & 0xEF, if I'm reading the opcode chart right. Some or all have data bytes after them, so you have to figure that out- pretty easy. Only some of them wrote to the CGA IO ports (can't turn those numbers up right now, but should be easy to find), and I just no-oped (0x90) over each byte in the whole opcode & data bytes. As I recall, there were just a few - 6? - CGA port outs, and removing 2 or 4 of them fixed the problem. Removing the other ones crashed the program, so some were necessary and normal commands that worked fine on the VGA card. 😀

You could be famed far and wide for making more games work on the PCjr, assuming that's really the problem. 😁 It's been years, so definitely doublecheck all my numbers and opcode lookups.