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Reply 60 of 219, by Terracresta

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clueless1 wrote on 2020-08-27, 17:16:
Terracresta wrote on 2020-08-27, 17:11:
clueless1 wrote on 2020-08-27, 17:08:

Agree with everything you said. I really wanted to like Albion and I played it for about 10 hrs but there were UI issues that made it too hard to continue, so I retired from it. 🙁

What UI issues do you have? I find that the game is quite hard at the beginning with limited healing items, combat being hard if you don't use the heavily limited gun ammo and armour breaking quite often, adding repair cost.

The main one was movement. There was not a suitable keyboard equivalent to the mouse movement and the mouse movement (constantly holding the left button to walk) caused pain in my hand. You could move up, down, left, right with arrows, but not diagonally and no ability to customize the movement keys. Also, when it went into first person view, they did a poor job of portraying depth. Nowhere near as good as Ultima Underworld. I constantly found myself overturning corners and accidentally walking into walls or turning 180 degrees instead of 90 degrees.

Ah yes, you are right about the first person few. There might also be simply too many 2D objects around, that often are literally in your face.
The controls and not being able to change them was sadly quite common in old games. Playing Ultima Underworld with cursor keys wasn't great either, so I preferred using the mouse, where you also had to keep the button pressed to move. Actually even with modern games, using pads with analogue sticks are hurting my hands after a while and when playing something more intense the thumb starts slipping because of the hands getting sweaty. Something I never get using mouse and keyboard. Having to keep Shift pressed for running is not great either though. Just thought about this yesterday when playing Amazon's The New World, where you want to run most of the time but have to keep the run button (Shift) pressed the whole time, with not option to toggle autorun, which even some old DOS games offered.

Reply 61 of 219, by clueless1

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Terracresta wrote on 2020-08-27, 17:33:

Ah yes, you are right about the first person few. There might also be simply too many 2D objects around, that often are literally in your face.
The controls and not being able to change them was sadly quite common in old games. Playing Ultima Underworld with cursor keys wasn't great either, so I preferred using the mouse, where you also had to keep the button pressed to move. Actually even with modern games, using pads with analogue sticks are hurting my hands after a while and when playing something more intense the thumb starts slipping because of the hands getting sweaty. Something I never get using mouse and keyboard. Having to keep Shift pressed for running is not great either though. Just thought about this yesterday when playing Amazon's The New World, where you want to run most of the time but have to keep the run button (Shift) pressed the whole time, with not option to toggle autorun, which even some old DOS games offered.

Funny, I actually really liked Underworld's keyboard layout and used it exclusively, using the mouse only for picking items. A and D were turning, S was walking, W was running, X was walk backward and Z and C were strafing. It was pretty forward-thinking for the time.

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Reply 62 of 219, by Terracresta

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clueless1 wrote on 2020-08-27, 22:30:

Funny, I actually really liked Underworld's keyboard layout and used it exclusively, using the mouse only for picking items. A and D were turning, S was walking, W was running, X was walk backward and Z and C were strafing. It was pretty forward-thinking for the time.

It wasn't as much the layout as it was that moving didn't feel as "granular" in the way of movement speed. The layout was great for a game of that era. I used both but always went back to using the mouse most of the time. Need to play it again to be more precise about why I preferred mouse movement.

Reply 63 of 219, by liqmat

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appiah4 wrote on 2020-08-27, 16:12:

Hand of Fate (Kyrandia 2) is an absolutely stunning PC game..

I'll second that. The Kyrandia games were beautifully drawn.

Another game I thought was stunning for its time and 486 friendly was Time Commando. Also, if you want to push the performance envelope, Heart of Darkness has minimal specs listed as a 486 DX2, but it does require Win95 as well. I am guessing you would need a higher end 486 to really enjoy it though. I remember that game being hard as nails.

Reply 64 of 219, by Terracresta

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Hm, how about the game Abuse? I think from a technical standpoint it looks quite good for it's time, incl. the animations, even though I'm more into vivid fantasy graphics of many RPGs and Adventures.

There are quite a few great looking games so the "most beautiful" is quite hard to name. I love the looks of many RPGs like Eye of the Beholder, Lands or Lore (2 with Voodoo graphics), Wizardry 7, Might & Magic 3 - 5 and so on. Some of the EGA Gold Box games have also great EGA artworks on their title screens, like Death Knights of Krynn.

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Reply 65 of 219, by Iris030380

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A middle of the road 486-DX2 is what I presume you're aiming for. Good looking games from that era on DOS were ...

Doom 2
Heretic
XCOM : Terror From The Deep
The Legacy
Simon The Sorceror (rivals Hand Of Fate graphically, though not in terms of story)
Blackthorne
Ecstatica
Little Big Adventure
Rebel Assault

Thats all I can think of right now.

