Ancient DOS Games Episode 324 - PC Golf & PC Pro-Golf is online!

I was originally intending only to cover PC Golf as we actually had this game on our Tandy 1000 SX way back when I was a kid. In fact, it was there from Day 1 of Dad owning the thing, meaning the guy doing the setup and installation for him must've been the one to put it on there! :O

But, going back to it and finding out there was barely much to say, I tried to broaden the scope of the video and found out about PC Pro-Golf which struck me as being surprisingly similar at first... but the more I dug into it the more I realized there's no way both games were made by the same person, though PC Pro-Golf definitely feels inspired by PC Golf, at least to some extent.

Either way, calling these both "games" is kind of a misnomer, as you will soon see...

Ancient DOS Games Filler #99 - MURI is online!

There were a couple reasons why I held off on covering this for as long as I did, given that this was a game mimicking the style and gameplay of the original Duke Nukem made in 2013 for modern computers. The first was that I didn't actually like the story and was pretty confused by it at first, so needed some time to be able to figure it out better, but the more pertinent reason is because I didn't really have a lot to say about the game as a whole, thus kept it on the back-burner as something to go back to later on so that I could look back on it retrospectively to a degree. I'm pretty sure this video worked out much better as a result of that, as I'm 99% certain if I tried talking about this game when it was brand new the video would've been much shorter and dismissive. :P

Having been making these videos for over a decade now, I can only really go back to a certain point in my old videos before I start to see the many, many problems with how I was doing things and how I was writing my scripts. Some of it I attribute to overworking myself, as I can keenly tell by how I sound in an old video how exhausted I was or wasn't when I made it, others are just flat-out inexperience and a lack of attention to detail with lines I absolutely would rewrite now given half the chance.

That said, I have no intention of going back and changing old videos; it's all history now. Changing any of it would be like trying to erase the past of where I've come from, what I've learned, and where I've ended up. Heck, even if YouTube gets nuked or something, I still have ALL of my videos backed up and archived! :B

Gemini000 wrote on 2024-03-16, 02:44:

Having been making these videos for over a decade now, I can only really go back to a certain point in my old videos before I start to see the many, many problems with how I was doing things and how I was writing my scripts. Some of it I attribute to overworking myself, as I can keenly tell by how I sound in an old video how exhausted I was or wasn't when I made it, others are just flat-out inexperience and a lack of attention to detail with lines I absolutely would rewrite now given half the chance.

That said, I have no intention of going back and changing old videos; it's all history now. Changing any of it would be like trying to erase the past of where I've come from, what I've learned, and where I've ended up. Heck, even if YouTube gets nuked or something, I still have ALL of my videos backed up and archived! :B

I've been watching your videos for about ten years and can honestly say that I've found the quality of your uploads very consistent over this time. The only thing I remember standing out was a microphone change early on. I think we're all our worst critic.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-03-16, 03:28:

The only thing I remember standing out was a microphone change early on.

I've actually had THREE mic changes up to this point now... technically. I started out using the mic in a crappy $60 webcam, moved on to using the mic in a Sony camcorder I bought when I covered Covert Action, got a Blue Yeti mic in the middle of Season 3 at the end of 2013, then a few years ago I had to promptly order a new Blue Yeti mic because the one I was using was starting to glitch in odd ways during recordings which was affecting sync with any live footage recorded, such as with Shovelware Diggers, plus Windows couldn't see it as a Blue Yeti mic anymore. (Confirmed the problem was the mic and not the cable once the new one arrived.)

Ancient DOS Games Episode 325 - Avoid the Noid is online!

This... actually turned out better than I was expecting. I mean, not at first as the keyboard controls suck, but once I plugged in a gamepad it became WAY more playable! Though it's also a bit short and has elements which WOULD be infuriating if the game was any longer or any more random, so it's certainly not a "great" game but I would at least call it "decent" for what it is.

