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Lent a sad friend a pile of my therapeutic choose-your-own-adventure books.
Edit: Because people asked...
There's no series of specifically therapeutic choose-your-owns, sadly. There ARE a couple books that are helpful for me when I get deep in the fog, whether for purposes of escapism or real help.
The best are Choice of Games' Choice of Robots and Choice of the Deathless. I haven't tried Creatures Such as We yet, but it's on my radar. Of them both, I found Choice of the Deathless to be the best - I tend to struggle with my place in society, and that book left me feeling a bit better about my relationship to my work and how I view my identity in relation to my job. Choice of Games' stuff aren't physical books though - I lent my bud my tablet, which had the full, paid versions on them, as well as...
Alter Ego. There's a free version and a paid version; both have the same features, but a waiting period between chapters on the free one. Again, I had it on my tablet. This is a life-simulation style game, albeit a very well-written one. I tend to agonize over the choices I didn't make, and even if in make-believe, it's good to have an outlet for that anxiety.
Otherwise, I have a lot of gamebooks that are sadly out of print and quite difficult to find. My favorites are the Real Life Gamebooks and Chronicles of Narnia series', which I've kind of halfway collected through years of used bookstore prowling. However, they're also available on Abandonia along with a lot of other rare and difficult-to-find books.
Have fun being someone else. :3
/r/civ has these linked on the sidebar:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/noahm/civilization-2.zip
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/14/Civilization.html
Moderators: I don't know if the copyright holders have official released these games as freeware (like Bethesda did with Arena and Daggerfall for example) or not. If not this is obviously a grey area. Please feel free to remove this post if you aren't comfortable with it. Thanks.
No way. Treasure Mountain and Midnight Rescue those were the shit.
Note: as with anything downloaded from abandonware sites, be sure to scan this file thoroughly before using it. The reviews seem good for this site, but who knows.
>This is magnificent. Now i want to play a game in this graphics.
Reminds me of an old Sierra adventure game called Lost Secret of the Rainforest. Definitely not as detailed as OP's work, but I thought of that game the second I saw the image.
Tagging /u/CantHOLD23 as well.
EDIT: Here's an online version of the game, but I haven't tested it and you'll most likely still need the Copy Protection links from Abandonia to get past the copy protection prompts.
Here too, though it's the original text-only game:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/228/Hitchhikers+Guide+to+the+Galaxy%2C+The.html
Be warned: I remember it being very difficult. There was something about holding "Tea" and "No Tea" in your inventory at the same time to solve a particularly tough puzzle, but it was a long time ago.
Simtower is the first PC game I ever played. I played hours and hours and hours. I was given a key for this and played it.
I was going in with Simtower nostalgia goggles. That was probably a mistake because I didn't enjoy this game too much.
Water and power was included already in Simstower. Adding water and power feature, in my opinion, made the game feel like more of a chore when you want to focus on things like designing your elevators and keeping economy afloat.
The elevators are the most interesting and vital part of Simstower. I felt that Project Highrise dumb this down by removing most of the reasonable limitations Simstower had.
Simstower had a really good vibe. The chatter of people, the ambient music, dinging of elevators, and the minimalist art design gave the game its unique grounded personality. Highrise did have tiny bit of those elements, but not enough to keep you engaged. It felt very soulless.
Simstower did a great job of keeping players on their toes that will make them keep playing for hours and hours. The game will throw new things at you like fires, hotel inspections, and new bells and whistles as you rise up the ranks. Highrise did have some of this, but only enough to keep you interested for a couple of hours. After that, it becomes a chore. Getting your tower to the tippy top didn't feel like compelling goal.
If you're a fan of just plain old repetitive micromanaging then sure it's decent.
But if you want a game with style, substance, and actual challenging gameplay, give simstower a whirl. It aged beautifully and I still play it every now and then.
Wild guess but maybe it's Super Solver's Outnumbered!?
You're walking around a TV station and each room is related to some aspect of TV production. You have to solve math problems in each room to get a piece of the combination for the final room.
Sometimes when you enter a room, an electrical cord "snake" appears and shocks you unless you zap it with the space bar before it reaches you.
Sound right?
Edit: A Wikipedia link
And a screenshot: http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/1009/Super%20Solvers%20-%20OutNumbered!_4.png
Papers, Please, Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning, Hotline Miami, Bad Mojo, Bisexuality: The Visual Novel, Fallout, Monopoly Deluxe, Deja Vu, The Neverhood, Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive, Donkey Kong, Hong Kong '97, The Incredible Machine 3.0 y ya me cansé.
Fallout 1 & 2 run great on toaster's. Although Nuclear Apocalyptic future might not be the thing your looking for. Unfortunately you missed it because before GoG removed the titles from there library they gave the games away for free. However they are still worth paying for.
