Ancient DOS Games Episode 344 - Cobra Mission is online!

...SO... you might be wondering how in the world I managed to put a video together on this game and comply with YouTube's ad policies! :D

Well... I don't know if I did because they're overly convoluted, so to play it safe I just disabled ads for the video entirely. I only get 10% of my income from ad revenue so I don't mind missing out on maybe a couple pizzas worth of money if it means being able to talk about a game no one else wants to touch with a 10-foot-pole. :B

That said, I made an effort to make the video viewable by everyone despite this and made sure to use language myself which only adults will understand, as Cobra Mission is a very strange case of a game and after being encouraged by LGR to cover it, I figured I'd give it a try, and while the game itself really isn't anything special, it's still a very different experience compared to what you would typically see in Western markets. (Though in Japanese markets it would be right at home amongst hundreds of other similar titles.)

Ancient DOS Games Episode 345 - King's Quest III is online!

...and yeah, it's a week late because something went screwy in my abdominal area and left me in pain whenever I tried to sit up straight. Turned out to be nothing serious and went away completely after about two weeks, well enough to get back to work after about 10 days, but yeah that kinda threw everything off for a bit. :P

In any event, King's Quest III is a game I had once upon a time... for two days, then I had my father return it because little old child-me not only couldn't figure out what to do, but couldn't gleam any semblance of fun from the experience given the nature of the game. How we got away with returning an opened PC game mostly came down to my father being friends with the guy working at the Radio Shack we bought it from; I believe this is how we ended up with Thexder instead though I could be mistaken.

Going back to the game as an adult though, things make a lot more sense and so the game isn't nearly as "bad" but I also recognize why the game isn't up to the same standards as the first two King's Quest games despite not being as bad as I remembered it being. :B

Ancient DOS Games Episode 346 - Doctor Doom's Revenge is online!

When a game looks THIS good you kinda expect at least SOME semblance of quality in terms of the actual gameplay.

...instead, prepare to see what may be the hardest game ever made for DOS... when set to BEGINNER skill... o_o;

Ancient DOS Games Episode 347 - Timeslaughter is online!
(Please note that this is a mature-rated video.)

So... I went into this one with an open mind. I saw the screenshots, I saw the reviews, I expected this to be a terrible Mortal Kombat clone, and what I got...

...was a surprisingly competent Street Fighter clone...??? :O

I mean... normally when one of us into retro titles says "gameplay is more important than graphics" we're referring to the fidelity of the graphics, not the overall style, yet there is a surprising amount of effort put into this game despite its low-grade style of graphics and sub-par voice acting, and as such it's totally playable!

...and also INCREDIBLY offensive in terms of both cultural insensitivity and graphic violence so... maybe be aware of that too before clicking on the video link. :P

Ancient DOS Games Pro 34 - Genocide Route - Excelsior Phase I: Lysandia is online!

Making this video was a trip and a half... actually, technically it was TWO trips... The notion of playing through Excelsior and beating the game while also obliterating nearly the entire population of Lysandia in the process was something I'd been curious to try, though it quickly dawned on me when I began the attempt that this was more-so going to be an academic process than one with any real meaning. As such, the first half of the video is dedicated to just beating the game in general, while the last half goes over what can and can't be done in terms of murdering the entire population of the Lysandia realm. :B

Gemini000 wrote on 2025-08-30, 02:10:

So... I went into this one with an open mind. I saw the screenshots, I saw the reviews, I expected this to be a terrible Mortal Kombat clone, and what I got...

...was a surprisingly competent Street Fighter clone...??? 😳

I mean... normally when one of us into retro titles says "gameplay is more important than graphics" we're referring to the fidelity of the graphics, not the overall style, yet there is a surprising amount of effort put into this game despite its low-grade style of graphics and sub-par voice acting, and as such it's totally playable!

You're absolutely right, and I had arrived at similar conclusions when reading up on this game, so it did not really surprise me when I actually played it (but it turned out too hard for me, I think I never beat a single match and the controls were a bit wonky or lagging, not sure).

The art style is not brilliant, but for what it's worth the artists did everything properly, so you have full and coherent character animations and animated backgrounds. I'd also say, bonus points for not imitating the usual Street Fighter style (or worse, trying for Mortal Kombat digitized sprites). BTW, Timeslaughter 2 looked very promising on their site and maybe it's a pity they never finished it.

But at the same time the devs very definitely did not intend their game to be aesthetically pleasing, unless perhaps in some "unorthodox" ways where the repulsive is cherished. Overall, I've always thought of this as a rather crude, black humour parody of violent fighting games, although it probably cannot be completely ruled out that everything was put in there in earnest. There's a distinctive air of "British black humour" around the whole thing so...

Gemini000 wrote on 2025-08-30, 02:10:

...and also INCREDIBLY offensive in terms of both cultural insensitivity and graphic violence so... maybe be aware of that too before clicking on the video link. 😜

I don't know, since when have people become this sensitive? I'd say the game is hardly more offensive than a wall in a public toilet covered by crudely drawn obscenities, which is probably not at all. A more philosophically-inclined mind might read more than that into the game, I suppose, but is that really necessary?

That said, I appreciate it that you did give a warning.