Ja, Deutch ist sehr interesant 😀.
Volfenstein would be correct, but kinda like Volkswangen, people will always pronounce it Wolfenstein. I'm too pronounce it that way, because I learned about the game before learning German at all and it has kinda stayed like that. I don't think it's that big a matter anyways.
Great review Kris!

Am I wrong by saying Mauwurf is in fact spelled Mauwürf , and it means a mole ? 😀

would Wild Metal Country count as a dos game?

no because it's win32 and requies a direct3d capable video card

why not feature one or both of the original Castle Wolfenstein titles in a future ADG episode? Since they were already mentioned in this one...

they're apple ][ at their core heritage

Yeah... As nice as it would be to diversify, I focus on DOS because the majority of my gaming collection is DOS games. Yes, I have more console games than PC games, but across over a dozen platforms. The most games I have for any one console is my NES, and even then, I only have 37 games for it. :P

Also, my first computer was a DOS-based system and in fact, I have never owned or had home-access to anything but DOS-based systems. Never had a C64, Apple ][, Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, or any of those.

leileilol wrote:

they're apple ][ at their core heritage

so was Dangerous Dave (and the same goes for some other past episodes - Supaplex came from the Amiga, etc.)

on the other hand - I'm pretty sure that the only official PC releases of Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond CW came on booter floppies... so I can't really say if they should qualify as "DOS games".

Gemini000 wrote:

Also, my first computer was a DOS-based system and in fact, I have never owned or had home-access to anything but DOS-based systems. Never had a C64, Apple ][, Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, or any of those.

I'm the same, and I've never owned a NES/any other console either. 😜 Unless you count one of those "200 NES games on a chip embedded in a gamepad" deals that came out 15 years after the fact...

the PC was where I got to know those two original Wolfenstein titles, so yeah, wasn't talking about starting to cover other systems. (or were you referring to cdoublejj's suggestion of a Windows game?)

By the way, about the aforementioned question of PC booters - would you personally consider them "DOS games" or close enough, as far as ADG goes? Don't think I've seen one covered yet, though I might just be having a brainfart...

VileRancour wrote:

By the way, about the aforementioned question of PC booters - would you personally consider them "DOS games" or close enough, as far as ADG goes? Don't think I've seen one covered yet, though I might just be having a brainfart...

Well... a bunch of PC Booter games can be hacked to work properly in DOS, DOSBox itself is designed to be able to boot PC Booter games, and on top of all that, you STILL needed a DOS-capable PC to play a PC Booter game in the first place. So, for all those reasons I do indeed qualify them as DOS games. :)

And yes, I have actually reviewed a PC Booter game: Donald Duck's Playground. Mind you, the version I covered was a freeware release available on Al Lowe's website that's been altered to run in DOS, which explains why it glitches out if you hit ESC.

If there are official ports of the original Castle Wolfenstein games that run on DOS PCs then I may have to look into them, though legally obtaining them would probably be a trip and a half due to how seriously old they are.

According to MobyGames, the PC port of Castle Wolfenstein was made to run in DOS 1.1, but then MobyGames details aren't always right, especially with older titles so... more research is definitely required.

yeah, I guess that determining the license status of the original CW games would be a headache all unto itself.

however, there *is* a DOS port of Beyond Castle Wolfenstein out there - with some enhancements such as SB support. Can't really say how playable or complete it is; but it's been out there since 2004, and both the ported game and the source code are available as public domain.
Over at the FAQ page, the author goes into some detail about distribution rights... he seems to have determined the project to be legally OK ("hopefully", make of that what you will). ;)

Gemini000 wrote:

If there are official ports of the original Castle Wolfenstein games that run on DOS PCs then I may have to look into them, though legally obtaining them would probably be a trip and a half due to how seriously old they are.

This one's been on eBay for quite a while now. The only reason I haven't grabbed it is because of its price, and the fact that it's got markings on the box. Although it supposedly having the original CW in the BCW is intriguing, it's just too much for me to drop on a curiosity. And I wonder how the seller can know what the contents are if it's still sealed... just a bit fishy to me.

plus, the listing says "brand new" (?!?) and has a screenshot which is plainly not the PC version (looks more like C64 to me)

lazygamereviews wrote:

This one's been on eBay for quite a while now. The only reason I haven't grabbed it is because of its price, and the fact that it's got markings on the box. Although it supposedly having the original CW in the BCW is intriguing, it's just too much for me to drop on a curiosity. And I wonder how the seller can know what the contents are if it's still sealed... just a bit fishy to me.

Indeed, though consider this would've been around the video game crash of the early 80s, and during that time lots of liquidation was happening, with some companies going so far as to sell games that were lacking proper packaging or even cart labels. (Halloween for the 2600 comes to mind.)

Muse Software might've run into a similar situation and decided to liquidate old copies of CW in BCW boxes. Considering they declared bankruptcy in 1986, it's within the realm of possibility.

Still, $50 is way too high a price point for me as well for something like this. >_>;

any one remember gizmos and gadgets? i remember playing the Cd version on the macs in the library wit my mentor when i was younger it paved the way for the skills i have today.

I never played Gizmos & Gadgets, BUT, it is part of the Super Solver series of games which does include one particular edutainment title I want to do a review of at some point, though I'm holding off on it because I have enough edutainment titles to do one big "edutainment month", just like our resident lazy game reviewer did, in April of next year. If everything goes to schedule, that would make for four reviews of edutainment titles for ADG Episodes 82 through 85. (After Episode 70 will be three fillers in a row to account for the Christmas season when I have very little time to myself.)

I'll add that game to my requests list too so I don't forget about it in case the titles I intend to do don't all turn out to make for good review material and I feel like hunting one down. (Actually, I believe many of the Super Solver games are still for sale, at least, they were the last time I checked.)

Ancient DOS Games Episode 64 - Volfied is online!

I'm still kinda miffed that Novalogic wasn't involved with this port like they were with all the other previous Taito ports. The difference in quality is dramatic and not in a good way. x_x;

And yeah, if you do the math (and know how old I am) I was playing the arcade version of Volfied when my age was just a single digit, so trust me, I don't suck at the game, I'm just used to a version of the game that plays fair and the DOS port doesn't.

I also seem to be coming down with a cold or something so if I sound kinda dead during Episode 65 next week, that's why. :/

Gemini000: Good episode, and man do I remember QIX 😀 I have no clue what game the next will be, but I will be looking forward to the next episode. And about colds and what not, well no worries. Cause my throat was killing me this morning, but now I am extremely refreshed, and I was really worried, that I had gotten bacterial pneumonia again. But thank goodness, I am good now 😀

Can't find anything about QIX being an acronym; but a search on "QIX JUS4QIX" finds quite a few references to the supposed origin of the name.

for some reason the DOS version of Volfied used to show up almost everywhere for a (very) short time back then... I remember being really drawn to playing it and trying to get better at it - only to promptly conclude that it was a rather crappy game and unfair to boot.
Maybe it was the above-average VGA graphics for the time? they even went the extra mile and adhered to "That Arcade Font" pixel by pixel (and preserved the Engrish intro too)!

unlike you, I wasn't really familiar with the arcade original. I just thought of Volfied as a "Xonix clone" - Xonix being possibly the first PC game ever produced in my country; though a somewhat-altered Qix ripoff, it was my introduction to this type of game.
Hell - at the time I thought that Volfied's spartan PC-speaker beeps and bloops were an actual tribute to Xonix's 1984-era tech. 🤣