Along the lines of supper toaster Wastland is actually a great but very very old RPG that might be worth checking out.
There is Albion which is Abandonware.
Also some consider System Shock 2 an RPG, but it's more of an FPS in my opinion.
Castlevania for DOS?
Maybe it's this one: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/398/Castlevania.htm
BTW, would you consider dumping those floppies later when you get a way to read them?
I don't have an exact match for you, but a few suggestions:
In Eternal Darkness [Game Cube], your character has a sanity meter (alongside hp and mp). When your sanity is depleted, you are affected by things like hallucinations. The plot is not medical in any way though, and sanity is meant in the sense of H.P. Lovecraft.
In Baroque [Wii] your player starts with some sort of amnesia. As you dungeon crawl to further and further levels of the dungeon, you gradually remember stuff (IIRC).
In Deja Vu [NES], you start with amnesia and have a point and click adventure where you must solve a murder mystery while also trying to figure out what's going on and what happened to you.
5 Days a Stranger [PC, free download] is an excellent point and click adventure that involves mental illness, if I recall correctly. It involves being trapped in a house with a murderer.
SimAnt is abandonware, so it is available for download at many places. I've played it before, but I forget if it needed DOSBox support or not (Abandonia says it does need DOSBox). Make sure you press the "Get it!" button too, it seems there are some ads faking the download link.
One or both of them are browser games, IIRC... I'll see if I can find the link..
EDIT: http://www.abandonia.com/en/search_abandonia/civ
I haven't played on this site so I couldn't tell you how well it works but let us know! :)
> One of my favorite memories was playing XWing and Wing Commander with my brothers. We would have one person that would fly the spaceship and the other person would adjust shields and do all kinds of other stuff on the keyboard.
My brother and I would do the same thing, except with this.
The first gigahertz processor came out in 2000. The Pentium didn't even exist until 1993 and started at 60Mhz. Most games back in that day didn't even really include a particular processor speed requirement on the box, just a processor model. This one seems to want a 286 AT 10MHZ or better (clearer from the second link below).
From this box shot, the requirements were as follows:
IBM/Tandy and 100% compatibles. DOS 2.1 & higher
5.25" High Density disks enclosed. Color monitor required.
Supports Tandy, EGA & 256 color in MCGA/VGA.
Supports Microsoft mouse. Sound boards supported: Adlib,
Roland, Pro-Spectrum, & Sound Blaster.
Hard disk required.
10 MHZ AT or faster required.
NO DISK COPY PROTECTION
Edit: Ah, and from an ad of the CD-ROM version with slightly higher requirements:
386SX or better. 2MB RAM. DOS 3.3 or higher. Supports Tandy, EGA and 256-color MCGA/VGA graphics. Supports Microsoft mouse. Sound Board needed: Adlib Gold, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, or Pro-Audio Spectrum. CD-ROM drive. Speakers or headphones for sound.
Blackthorne, Cannon Fodder, Commander Keen series, Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, All the LucasArts SCUMM games, Death Rally, Doom II, Flight of the Amazon Queen, The Lion King, The Lost Vikings, Pac-in-Time, Raptor: Call of Shadows, Rick Dangerous, Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2, Soccer Kid, Star Control 2, Little Big Adventure 1 and 2, Warcraft 2...
To name a few. I don't think any one of these is free but they are available on abandonware websites. All the games need DosBox for them to be able to work on modern day computers. Some of them are also available on GOG for a low price.
Still got it and still play it :) A few weeks ago, Epic Games launched a Jazz2 server for it's 14th anniversary. Now that is Epic. BTW this is abandonware, and can be gotten at abandonia, RIGHT NOW. AS IN GOOOOOOOO GET AND PLAY IT
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/294/Jazz+Jackrabbit+2.html
Megatraveller 1 - The Zhodani Conspiracy.
Megatraveller 2 - Quest for the Ancients.
I have played both games years back, and I remember them both as being pretty good, with cool stories. If you can get past the (very) old graphics, they're definitely worth checking out. Also, both games are officially abandonware now, meaning that it's free and legal to download them from the links above. Enjoy!
I love this game, despite not really knowing how to play it. All my cows always die, and the ducks beat me up.
Celtic Tales is kinda-sorta similar http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/367/Celtic+Tales+-+Balor+of+the+Evil+Eye.html
Another game that has great static screens is Darklands (however it doesn't really have many other things in common, I guess) http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/194/Darklands.html
I seem to remember that A# (or someone else?) was developing an iPhone/iPad remake?
I actually found that myabandonware gives some games to download thay aren't actually abandonware as games stop being abandonware as soon as the company starts selling it again.
