I'm not much into XT, but since you asked:

Beast
Akalabeth
Defender of the Crown
Rampage
emm... that's it.

Does King's Bounty work on XT? If yes, count me in 😀

In 1992, I was playing these games on a Commodore XT with Hercules graphics (and CGA emulation):

- Prince of Persia,
- Tetris (original version)
- Blockout
- Leisure Suit Larry 1
- Police Quest (I don't know which version)
- Space Quest 1
- Zaxxon
- MS Flight Simulator 1
- Grand Prix
- An NBA Basketball game that I don't remember the exact name
- Test Drive

I suppose all CGA-only and maybe most CGA-supporting games can run on XT, as they supported 8088 instructions and wanted conventional memory. But I doubt every such game will run at comfortable speed at 4.77 MHz.
And I do not understand sense in creating an "XT" with NEC V20, - it would not be time correct and you may get compatibility issues.

reenigne wrote:

I'm planning to make one myself as well.

It's nice there is an XT gamedev scene still. I'm still struggling to make something PCX2/Voodoo graphics/Pentium friendly with my lack of ASM knowledge, and the closest I came to XT gamedev was some basica conditional lamer game hacks in the 80s/90s. 🙁

leileilol wrote:

It's nice there is an XT gamedev scene still

Just barely. It's been bugging me for a while now that almost every other retro-computing platform has new games constantly being pumped out (C64, Speccy, the 8-bit Ataris and whatnot) while the 8088/CGA has had what... 3 games in 5 years (maybe 8-10 if demoscene stuff counts)? Even the Apple II 'scene' is more active! I can't do much other than graphics (and ideas/design), but *something* will be done 😀

carlostex wrote:

- Indianapolis 500; (yes you read it right);

This. And SimCity.

VileRancour wrote:

It's been bugging me for a while now that almost every other retro-computing platform has new games constantly being pumped out (C64, Speccy, the 8-bit Ataris and whatnot) while the 8088/CGA has had what... 3 games in 5 years

Until 1989 (386+VGA+SB with adequate price) it was hard to perceive IBM PC as a competetive home platform for games. Other platforms gave similar or better things for same or less money. So there is no comparatively much nostalgia about 8088+CGA for games, and not very different situation with 286+EGA. To make an interesting game even for 286+EGA is not as easy as for 8-bit systems, while for 386+VGA things become only worse. That is why, I suppose, we don't see much new games for old PC hardware, similarly as much new games for any system popular in 1990s. Harder development needs commercial motivation wich is small today for those systems.

Tertz wrote:

I suppose all CGA-only and maybe most CGA-supporting games can run on XT, as they supported 8088 instructions and wanted conventional memory. But I doubt every such game will run at comfortable speed at 4.77 MHz.
And I do not understand sense in creating an "XT" with NEC V20, - it would not be time correct and you may get compatibility issues.

Some games might benefit from the extra speed of the V20, and for those games that do require an 8088 at 4.77Mhz... i can live with that.

I went as far as using a 8MHz OSCI on my 286 , and with the Turbo button depressed games Digger was very much playable. I don't mind if my XT is a tad faster than an original IBM XT. And the benefits clearly surpass the disadvantages. By using XT+ BIOS on my XT-IDE i assembled i have a speed boost for Hard Drive operations.

Tertz wrote:

Until 1989 (386+VGA+SB with adequate price) it was hard to perceive IBM PC as a competetive home platform for games. Other platforms gave similar or better things for same or less money. So there is no comparatively much nostalgia about 8088+CGA for games, and not very different situation with 286+EGA.

That's all true, but since the PC clones took such a huge chunk out of the market in general, many were "stuck" with them (like I was as a kid), and ended up enjoying the games anyway; so the nostalgia factor could work there after all.
Like this guy, for instance (pretty cool to see 8088/CGA getting some love in public): http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/growing … -i-ever-bought/

VileRancour wrote:

That's all true, but since the PC clones took such a huge chunk out of the market in general, many were "stuck" with them (like I was as a kid), and ended up enjoying the games anyway; so the nostalgia factor could work there after all.
Like this guy, for instance (pretty cool to see 8088/CGA getting some love in public): http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/growing … -i-ever-bought/

How this i miss this post...

Awesome article there, thanks VileR. And man Starflight, one of the best games EVER. I plan to enjoy it soon. Already got my boxed copy and all!

I have first-hand experience of this topic as I was in this position in 1990 😀
My Dad had a 10Mhz XT/CGA/640K laptop (with external monitor) and I was desperate to find games to play on it.

A 10Mhz 8086 XT is great for just about any CGA game you could throw at it. I seem to remember my favourites being LHX Attack Chopper, Legend, PGA Tour Golf, ZZT, Commander Keen and Monuments of Mars. Also remember playing various Moraff games on it. Slower EGA games would be OK too but you would really want a 286 for those.

