Nethack 😜

Yeah I immediately thought of Nethack as well after my initial post. 😀

I remember playing phantasie on my 286. It felt big at the time. Haven't played it since then.
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2010/04/game-1 … -phantasie.html

SimCity.
SimEarth.
MidWinter. (Slow at 10MHz)

The original Elite for IBM PC compatibles. Elite : First Encounter but I'm not sure that will run on a 286, I didn't look. Great games though if you enjoy forging your own story.

Also Road War 2000 was always cool as well as it's sequel Road War Europa. These may run too fast though since they were more designed to run on 8088 processors. Not sure if it really counts as sandbox but it's a completely open ended simulation of sorts where the only goal is to try and take over the whole map. A lot like Burntime really (WHICH IS A FANTASTIC GAME).

Ultima, Questron.

Not really listing Sandbox games, but a surprisingly large amount of cool games runs on a VGA 286 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ZEWvokp3o , I think Elite First Encounters will too.

These EGA/VGA games run on a 10 Mhz 8088 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzum0M97PaY so these will definitely play on a 286 as well since a 10 Mhz 286 is around 20 Mhz 8088 speed.

snorg wrote:

Yeah I immediately thought of Nethack as well after my initial post. 😀

Indeed though i'm thinking of the earlier 1.x versions (1.4 mainly), definitely played that on a 4.77mhz 8088 at least. Never tried a 3.x on a CPU that slow

The Terminator by Bethesda. It's essentially a basic GTA. It will run on a 286.

Frontier: Elite II requires a 386 as far as I know. First Encounters is a pretty demanding game. I remember it getting laggy on my 486-33.

DosFreak wrote:

I remember playing phantasie on my 286. It felt big at the time. Haven't played it since then.
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2010/04/game-1 … -phantasie.html

SSI games are mucho dinero. Their RPG and wargame simulations from that time period are legendary and in high demand.