Also, before anyone comments on what happened to the whole "Noid" ad campaign Domino's Pizza was running, please make sure you read the video description over on YouTube first, as I go into details of what the media at the time and the internet now CONSTANTLY get wrong and repeat over and over again without checking their damn "facts". I even post a link to a radio program from a few years ago interviewing people who were involved at the time who shed light on everything.

I only remember that Family Guy gag with Adam West.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 326 - Unnatural Selection is online!

I kinda had high hopes for this one given that I actually found quite a bit of fun in some slightly more modern games themed around genetic manipulation, as those modern games had actual gene mechanics in place. Unnatural Selection though is more of a numbers game with no actual gene mechanics, so it's surprisingly shallow for what it is and ridiculously difficult when trying to play through its story mode. That said, it's definitely novel in terms of the kind of gameplay it was presenting at the time and a TON of effort was put into its presentation!

Ancient DOS Games Pro 29 - Stat Balance - Seek and Destroy is online!

I honestly expected this to be trickier to figure out, but the results actually turned out to be incredibly straightforward and almost not even worthy of making a full video out of it, so to help pad the length I spend a couple minutes at the front of the video reiterating the reasons why I even make these Pro and Mod videos, since I think those reasons may have gotten lost along the way, at least a little! :B

Ancient DOS Games Episode 327 - Isle of the Dead is online!
(NOTE: This is a mature-rated video.)

This is a bad game, there's no denying that... but I think out of all of the bad first person shooters I've played which are OBJECTIVELY bad, this is perhaps the most playable of the bunch... Not that it isn't rife with problems, but once you know where to go and what to do there's no random chance or luck driving your success, thus it's surprisingly a skill-based challenge despite how lousy it is. :o

By the way MURI is unplayably slow with Tulatin 1400. Like how the hell can they make games soooo uneffective cpu unwise. At least Core2 and Atom runs it good. And at least it supports XP.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-05-11, 05:21:

By the way MURI is unplayably slow with Tulatin 1400. Like how the hell can they make games soooo uneffective cpu unwise. At least Core2 and Atom runs it good. And at least it supports XP.

This almost certainly has nothing to do with the CPU or GPU. Older versions of modern engines, notably Clickteam Fusion and Game Maker Studio, have some very odd performance bugs which can crop up, absolutely murdering the framerate under very specific circumstances. One such example which I know has afflicted BOTH engines in the past is if your computer knows you have a gamepad or joystick of some sort which you have had plugged in or connected since the last reboot but which is NOT currently connected, those engines will poll the unattached controller far too often causing unreasonably long delays due to the sheer quantity of polling attempts, which in turn causes the framerate to die. Given the age of MURI it might have a similar issue given very specific circumstances and configurations.

I really love MURI. It is a prime game to make a DOS port. Oh by the way Seek and Destroy is one of my favourite DOS game. Lost it years ago. Now rediscovered it. Strange that it is not more famous and did not produce sequels.

Re: MURI, I'm also not entirely sure how one makes an "EGA"-styled game and gets the brown all wrong (RGBI #6)... in the footage there's no brown but there's clearly a dark yellow, aka "SkiFree dog pee".

Gemini000 wrote on 2024-05-11, 03:23:

Ancient DOS Games Episode 327 - Isle of the Dead is online!

My favourite thing about this game is the extremely terrible version of all the music. But, I don't remember which version of the game had said terrible music.

Said version has lower music tempo, way less timbres, and generally sounds "lazily made".

VileR wrote on 2024-05-11, 07:28:

Re: MURI, I'm also not entirely sure how one makes an "EGA"-styled game and gets the brown all wrong (RGBI #6)... in the footage there's no brown but there's clearly a dark yellow, aka "SkiFree dog pee".

That may've been a stylistic choice. Dark yellow as opposed to brown is better suited for glow effects and shadows, whereas brown is better suited for creating a more natural colour scheme as opposed to artificial.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 328 - Star Trek TNG: A Final Unity is online!

