Ancient DOS Games Filler #102 - Kitsune Tails is online!

While a modern indie title from less than a year ago with full voice acting may not seem like something you would expect to be a massive retro callback, that's actually the biggest reason why I wanted to talk about this game, because it takes subtle cues from a TON of old games, some of which are more obvious than others as most of its inspiration is from Super Mario Bros. 3, but it also has callbacks to Kid Chameleon, Ghosts n' Goblins, Boulderdash, Arkanoid, Legend of the Mystical Ninja, and probably even more than that which I'm not completely cognizant of! :o

Ancient DOS Games Episode 341 - Wasteland is online!

...a week late because the PSU in my computer died, but oh well. :P

Also, let this review be proof that I can recognize the quality of a game even if I myself have trouble playing it. I spent about 12 hours playing Wasteland and I'm about 99% certain I barely got anywhere in it, but I was able to recognize that despite how little progress I was making, there was a LOT to this game and that it was put together reasonably well given the hardware limitations it was built to work within. :B

Gemini000 wrote on 2025-04-11, 23:28:

Ancient DOS Games Episode 341 - Wasteland is online!

...a week late because the PSU in my computer died, but oh well. 😜

Also, let this review be proof that I can recognize the quality of a game even if I myself have trouble playing it. I spent about 12 hours playing Wasteland and I'm about 99% certain I barely got anywhere in it, but I was able to recognize that despite how little progress I was making, there was a LOT to this game and that it was put together reasonably well given the hardware limitations it was built to work within. :B

Hey, I just watched that episode. Have you had many requests for Biprolex+? It's a rather neat cross between Tetris and Arkanoid that's rather rough around the edges but I got it on a shareware CD or something when I was a kid and always come back to it from time to time. Would be good to see you review it. I also wish they'd release a more modern version.

The main issue with it IMHO is that the levels (with a few exceptions) tend to be very biased towards one side or the other; lots of purple and blue blocks makes it extremely hard for Arcalex, lots of creatures cluttering the playfield make it very hard for Tetlix whose blocks keep changing shape as creatures add to the block. But these are details; the core game concept is a lot cooler and less gimmicky than one would've thought.

jez wrote on 2025-04-14, 22:59:

Hey, I just watched that episode. Have you had many requests for Biprolex+? It's a rather neat cross between Tetris and Arkanoid that's rather rough around the edges but I got it on a shareware CD or something when I was a kid and always come back to it from time to time. Would be good to see you review it. I also wish they'd release a more modern version.

Never even heard of it so no, no requests for it as of yet. If you'd like to make such a request please eMail me through the eMail you find on my website or at the end of any of my videos so I can track the request properly! :B

Would like help from community or Kris(thanks for work) -DOSBOX speed questions. Got a copy of pc Techno cop , but warning has inappropriate stuff in it. Was noticing it has a slow medium fast speed. Manual also mentions use of an epyx 500xj controler. A similiar controller for pc is available with a Commodore 64 mini. I found in the past that this and street fighter 1 runs too fast on an ibm ps2. Why doesn't dosbox emulate 5150 @ 4.77 mhz or different systems or does it? From 1975 to 1985 from research... the supported systems by dosbox is confusing? Tom and Jerry CATastrophe is a fun one if you haven't reviewed by hi-tech software (found it ep355!, I think you can look through the pipe spyhole in the mousehole). Some of these games are still available from a company (cant find name Centresoft?) for systems such as the commodore 64. Sarge for MSDOS was fun (not reviewed, also arcade) You could review Space War, 1985 shareware, but it is 2 player. Also published in EU by Gremlin. -- overall question -why doesn't dosbox support these hardware mentioned? Why not 4.77 mhz 10mhz individual clock speeds and cycles (cpu time) instead?

rico001 wrote on 2025-04-17, 17:45:

Would like help from community or Kris(thanks for work) -DOSBOX speed questions. Got a copy of pc Techno cop , but warning has inappropriate stuff in it. Was noticing it has a slow medium fast speed. Manual also mentions use of an epyx 500xj controler. A similiar controller for pc is available with a Commodore 64 mini. I found in the past that this and street fighter 1 runs too fast on an ibm ps2. Why doesn't dosbox emulate 5150 @ 4.77 mhz or different systems or does it? From 1975 to 1985 from research... the supported systems by dosbox is confusing? Tom and Jerry CATastrophe is a fun one if you haven't reviewed by hi-tech software (found it ep355!, I think you can look through the pipe spyhole in the mousehole). Some of these games are still available from a company (cant find name Centresoft?) for systems such as the commodore 64. Sarge for MSDOS was fun (not reviewed, also arcade) You could review Space War, 1985 shareware, but it is 2 player. Also published in EU by Gremlin. -- overall question -why doesn't dosbox support these hardware mentioned? Why not 4.77 mhz 10mhz individual clock speeds and cycles (cpu time) instead?

The "simple" explanation is that DOSBox is not a virtual machine, it's an emulator. The difference is that a virtual machine attempts to replicate the actual hardware of an older system entirely in software, whereas an emulator is simply running the older code you throw at it and interprets the results into an output of some sort. Because of this, it's not possible for DOSBox to precisely emulate specific computer systems and has different internal factors which affect how fast/accurate the emulation is.

Generally speaking, the "cycles" setting in the DOSBox configuration file will have the most prominent effect on the end result, as it effectively determines how fast of a system DOSBox is emulating. The default setting of "auto" will normally pick 3000 as the cycles rate or will switch in and out of its "max" setting if 32-bit protected mode access is detected, as most 32-bit DOS games want as much CPU power as is possible. To emulate the speed of an original IBM PC you generally want to use a cycles setting of around 350, + or - up to 50 depending on the kind of graphics output being performed by the game you're intending to play.

As for what games I've covered on ADG, I keep an alphabetical list on my website for easy searching! https://www.pixelships.com/adg/index2.html

Ancient DOS Games Mod 13 - Aliens TC - Doom is online!
(Please note that this is a mature-rated video.)

This was kind of a "unicorn" of a mod way back when it initially came out. Everyone would talk about it yet every time I tried to search for it I could NEVER find it, or more specifically, I could never find a copy which worked with my copy of Doom, especially after I upgraded to 1.9 and no longer had access to 1.2 because my teenage self didn't think to make a backup first. :P

Nowadays, it's STILL troublesome trying to get a working copy of this mod, as there's multiple releases depending on which version of Doom (or Doom II) you're applying it to. I had to resort to some crazy upgrading AND downgrading to get my DOS copy of Doom in a state where I could play one of the Aliens TC releases.

And now that I have... well, the less said about the secret level the better because that was the only part of the experience which was actually miserable. The rest had a very high degree of difficulty and atypical approaches to level completion, but was otherwise pretty impressive given how early this mod was in the Doom timeline! :o

Gemini000 wrote on 2025-04-26, 03:35:

or more specifically, I could never find a copy which worked with my copy of Doom, especially after I upgraded to 1.9 and no longer had access to 1.2 because my teenage self didn't think to make a backup first. 😜

Nowadays, it's STILL troublesome trying to get a working copy of this mod, as there's multiple releases depending on which version of Doom (or Doom II) you're applying it to. I had to resort to some crazy upgrading AND downgrading to get my DOS copy of Doom in a state where I could play one of the Aliens TC releases.

I've had luck getting it up and running in Chocolate Doom relatively painlessly but you have to make sure to emulate the version that allows the boss exit tag to work, otherwise E2M8 will never exit on its own because at some point in Doom's patch history that tag behaviour was changed so that you have to specifically kill the class of monster that would have otherwise triggered things, but the Alien Queen does not replace the Cyberdemon, it replaces the Spider Mastermind. If you kill a Spider Mastermind on E2M8 on later versions of Doom it will not exit the map, it has to specifically be a Cyberdemon.