Closing in on two decades old, but here you go. Grand Prix Manager 2
There are others out there, also from the 90s, the most popular alternative being Grand Prix World. There are also modding communities for each game, so you can get team lineups from more recent seasons.
More proof that the mouth pieces of garglegoats are people who aren't gamers, don't play video games and have no interest in the medium beyond it being a vessel for conservative politics.
Also get bent: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/24370/balance+of+power+1990.html
I played the fuck out of this game. Our old XP was to shitty to play modern games, so I relied on DOSBox and Abandonia for all the games I played in my early teenage years!
Actually Balance of Power though didn't require an emulator to run on XP, don't know if it's different for Windows 7, vista, etc.
Stonekeep is pretty great, and so is Might and Magic 1-6 (M&M 1 and 2 may be unplayable by some modern gamers, and they're no fun if you look up information online. Be ready to devote at least a graph paper notebook to them). Both available at gog.com.
Also, Dungeon Hack (from abandonia), which has random dungeons.
Awww, this game was the best. Remember playing it ALL the time with my friends. It never got boring. Thank you for the sweet memories.
Edit: Get it here
Check out Abandonia for an extensive list of classics. You may need to grab DOSBox to run some of them.
There's also The Abandonware Webring
There was this one game that I used to play, way back in the stupid ages. It was one of those third-person isometric RPG games. The game used pictures in the rule book as DRM, with a set of 5 faces that you had to match each time the game played.
And one of the characters you met early in was called Rowena.
I have searched for a copy for years, to no avail.
EDIT - FOUND IT!!! - The Summoning
You can download it here..
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/30343/
1 review says, in short:
Overall, the game gets only two out of five. While it looks and sounds okay, the gameplay is really dated and boring and it's no wonder why they never released it. Even if it didn't have any Beta aspects, it would still be bad. The only reason to play this is for the curiosity value.
Let us know if it still works. :->
If it doesn't, it's available to play online at http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html for download at http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/228/Hitchhikers+Guide+to+the+Galaxy,+The.html and is playable on Frotz.
The UI is about on par with DCS. For binding controls, most people nowadays use the BMS Alternative Launcher, which has a controls binding UI similar to DCS. It also allows controls to be bound to button release, which is really helpful for binding latching switches like the ones on the Warthog throttle, and is something that can't be done directly in DCS without editing the input lua files.
As for the game itself, the main menu is similar to DCS, just laid out horizontally instead of vertically. On the campaign map, it's usually a matter of selecting a mission, clicking on the role (wingman or flight lead), then clicking on Takeoff and then selecting where to start from (ramp, taxiway, or runway). This isn't too different than creating a fast mission in DCS.
As for graphics, DCS has the edge here, but I find that people place way too much priority on this point. I understand that no VR support in BMS is a deal breaker for some people, but on a monitor, it's not like the difference between F117-A and DCS. The terrain is noticeably blockier, cities are only ground textures with a few buildings rendered, and the ~30 nautical mile rendering distance limit in BMS is annoying, especially when employing standoff weapons that have a longer range than that. However, all the crucial elements are there, such as a 3D cockpit, model scaling, and a working A2G radar. When people overwhelmingly use BVR missiles and can't spot in DCS anyway, I have to wonder just how important graphics really are when there are so many more fundamental issues that hold back DCS.
Reading the manuals, especially in old games, should be extra emphasized. More often than not those didn't include any kind of on-screen tutorial, and it's not rare to complete most of the game only to find out you need to do a certain action only explained in the instructions.
I wrote this small compendium of manual / walkthrough websites for another board, I think it's worth a look:
Here's a full PDF of The Dark Wheel. It came with the original Elite.
Text version on Ian Bell's site.
The game is Balance of Power. I assure you. Not only did I write that shitty review back when I was like 13, I actually emailed the creator (Chris Crawford) about his newer version of the game, Balance of Power: 21st Century which used to be able to be found here at http://www.storytron.com/, but Storytron has since gone down.
Greetings commander, I would say there are quite a few people in the same boat as the last time we had an Elite game was nearly 20 years ago. Did you see the new Newsletter? looks like Frontier are fleshing out the lore for us a bit more now?
There actually isn't a huge amount of story, as the story is yours. But there is a large amount of fiction which is going to tie into the game (in the spirit of the original game which was the first game to be shipped with a Novella) and Frontier are putting in special locations and events to tie in with the new stories.