The first time I played this game was when I borrowed it from a friend back in the mid-90s to run on our Pentium 120 system. It... wasn't really playable. The battle engine ran way too fast and I couldn't tell what to do half the time. :/

Going back to it this many years later and being able to run it at a proper speed thanks to emulation, I can see that this is actually a surprisingly ambitious game with an enormous amount of content... yet it's also rough around the edges. It's playable for sure and actually not that bad, but you really need to get used to the awkward way it does things, plus if you think you can leave Worf to do all of the battling for you, think again; the AI sucks. :P

Also have an unboxing segment with a sealed copy of the Collector's Edition! ...don't gasp or call me crazy; they made SO MANY copies of the thing that they're super-common and surprisingly inexpensive. :B

Ancient DOS Games Filler #100 - Fractint is online!

Sorry this was a week late but I kinda got sick a couple Sundays ago. Even waiting as long as possible to get the voicework done for this video to be able to upload it tonight I still don't quite sound perfect, but good enough really. :B

I'm sure the vast majority of DOS users have come across Fractint at some point or another, thus I felt taking a quick look back at it would be interesting. Obviously modern fractal tools are way, way, WAY more powerful, but back in the late 80s and early 90s most fractal generating programs were SLOW. Thus came along Fractint (originally Fract386) with its entirely integer-based approach which made generating fractals MUCH faster (at least until Pentiums were a thing) and was free software anyone could use or contribute to!

Ancient DOS Games Episode 329 - Action Fighter is online!

THIS one was a long time coming... :P

For anyone who's been watching my show since near the beginning, my sixth filler video ever was to showcase my actual Tandy 1000 computer and show some gameplay, with the very first game I showed being my copy of Action Fighter. Now, I knew my copy was special in that it even had special Tandy graphics and sound support compared to most releases, but it wouldn't be until MUCH later when I learned that particular version of the game was considered "lost" and at that point... I wasn't really sure what to do about it. I have all of my 5 1/4" disks of course but I don't have a proper working computer with a 5 1/4" disk drive right now. I mean, I have "computers" plural which have them, but their condition is... not good. :(

Lately though I became aware that the Tandy version had popped up in a DOS game archive online, and sure enough when I went searching and dug through multiple different copies of the game I found the one which had the appropriate executables, same as the ones found on my disk, thus I'm FINALLY able to give this game the proper ADG treatment! :D

...and looking back at it now without the rose-tinted glasses... it's EXTREMELY AVERAGE. :P

Ancient DOS Games Mod 12 - Level Editing - Duke Nukem is online!

So it turns out the original Duke Nukem has surprisingly simple formats for much of its data. The only trouble is that the data itself isn't exactly straightforward in how it translates into game functionality. Fortunately, Duke Nukem level editors DO exist and one of the best to use, even today, happens to be a DOS-based editor from the late 90s known simply as DN1MOD! :B

It's TECHNICALLY possible to edit other aspects of the game too, such as the tiles, but there's considerable difficulties in making the attempt and I do touch on those briefly towards the end of the video, as well as present a full level I made for download which includes batch files to ensure you don't accidentally destroy anything trying to make the custom level work! (Though backing up your main game files for any game you intend to mod with custom content is ALWAYS and HIGHLY recommended!)

Ancient DOS Games Episode 330 - Realms of Chaos is online!

This one basically gave me the same treatment that Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure did: Perfectly playable shareware portion, followed by a MASSIVE difficulty spike for the registered portion. >_<

Granted, the main issue with the game was the level design more than anything, and that's one of those things where you can adapt to it once you know exactly where to go and what to do... though no amount of adapting will save you when you reach a boss and realize you're severely underpowered because you were EXPECTED to be hunting relentlessly for secrets to power yourself up...

...also I somehow hit a glitch and managed to softlock myself on the first boss of the second episode and had to restart the entire episode... if not for how short this game was I don't think I would've struggled my way through the entire thing... or would've at least dropped the difficulty down a notch or two. :P