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Reply 66 of 219, by Jo22

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A few more games that come to mind:
- Lollypop
- Betamax
- Mario&Luigi (aka Mario)
- Die Höhlenwelt Saga
- The Secret of Donkey Island
- Normality
And all the StarTrek games, especially though 'A final Unity".
- I ran it on a 486DLC with ULSI coprocessor, even.
Except for the 3D scenes (combat) it was absolutely playable on 386 hardware!

Edit: "Alpha Waves" is also awesome, really. It has that old school 3D graphics.

Edit: Also interesting: the Legend Entertainment games, such as Gateway and those by Magnetic Scrolls.
These also have colourful graphics: "RedCat 2", "Vinyl", "Captain Blood", "Battle Chess", "Das Telekommando 2" (German), "Mission Supernova" (German), Maupiti Island
Simulations: "MS Space Simulator", "SimAnt", "A.G.E." (Advanced Galactic Empire), "Darker", "Crystal Pixels", "Coaster", "Bravo Romeo Delta", "E.S.S.",. "E.S.S Mega", "Echelon", "EF 2000".

Edit: Some more simulations: "Fighter Wing", "Infestation", "Nomad", "Shuttle: The Space Flight Simulator", "SimIsle: Missions in the Rainforest",
Starlord", "Stunt Driver", "Su-27 Flanker", "Stunt Island", "Tau Ceti", "Ultrabots"(aka Xenobots), "Bar Games"

Edit: Betamax can be found here: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=15504

@Terracresta Thanks for the screenshots, these look really pretty! 😃

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Last edited by Jo22 on 2020-08-30, 03:12. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 67 of 219, by amadeus777999

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"Doom II" will always be my overall reference piece.

Honorable mention...
"Blackthorne"
"Lost Files Of Sherlock Holmes"
"Warcraft - Orcs and Humans"
"X-Com" especially the second installment

Many more good ones but these always have struck me as most impressive.

Reply 68 of 219, by Terracresta

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Just remembered that the Crusader games from Origin looked quite nice and it was always fun to set enemies on fire or freeze them.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-08-29, 07:05:

@Terracresta Thanks for the screenshots, these look really pretty! 😃

No problem. 😁
Was going to say that I played Stunt Driver on the C64 but it was Stunt Car Racer.
I think that I played the Darker demo back then, as is looks and sounds very familiar.

Reply 70 of 219, by appiah4

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I never knew of Return of the Phantom but I really liked Dragonsphere.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 72 of 219, by appiah4

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pan069 wrote on 2020-08-31, 07:48:

Cruise for a Corpse looks very interesting. Never seen that game before.

I played and finished it on the A500, it was one of the best looking games of that system as well.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 73 of 219, by robertmo

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https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/polanie/sc … eShotId,750746/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/kajko-i-ko … eShotId,621343/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/prince … eShotId,670460/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/les-manley … eShotId,108100/

Reply 74 of 219, by Terracresta

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Somehow Adventure games feel a bit like cheating as it was far easier to have good graphics for mostly still background.

Daughter of Serpents is another one I liked the looks off when I saw the review in a gaming mag back then. Could also mention Broken Sword 1 and I'm actually amazed that nobody did so yet.

Riddle of Master Lu is a game praised by many but I never liked pre-rendered backgrounds.

Reply 75 of 219, by Whiskey

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Here are some I always thought were pretty sweet when it came to the pixels, forgive the extra adventure game.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

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In Search of Dr. Riptide

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System Shock

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Epic Pinball (Super Android Table)

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I stream retro games every wednesday here & I dump the recordings here

Reply 76 of 219, by Spikey

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Although the game is flawed, I thought Noctropolis was beautiful graphically, for a darker sort of game.

EcoQuest 1 is a pretty game, due to the underwater seascapes (and some striking less pretty images later in the game).

Some older Sierra games which are amazing EGA titles are Conquests of Camelot and The Colonel's Bequest. The latter is the best 16-color art I've seen!

Some great games mentioned in this thread I'd never heard of. Thanks, guys!

Reply 77 of 219, by brostenen

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I can contribute with some gems as well....

Full Throttle.
Dynablaster.
Raptor.
Pinball Fantasies.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

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Reply 78 of 219, by hyperrmachine

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hyperrmachine wrote on 2020-08-31, 04:29:
Some of my favorites: […]
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Some of my favorites:

Sam and Max Hit The Road (1993, LucasArts)
735157-sam-max-hit-the-road-dos-screenshot-engaging-in-a-conversation.png 735153-sam-max-hit-the-road-dos-screenshot-sam-comments-upon-an-object.png
735166-sam-max-hit-the-road-dos-screenshot-i-expected-sam-to-say.png 735170-sam-max-hit-the-road-dos-screenshot-listening-to-a-hilariously.png

The main artist in Sam and Max Hit the Road is Steve Purcell. He drew some box art for a few LucasArts games, like Zak McKracken and the 1st and 2nd Monkey Island games.
He's currently working at Pixar. He worked on Pixar's Brave as co-director. He also worked on Cars. By the way I'm a Disney fan.

Steve Purcell's concept art for Merida (the protagonist of Brave): http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/335000 … 0-3035-1619.jpg