Ancient DOS Games Episode 235 - Thinkin' Things Collection 2 is online!

I really expected this one to be way better considering how good the original program was, but... nope. This program is entertaining for sure and there's nothing wrong with it in that sense, but it completely fails at actually educating, and rather spectacularly when you understand why exactly it's missing the mark. Educating with software is very tricky and a lot of the people who wrote this stuff were NOT educators, they were designers and programmers, thus why so many of these programs fail so hard at that aspect.

Just as an aside, more than once when I'd go into work at my job writing math software between 2002 and 2004, I'd be near the end of a project and would propose a new idea for one, or my boss would hand me a basic idea and ask me to elaborate on it or make it interesting, and rather than be given the thumbs up right away, he would express concern about what was actually being taught. How you intend children to use your software is ultimately very different from how they actually will, so you have to put yourself in their shoes and try to understand what it is they're learning when they make mistakes or fail to use the software as intended. It's a concept I understand very well, which is why I can be a little hard on these edutainment titles sometimes because it stands out so blatantly to me when someone DIDN'T check that. :P

Ancient DOS Games Episode 236 - Big Red Racing is online! ...except... what's this? It's technically NOT an ADG episode??? 8O

Long story short: One of my favourite content creators, Ross Scott, who makes the series "Ross's Game Dungeon" has been hit with some hard times and I wanted to help drive some new viewers his way to help generate some ad rev on his end to keep things going as well as possible, so I decided to make an ENTIRE VIDEO in his style! Helps too that the game in question easily fits in with it! ;)

Don't worry, this is only a one-time thing. The normal ADG format resumes next week! Making a video in someone else's style has been something I've been wanting to do for awhile, actually, but I've been waiting for the right game and the right time and this was it! :B

As for the game itself, it's technically a racing game, but... well... the more you play it the more you wonder if it really wanted to be JUST a racing game. Plus it has some bizarre quirks to go along with it. This is not your typical racing game, even though on the surface it looks like one!

Ancient DOS Games Episode 237 - Boppin' is online!

I was expecting the worst going into this one, given what I had heard about it, only to discover I HEARD WRONG. XP

This puzzle game is actually pretty tame by puzzle game standards as far as the gameplay is concerned. The trouble is that, some people just have a really hard time with instructions and as such, once you know what you're supposed to be doing and how everything works, the game stops being impossibly hard. ;)

Plus it has a built-in, fully featured level editor. That's some bonus points right there! :D

In the Big Red Racing video I didn't notice it contained a hint that the next video was about Boppin'.

The next Ancient DOS Games filler video is live and this is a special one: Filler #72 - Patreon $512 Milestone Reached!

It's actually been quite a few months since this milestone was reached, but trying to fit making this video alongside my normal schedule was proving to be impossible, so I decided to make it a part of the normal schedule instead so I could FINALLY get it out! :B

Basically, it's a Q&A, where Patreon supporters could send in their questions and I would answer ALL of them... thus why the video's 41 minutes long! There were only two stipulations: One question per person and nothing requiring a NSFW answer.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 238 - Lands of Lore: Guardians of Destiny is online!

Wow, this game... not only is it such a major departure in terms of gameplay from the first Lands of Lore game, but the quality of it is so polarized. There is no middle ground in this game; everything is either really good or really bad. :o

Also, getting it working with 3dfx Glide graphics was a trip and a half, so the end of the video where I go over DOSBox configuration settings is a bit more involved than usual. :P

Yeah, this is one of those games where you'd want to use an unofficial fork of DOSBox (like Yesterplay80's DOSBox ECE) to have an "easier" time emulating the Voodoo mode in this game, so that you don't need a external Glide wrapper in order to run this game. Even then, your game version has to be 1.30 in order to access Voodoo in the game, and you're stuck with 640x480 through emulation.

If you want an even more unnecessary and complicated setup then: Install Windows 95 in PCem, install DirectX, S3 ViRGE drivers, Voodoo2 drivers, then install the game in the Windows 95 VM, then apply the v1.30 patch, and then you can finally play the game in 3Dfx mode on that setup.

switchblade wrote:

and you're stuck with 640x480 through emulation.

Fairly certain I had the game rendering at 1280x960... In fact, here's a screenshot from my raw, unprocessed footage to prove it. Sprites and such are still limited by their actual resolution, but you can see from the 3D rendering that stuff in the distance shows more detail. :B

Gemini000 wrote:

switchblade wrote:

and you're stuck with 640x480 through emulation.

