Depends on your radar. Ultima? Nethack? Dark Seed?

I know... pretty big radar sweep. Ultima was fun for a while. By VII I got bored of it...going to go back though since I found a copy of Serpent Isle
I am Looking for obscure. I am trolling around archive.org and other places like the dos games archive or mocagh.org. Lots of games apparently lost to time and no one thinking of preservation Took me spending $35 on a complete box of When Two World War on ebay (not RPG but a game I had when I was a kid)
Mobygames has been no real help as it lists windows 95 games as DOS. I know technically they run in DOS, but require Windows to even install.
nitpicky, but annoying for me, especially when I build a DOS machine, I don't want to have to install elsewhere then move files. I plan on a budget to buy physical copies of games if I can find them.
Also, games like Ultima have a party and I am hoping to find something with a single PC.
As for text mode games, I think there is a way to emulate a BBS an have DOSBox connect to it. Won't help much once I get the DOS machine built.
So if needing clarrification on tetx mode games, almost like IF but more interactive Again, much like legend of the Red Dragon

Text mode games like "zork" ?

Zork is Interactive Fiction. I finished those years and years ago as a kid when I still had my old 286 machine. I was really into the Infocom games then.
More like this:
https://legendreddragon.net/
The front page has a screenshot of what a BBS terminal window might look like.
I guewss I should further clarify; ANSI graphics, though that doesn't happen often, might help describe "the scene" it is mostly just text like IF, but you have more RPG elements tossed in.
Another game in the genre; Drug Wars, though I think that was ONLY a door game.

I'm sure these games existed as "offline" games.

James_Richards wrote on 2024-06-08, 13:17:

Zork is Interactive Fiction. I finished those years and years ago as a kid when I still had my old 286 machine. I was really int […]
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Zork is Interactive Fiction. I finished those years and years ago as a kid when I still had my old 286 machine. I was really into the Infocom games then.
More like this:
https://legendreddragon.net/
The front page has a screenshot of what a BBS terminal window might look like.
I guewss I should further clarify; ANSI graphics, though that doesn't happen often, might help describe "the scene" it is mostly just text like IF, but you have more RPG elements tossed in.
Another game in the genre; Drug Wars, though I think that was ONLY a door game.

I'm sure these games existed as "offline" games.

As a side note, most door games can be launched locally/offline. They have switches for this purpose (intended for BBS maintenance tasks) or can be tricked with a dummy BBS drop file. If you are interested in a specific door game have a look at its documentation (the part with instructions for the sysop), it might be really simply.

That makes sense. I wonder why I didn't think about that
hmmm... I'll take a poke through. I have a couple door games in ZIP I picked up from somewhere. I never got into running my own BBS as I was born a tad late. Sure, maybe I could have done something with it. Corvette BBS here in Vegas finally went offline in around 2001? I used to log in and MUD after school
My dad just sent me a list of games I played even younger. He broke me in on a Commodore 64. A couple of these games look neat. Maybe I should look into emulation C64 as well. Looking more in this box of games, some even have the C64 logo on them, so looks like this old dude was a gamer. I wonder what else is in this box. There's another on the way, too. He got all the gold box games, too. I have those form GoG as I played Curse of the Azure Bonds a lot back then.