I was just about to give you hell, like last time.

Yeah, thanks, appreciated.

Isn't Dune 2000 an official remake of Dune II using the C&C engine?
Great episode as always, since you referred to Bullfrog strategy games, ever played Syndicate and Syndicate Wars?

F2bnp wrote:

Great episode as always, since you referred to Bullfrog strategy games, ever played Syndicate and Syndicate Wars?

Yes, but a very long time ago and for some reason, they confused me back then. I think I'd have better luck trying them again now that I'm way past childhood. :P

I'm good at RTS games and tend to have little difficulty in a single player campaign but the C&C series is a beast to be reckoned with. The problem I usually face is that the computer replaces turrets faster than I can destroy them. I remember one mission I finally bought a dozen APCs and dropped off engineers next to the buildings. I just could not approach the base any other way and even then several of them didn't make it.

Great episode, Gemini000, I LOVE C&CTD! 😀 Still play it even today as a matter 'o fact, one of the reasons that I initially stumbled upon DOSBox a few years ago... trying to get C&C running under my new (at the time) XP machine.

Anyhoo, for anyone interested, my C&C crapola -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/Command_and_Conquer/ 😀

Ancient DOS Games Filler #6 - My Tandy 1000SX Computer is online!

This is not really so much an informative look at the system but rather just digging the thing out and giving it a run to show how it works and what gameplay was like on it. I had to connect it to my television instead of its RGB monitor because the monitor's in... bad shape, to put it mildly.

It might be a little boring if you're not into watching old hardware being run but I had very little time to put together this week's filler so I had to do something simple. Of course, you may want to watch it anyways since next week, the usual ADG episodes resume, and that means there's a hint for the next episode for those of you who want to guess! ;)

Just a side note too: Since I started taking guesses for ADG episodes I've been telling people when three correct guesses have already been recorded. I'm not going to be doing that anymore so don't be surprised if you get it right and don't see your name in the credits because three other people got it right first. ;P

Yes, I am aware that my website has been going super-slow for over a day now for many people, to the point of timeout errors. This is a problem with my webhosting provider and there's very little I can do about it at the moment. >_>;

If you wait long enough, it still works. Hopefully this will all be sorted out soon and the usual split-second loading speeds will come back.

Tandy! Awesome...

Was Tandy a US / Canadian thing? I never saw / noticed any in Europe when I was a kid...

Gemini000, how do you rate the Tandy speaker emulation of DOSBox?

I've been looking into the issues with my website which I just posted about minutes ago and it turns out it could be just me. I realized this when I discovered no related news topics related to my web hosting provider and also found I couldn't connect to anything hosted by www.dreamhost.com either, and again, finding no news items about problems with them.

Now to reply to Mau1wurf1977...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Tandy! Awesome...

Was Tandy a US / Canadian thing? I never saw / noticed any in Europe when I was a kid...

Mostly. The Tandy series computers were based off of many components of the PCjr, which failed miserably. I don't know if Tandy series computers were made in Europe but even if they were, the European market had a host of more popular and less expensive home computers, the ZX Spectrum being the first one that comes to mind, though I also believe a lot of the best C64 games were made there too.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Gemini000, how do you rate the Tandy speaker emulation of DOSBox?

It's very close to perfect. The real speaker on my Tandy 1000 system has a sort of metalic tinge from the sound echoing through the case, which obviously is not duplicated in DOSBox. Also, the distortion effects aren't perfect but close enough that you'd have to listen to them side by side with a real system to notice the difference really.

There's been a big web attack in the past two days. My sites were also affected

Ancient DOS Games Episode 41 - Teen Agent is online!

Also, I find it hilarious that about two hours after I posted about the website being super-slow, despite the fact it had lasted for over a day, it once again started going its right speed. Go figure. ;)

As for today's ADG Episode, I'm finding it neat that the more I look into these old DOS games of mine I'm noticing that quite a number of them weren't made in North America. Heck, Teen Agent was made by a Polish comapny and thus it eventually saw a commercial CD release with a complete voice over... in Polish. Now that would've been neat to check out. Alas, I only have the English version, and that never got a voiceover. :P

Ancient DOS Games Episode 42 - Round 42 is online!