Fairly certain I had the game rendering at 1280x960... In fact, here's a screenshot from my raw, unprocessed footage to prove it. Sprites and such are still limited by their actual resolution, but you can see from the 3D rendering that stuff in the distance shows more detail. :B

I already know that you mentioned about getting the game running at 1280x960, but mostly through dgVoodoo 2 on top of the version of DOSBox used in the GOG release.

That's not what I originally meant. I was mentioning about getting the game running using a special fork of DOSBox with built-in 3Dfx support. If you play Lands of Lore through that special fork of DOSBox, you may just be limited to the in-game resolution of 640x480, and it will be in windowed mode. Although, you could play the game in fullscreen with the special fork if you select the surfacepp renderer, but it won't be a complete fullscreen.

And here's one of my shots: 😜

Ancient DOS Games Episode 239 - Pharaoh's Tomb is online!

I know this game is practically identical to Arctic Adventure in terms of gameplay, which was a game I covered a LONG time ago, but I wanted to quickly go over this one to give myself a break given how crazy it was trying to cover last week's game, thus this ended up being a much shorter episode than usual. :B

Still got to whip out the trusty old Evil Detector though! :D

Ancient DOS Games Episode 240 - Titus the Fox is online!

I was honestly expecting a worse game than this ended up being, though my initial attempts to play it were filled with a lot of death and disaster. It truly is about memorizing what to do and then doing it as opposed to just reacting to events as they transpire, thus why I only got about a 1/3 through the game. ^_^;

Although now I'm curious about trying the GB or GBC versions... :o

Ancient DOS Games Episode 241 - Zoop is online!

So... I was originally planning to cover a particular strategy game this week, but I found out a bit late that the GOG release ONLY has the Windows version included, despite the fact the game's original CD always had both DOS and Windows versions on it. Gotta remember to check that with GOG releases because you can never be 100% certain... :/

In any case, Zoop turned out to be a weird one. It plays well enough, but geeze, every step of the way it felt like they intentionally designed this thing to drive players away rather than hook them into playing for hours on end. I literally only captured ONE hour of footage to make this video. I felt like there wasn't really much more to show beyond that and I wasn't really able to get into it strongly enough to want to play it more than that.

Hopefully Viacom doesn't content claim your video, heh.

Zoop strived hard for a Tetris-esque grab on the market (it was perhaps the most aggressive multiplatform game launch of 1995), Viacom really wanted to exercise its marketing muscle.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 242 - Whiplash / Fatal Racing is online! ...and try to forgive that I sound like I'm dying in this one, I'm still getting over my cold. >_<

This game is basically a direct injection of 90s into the veins. In fact, until you actually play it, the features which make it stand out from other similar racing games don't really stick out at all as they're all subtle things, such as being able to command your teammate or the lack of rubber banding on the AI. Definitely more to this than its painfully average surface coating lets on to! :B

Nice, I played a ton of this game back in the day. I think I turned the voices off nearly instantly and never knew about the teammate controls. 😜 I did manage to unlock the third set of bonus tracks so I must have been doing something right. Might have to give this one a second look.

BTW I remember figuring out the hard way that Fatal Racing (what I had) does not work with the Whiplash 3DFX patch, so there's at least some substantial differences between the two. Although seeing gameplay footage of it now, I think the software version looks better anyway.

Great episode, hope you get your voice back soon!

not sure what you are relating to, you can run fatal racing even on a voodoo2 just get the right patch

besides that thanks for this review, this is a great game I still enjoy playing today

Ancient DOS Games Episode 243 - Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion is online!

OK, so... this game isn't really so much "bad" as it is "extremely frustrating". It has some neat mechanics to it, but having to play levels FLAWLESSLY in order to make any progress is not one of the neat ones. Even Battletoads gives the player a break and at least has checkpoints. :P

So yeah, I didn't enjoy the game, but I totally understand that some people will. :B

Ancient DOS Games Episode 244 - Jones in the Fast Lane is online!

Having seen other reviews and videos of this game in the past, I kinda had an idea ahead of time of what to expect and how to play, but I think I probably could've figured it out anyways. ;)

This game is actually pretty repetitive if you're playing it solo, but just like any board game would absolutely be more enjoyable with more players! Well, I mean... you COULD play against the AI, but the difficulty range for the AI in this game is kinda busted. :P

Ancient DOS Games Episode 245 - Star Trek Pinball is online!

So... I had heard this pinball program was one of the worst ever, but judging from the screenshots I wasn't convinced, so a fan offered to get me a copy and I decided to take a look at it, and... umm... I probably should've listened to the consensus on this one... >_>;

Also starts with a LONG unboxing segment, since I spend some time discussing things which were making me feel like the box may've been resealed, but I added a time-code on screen at the start of the unboxing segment for people to skip to if they don't want to watch it. ;)