Civilisation 1
Stunts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts_(video_game)
Wolf3d https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein_3D

Drakkhen, if you like role-play games.

Mechwarrior
Indianapolis 500
Deathtrack
SCI0 games (SQ3, KQ4, LSL3, Hoyle 1/2, etc)

Prehistorik 1 and 2

Dune II
Cannon Fodder
Xenon II Megablast
Pinball Dreams
Lotus III
Vikings II
F1GP

I used to play these back in the days on a fast 286-16.

kixs wrote:

Dune II

I used to play these back in the days on a fast 286-16.

with Sound enabled ? i remember it was very slow on a 16Mhz 386SX.

Dune2 barely runs on a 25mhz 386dx when lots of units are on the screen...

I think Wolf3D might also be slow on a 286.

I will try ALL the games posted here!

hey it even runs on a 80186 😀

matze79 wrote:

hey it even runs on a 80186 😀

Wish I had an XT 80186 to mess around with 🙁

Duke Nukem II runs on a 12 MHz 286 but only just.

Wolf3D is fine on my 16MHz Zenith SlimsPORT but that is an unusually fast system. Still, I have noted that clock-for-clock, a good 286 can be a little faster than a 386SX sometimes.

HighTreason wrote:

Duke Nukem II runs on a 12 MHz 286 but only just.

Wolf3D is fine on my 16MHz Zenith SlimsPORT but that is an unusually fast system. Still, I have noted that clock-for-clock, a good 286 can be a little faster than a 386SX sometimes.

Interesting - did not know that. I had noticed the my 33Mhz SX is quite a bit slower then my 33MHz DX. This little guy will run fine at 16MHz (tested with 33Mhz crystal) but I don't think I need that much speed. The CPU is a late AMD 80286 soldered to the board. It will also post at 20MHz but hang at "loading MS-DOS". Right now I'm keeping it at it's rated 12MHz because pushing the turbo button makes it run at 6MHz 😁

matze79 wrote:

kixs wrote:

Dune II

I used to play these back in the days on a fast 286-16.

with Sound enabled ? i remember it was very slow on a 16Mhz 386SX.

It was without sound, as I bought my first SB in 1995. That 286-16 was on par with 386SX-25.

ok now I wanna stick the 33Mhz crystal back in and try dune2 on it 😁

Check among EGA supporting games, as generally they were designed to be playable on 286. Those games may to have VGA modes too. Anything up to 1990, many up to 1992 should work ok.

HighTreason wrote:

I have noted that clock-for-clock, a good 286 can be a little faster than a 386SX sometimes.

286 is ~15% faster. good video card is also important for games

Bio Menace should work well, I played that on my 286 back in the day. I didn't even have a HDD!

Try a Freescape game like Space Station Oblivion or Total Eclipse. They will run, but I'm curious how fast. 😀

Try Stellar 7 and Nova 9

A lot of Apogee's early games will run. I've just been doing a similar thing for my 16MHz 286. Some of the games that work well are Commander Keen, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventures, Crystal Caves / Secret Agent, Halloween Harry, Monster Bash / Scubaventure, Paganitzu, etc.

Plus many non-Apogee games: Blockout, Catacomb Abyss, Captain Comic, Clone Invaders, the Dangerous Dave series, Doofus, the Hugo's House of Horrors series, Jetpack, Jill of the Jungle, Kiloblaster, Magic Pockets, Magnetic, Midnight Rescue / Treasure Mountain / etc, Xargon (just).

I've actually found that of all the games, Vinyl Goddess From Mars actually runs extremely well on a 16MHz 286. Some of the levels are slow in parts, but the full-screen VGA animation is incredibly smooth. I'm not sure how they did it but it's considerably better than most other platform scrollers, and it's 256-colour as well.

Tertz wrote:

HighTreason wrote:

I have noted that clock-for-clock, a good 286 can be a little faster than a 386SX sometimes.

286 is ~15% faster. good video card is also important for games

It's not that the 286 is faster than the 386SX clock per clock. It really depends on the motherboard implementation. Keep in mind that when 386SX's started to appear market wise, 286 motherboards were matured. Usually 286 boards paired with fast chipsets like Headland HT12 can indeed be faster than OEM'ed 386SX designs.

I own 3 286 boards. 2 are based on Headland HT12 (one of them an Octek Fox rev 3.2 which needs some repairs and the other one is an M219 board (PC Chips?).

The M219 board is actually slower at 20MHz than my good Headland HT12 board at 16MHz. It can also be that some boards default to 0 wait state memory operation and others do not. I do plan to take a personal look into the 286 vs 386sx story.