A 4.77Mhz 8088, even a V20, is really slow however. Forget about anything that scrolls. Even Monuments of Mars is too slow. You're really limited to text mode games (e.g. ZZT, Dracula In London, Infocom), really basic graphical games (Paratrooper) or turn-based stuff (SSI Gold Box).

TELVM wrote:

I probably spent much of 1990 shooting down boatloads of Heinkels and Stukas playing Their Finest Hour. 🤣

Their Finest Hour is a pain to play without joystick, and I don't think the PC/XT comes with joystick port. Most PC/XT those days didn't have Sound Blaster (which gives it joystick port).

As for the OP's question, I'd probably play Space Rogue, Test Drive, F-16 Combat Pilot, Karateka, Grand Prix Circuit, and Sierra Championship Boxing.

carlostex wrote:

VileRancour wrote:

That's all true, but since the PC clones took such a huge chunk out of the market in general, many were "stuck" with them (like I was as a kid), and ended up enjoying the games anyway; so the nostalgia factor could work there after all.
Like this guy, for instance (pretty cool to see 8088/CGA getting some love in public): http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/growing … -i-ever-bought/

How this i miss this post...

Awesome article there, thanks VileR. And man Starflight, one of the best games EVER. I plan to enjoy it soon. Already got my boxed copy and all!

I fully agree! 😁 And thanks a lot, VileRancour!

This post from arstechnica is wonderfully written!

StarFlight was one of the games I played in my childhood on my Megadrive (aka Geneses) and loved a lot.
After I've seen Mobygames, I learned about all the other ports and was fascinated.

They all were slightly different, but thankfully none of these ports was something I consider of beeing bad.
Surprisingly, the Atari ST and Amiga versions were equally good in visual terms.
And the Mac version had amazing hires B/W graphics. Unlike the C64 version, which was below CGA standards (but still good).. 😉

Anyway, none of the ports had this "mystical" ambience the original PC version had.
Playing this somehwen in the 1980's during nighttime on an ancient XT clone with a likewise video monitor must have been almost romantic.

I'm glad there are people out here who still care about things like this and preserve it.

Btw, it took me years get a copy of the original PC version!
I remember how happy I was holding it in my hands, even though my copy lacked the vinyl like packing! (^_^)
(See LGR - LP-style PC Game Boxes )

reenigne wrote:

shamino wrote:

When I think about this scenario, it makes me realize I'd probably regain a lot of interest in programming.
I guess at some point, the complexity of modern operating systems and the plethora of graphically intense multi-million dollar games killed my enthusiasm.

There is a small scene of programmers making new games for old systems (what's the opposite of VOGONS? NGOVOS?) See http://www.deathshadow.com/pakuPaku and http://bluepandion.tumblr.com/tagged/magiduck for PC/XT/CGA-specific examples. I'm planning to make one myself as well.

Wish I could get my engine working on a 286. I've got that QB45 code as optimized as it's going to get and it still lags on a Pentium-75 🤣

Commander Keen will work on an 8088 (CGA or EGA) but it probably wouldn't run at full speed unless you had something better than 4.77 MHz.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Wish I could get my engine working on a 286.

Time to rewrite it in C perhaps? (And/or rewrite the critical inner loops in assembler).

I'd be playing:
Digger
Lode Runner
Karateka
Bruce Lee
Infocom text adventures
Ultima I through Ultima V
Wizardry I through Wizardry VI
Bard's Tale I through Bard's Tale III

keenmaster486 wrote:

Wish I could get my engine working on a 286. I've got that QB45 code as optimized as it's going to get and it still lags on a Pentium-75 🤣

Try PDS 7.1 and Visual Basic for DOS - I heard they are to some extent compatible qith QuickBASIC 4.5 😀

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

TELVM wrote:

I probably spent much of 1990 shooting down boatloads of Heinkels and Stukas playing Their Finest Hour. 🤣

Their Finest Hour is a pain to play without joystick, and I don't think the PC/XT comes with joystick port. Most PC/XT those days didn't have Sound Blaster (which gives it joystick port).

As for the OP's question, I'd probably play Space Rogue, Test Drive, F-16 Combat Pilot, Karateka, Grand Prix Circuit, and Sierra Championship Boxing.

Hi, I'm no XT expert, but I've seen Gameports on a lot of Multi-I/O cards.
Perhaps they were in common use before the Sound Blaster cards.

Ahh, good ol' BOB1940. That game became so much more tolerable on a 486 DX4 with a Turbo button. Sure, it already had a "triple speed" button in-game, but this way you could really get moving...

Anyway, the appeal of watching cyan and magenta graphics crawl along the screen to the accompaniment of PC speaker blorps is sharply limited in my mind.

Jo22 wrote:

Hi, I'm no XT expert, but I've seen Gameports on a lot of Multi-I/O cards.
Perhaps they were in common use before the Sound Blaster cards.

There were seperate 8-bit cards with two Gameports on them, sold well into the 90s.

So it's definitely possible to have an XT with Joystick interface without a sound card.

You could play some L&D.