I'm sure a lot of people expected me to review Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, but I have a pretty good reason for not reviewing it, which I address in the episode.

This is also one of the extremely few old games I know of that uses the hacked 160x100 16-colour graphics mode. I'm really surprised so few games actually use this mode, instead opting for the typical 4-colour 320x200 modes. As the 90's proved with VGA graphics, more colours is usually better than higher resolution. :P

Didn't think you'd actually review round 42, hitchhiker's guide just seemed so damn obvious.

I for one was slightly let down, but when you explained why... its did make sense.

Well, here's the way I see it: At least I acknowledged the existence of the Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy game and showed a small portion of it. If I had not done so for Episode 42, THAT would've been inexcusable. :P

Another fun fact: I've been planning this particular episode since around Episode 16. Originally, I was going to make fun of the fact that it was a text-mode game, but then when I did my research I found out it was actually one of the best text-mode games out there. Then when I actually tried it, it actually responded fairly well to the things I typed in, so it was kinda hard to make fun of it after that point.

I'm thinking it might be good to dedicate an episode to various text adventures at some point. There's nothing saying I can't cover multiple games in a single episode. ;)

For some curious reason I've never been able to get the DOSBox graphics scalers to work with this game, even when using the "forced" option

Some graphics and text modes are double-height or double-width, and DOSBox has special scalers working on height or width only that are applied in such cases, overriding any configured scaler that works on both height and width together. CGA text is double-height; but you will see the same thing in games like Blood & Magic that use double-width graphics.

If you're going to review Infocom games, you can make them look a little better than B&W text. Using the original interpreters in DOSBox, you'll get color if you use a /W command-line parameter. Better yet, you can use any color scheme you want and proportional fonts with the Frotz interpreter for DOS. Also, Infocom's later games have graphics with mouseable menu-driven interfaces; such as Journey: The Quest Begins.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

Some graphics and text modes are double-height or double-width, and DOSBox has special scalers working on height or width only that are applied in such cases, overriding any configured scaler that works on both height and width together. CGA text is double-height; but you will see the same thing in games like Blood & Magic that use double-width graphics.

That makes sense then.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

If you're going to review Infocom games, you can make them look a little better than B&W text. Using the original interpreters in DOSBox, you'll get color if you use a /W command-line parameter. Better yet, you can use any color scheme you want and proportional fonts with the Frotz interpreter for DOS. Also, Infocom's later games have graphics with mouseable menu-driven interfaces; such as Journey: The Quest Begins.

Good to know. Thanks! :)

Mmm, Round 42. Excellent game and an excellent review! I'm a huge fan of the bizarre CGA graphics mode in the game, it's just awesome on a true CGA monitor.

Plus, Depth Dwellers reference = awsome.

lazygamereviews wrote:

Mmm, Round 42. Excellent game and an excellent review! I'm a huge fan of the bizarre CGA graphics mode in the game, it's just awesome on a true CGA monitor.

Indeed. I really need to try running the game on my Tandy 1000 SX system someday, see what happens. As far as I know, Tandy graphics adapters are fully CGA compatible. Even using Tandy mode in DOSBox results in the game rendering properly. (Albiet, still without its border.)

lazygamereviews wrote:

Plus, Depth Dwellers reference = awsome.

I had a feeling you'd like that. JUST before I started watching your videos many weeks ago I was thinking of doing a Depth Dwellers review, then I watched yours and... there's simply no way I can top that. XD

I'd have to scour eBay for a legit copy anyways. All I have is the shareware version.

I do have Flightmare though, another one of those games you ran across when you were going through your Keypunch Software... I really should review that one sometime soon since I've had that one since I was a child and I'm not too bad at it. Not great, but not terrible.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 43 - Magic Carpet is online!

It's a long one this time around. Magic Carpet is loaded with content and is a great game so I had to do my best to cover as much as seemed reasonable. I could've made it even longer if I went over every enemy and gave tips for how to clear specific worlds... but this is a web show, not a marathon! ;D

Not gonna be long before I get to Episode 50 at this rate... :o