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.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 342 - Capture the Flag is online!

I'm a little surprised Richard Carr is STILL selling his old software after all these years... :o

So yeah, picked up a copy of this one (along with his other games) to finally experience it properly, given that the shareware version of the game is SEVERELY crippled by comparison, and it pretty much met my expectations spot on... though I never did find any great uses for the "walking" stance... I mean... MAYBE if you're trying to make your way through a dense forest and need to map things out better...? *shrugs*

Ancient DOS Games Pro 33 - HP & DPS - Terminal Velocity is online!

This... was quite a trip... I mean, figuring out how powerful the weapons were relative to each other went SUPER quick, but trying to translate that into damage against enemy targets rapidly devolved into numbers which were so arbitrary they didn't make any sense, leading to an "AHA!" moment which turned out to be wrong, eventually leading to figuring out that the HP and damage values in this game are... umm... "big"... :B

Gemini000 wrote on 2025-05-24, 05:06:

This... was quite a trip...

My favourite thing about the game is (atleast if you're playing on Terminal) every single time you enter a tunnel, everything in the main map mysteriously gains more HP.

If you keep repetitively entering a tunnel system that allows re-entry you will eventually wrap the health of every object around.

EDIT: I should also mention the reason why Weapon 7 is limited to only a single shot is because it fully repairs your ship when fired. You don't even need to have any valid targets in field of view when you fire it off, it just instantly repairs your ship on the spot.

I also don't know if this is of much use but evidently the files that define the level itself are mostly plaintext. This includes the enemies to create, but you'll need "tvcad" or the editor from WizardWorks F!ZONE to easily parse the information without reverse engineering it yourself.

DracoNihil wrote on 2025-05-24, 11:25:

My favourite thing about the game is (atleast if you're playing on Terminal) every single time you enter a tunnel, everything in the main map mysteriously gains more HP.

If you keep repetitively entering a tunnel system that allows re-entry you will eventually wrap the health of every object around.

EDIT: I should also mention the reason why Weapon 7 is limited to only a single shot is because it fully repairs your ship when fired. You don't even need to have any valid targets in field of view when you fire it off, it just instantly repairs your ship on the spot.

I'm gonna be looking into these things shortly and will add additional details into the video description once I've figured out exactly what's up with all of it! :B

Oh another thing: The enemy spawns? According to the level editors that is handled by having a actor in the level flagged as a "copycat". The engine will stop spawning that enemy type if the specific actor flagged as "copycat" is destroyed and purged from the current level.

This is primarily why whenever I play the game I bring up the long range radar and immediately beeline towards every single air target I can see, eventually I will destroy said "copycat" and spawns will be permanently disabled.

DracoNihil wrote on 2025-05-26, 22:34:

Oh another thing: The enemy spawns? According to the level editors that is handled by having a actor in the level flagged as a "copycat". The engine will stop spawning that enemy type if the specific actor flagged as "copycat" is destroyed and purged from the current level.

This is primarily why whenever I play the game I bring up the long range radar and immediately beeline towards every single air target I can see, eventually I will destroy said "copycat" and spawns will be permanently disabled.

Interesting... I was not aware that was how it worked... although it makes sense from a technical standpoint. :o

Gemini000 wrote on 2025-05-27, 00:06:

Interesting... I was not aware that was how it worked... although it makes sense from a technical standpoint. 😮

It's a VERY bizarre way to even implement this. You'd think enemy spawns would be something they'd throw into the level definition file itself but for some reason they designed it to revolve around checking for actors marked as "copycat" and spawning those around the player so long as said "copycat" enemies continue to exist in the level, which results in their spawning permanently becoming disabled if those enemies die for any reason.

Usually for this reason, atleast according to level editor docs; the "copycat" enemy is typically placed somewhere well out of reasonable action zones to effectively prolong the spawning enemy as much as possible.

Another thing that is VERY bizarrely coded are the "cavern systems". Tunnels in Terminal Velocity are separate maps the game travels to/from as seamless as your memory and filesystem bandwidth permits. However: A tunnel system can be flagged to come out in what is considered a "cavern" which is a specifically built area in the main level where the terrain tiles reach all the way to the cloud layer. Adjacent tiles define the textures to apply to the "ceiling" of this cavern. When a tunnel is flagged to exit into a cavern area, the engine is still loading back into the main map but in a special use case where instead of displaying clouds and sky, the tiles adjacent to the "cavern" are "folded over" to form the roof of the cavern using the textures assigned by those adjacent tiles.

Because the cavern system exists in the main map, if you know the X and Y coords to reach them there is literally nothing stopping you from turbo'ing (or even proceeding without turbo!) to those caverns and pre-emptively destroying everything that would have been there. In the case of the world end boss being located in a cavern, usually the tunnel exiting the cavern is still marked as active. If you take that tunnel and follow it out as normal you COMPLETELY skip the boss fight!

Ancient DOS Games Episode 343: Heros I - The Sanguine Seven is online!

I mean... props to the author for making a game like this of this size pretty much entirely solo, but wholly geeze... there's hard games, then there's HARD games, then there's... THIS.

Heros I is one of the most difficult platformers I have ever played due to a combination of its speed, its lack of viewing space, the massive size of the levels, the nature of its level design coupled with how enemies and enemy bullets are processed at all times, and just how incredibly unforgiving it is overall. It's got tons of neat ideas buried within it though and is a game I feel could easily be transformed into something much more enjoyable through a modern reimagining... I doubt it would ever happen, but hey, you never know! :B

Gemini000 wrote on 2025-06-14, 00:06:

Heros I is one of the most difficult platformers I have ever played due to a combination of its speed, its lack of viewing space, the massive size of the levels, the nature of its level design coupled with how enemies and enemy bullets are processed at all times, and just how incredibly unforgiving it is overall.

I hope the soundtrack didn't drive you insane producing this video! Because the music is also a very unforgiving aspect of the game...