I would suggest you start with the 'Dark Wheel' (PDF) its short, not very heavy 'star-wars' type stuff but while your reading it remember it was written by a (sadly now departed author) 30 years ago and every kid that grew up with the game read that and imagined the universe that went with it (in the game). I remember reading it and it really made the game seem real to me, I can also imagine everyone from the creators of Eve to X to a young Chris Roberts reading that too ;-)
Some of my best gaming memories revolve around flight simulators. When I was 10, my first PC was a monochrome 286, DOS 5, no mouse. I put Flight Simulator 2 on there and was mesmerized. It looked like this, only in black and white. Ha. After that, I got into the various military flight simulators they have, my favorite being F-17 Stealth Fighter by MicroProse. It looked like this.
Not sure where I am going with this. I always loved flight sims and would welcome one on the XBox One, but I know I am in a minority.
The secret island of dr. Quandry by chance. http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/25123/Secret+Island+of+Dr.+Quandary,+The.html edit: sry that site needed a credit card conformation. You get the gist though
You might like the spiritual successor, Chuck's Challenge. The original is on Abandonia. Apparently you're going to need to Set up DOSBox to get it working. Good luck!
Princess Maker 2 is a weird entry. Its charms grow on you when you realize the depth of the game. Raise a girl from 10 to 18, depending on your actions she can become everything from the god of war to a common street harlot, a religious icon or the lord of the underworld. It is strangely addictive.
>the evil of Edutainment
Fuck you, buddy! Museum Madness and Carmen Sandiego were amazing!
Abandonia is another great resource - been using it for a while.
GoG is probably what you are looking for.
Steam actually has a surprising amount of old classics, including the entire XCom franchise (with DosBOX built in, btw, which is pretty cool), all the id games back to Commander Keen, the Commandos games, Oddworld, even some Lucas Arts classics.
It's just a shame they're still so incomplete. In fact, there are a few games you don't even find on GoG. Great games. System Shock 2, Thief 1 & 2... and where is the Lucas Arts adventure "complete pack"? I think a lot of those are hanging in some horrible publishing/licensing limbo. Big publishers like Activision or EA have the rights (inherited from some former mergers and acquisitions) and can't be bothered releasing them officially because they wouldn't be profitable enough. That makes pirating semi-ethical, IMO, especially since the original developers usually don't see a cent of these games ever again, anyway. Pretty much the definition of abandonware.
Saint Nicolaas (freeware).
[Jazz Jackrabbit holiday hare]https://www.gog.com/game/jazz_jackrabbit_collection)
SimAnt - I spent a lot of time playing this as a kid. It not only ignited my interest in gaming, but also in simulation and AI. One of my senior projects as an undergraduate computer science student was an ant colony simulator. My ants exhibited superior intelligence to the SimAnt AI.
Earthbound (aka, Mother 2) - This was the second game that I fell in love with as a kid. It ignited my interest in RPG/JRPG games, and still holds a special place in my heart. My mint condition, complete Earthbound (SNES) set also ignited my interest in game collecting. It's worth about $600-$800 on Ebay right now.
28? Because I grew up the first few years with that. The PC we got was already old when we got it though ^(still loved the living hell out of that machine though).
First game was CalGames on a monochrome (Orange/Black) monitor. Good times were had.
if you like this, you might also enjoy
- Starflight - similar gameplay. deep and wide. shit graphics. this game is the great grandaddy of what Star Citizen hopes to become.
- Protostar: War on the Frontier - the spiritual successor to Starflight. more modern UI and graphics, but missing some of that 16-color charm.
- Project Nomad - arguably another spiritual successor (and my personal favorite). early 3d graphics keeps the game feeling not-too-dated. UI still kinda sucks. voice acting for every alien race. multiple endings (play without any combat at all, or kill everything you see!) and actually a decent amount of artifact items whose uses have yet to be discovered.
The Eye of Beholder games are considered abandonware, and you can find them on abandonia.com.
There is also a dungeon mod for the Legend of Grimrock that turns the game into Eye of the Beholder. It's worth checking out.
You could always download some abandonware games, which are games where either the copyright expired, the developer does not exist anymore, or they've officially ended support. Basically, they're games that are so old, they're free. Some classics on there. You'll have to have a spectacularly shitty laptop to not be able to play these games.
Hey guy, try these:
They're free.
Sim Life lets you make individual organisms, including crazy details like foraging patterns. You can make an entire ecosystem, including all plants and herbivores and carnivores and everything.
Sim Earth lets you basically terraform an entire planet and watch life evolve.
The original MechWarrior is a fantastic game, as is the old XCom (Though the remake does it justice enough that it's not heresy to play only it.)
You can find a lot of oldies, but goodies on this website.
Here is the game (DOS) http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/429/Clue!,+The.html
You will be needing dos box http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1
I would get D.O.G as well http://www.freewebs.com/erikgg/ this is a front-end for dosbox to make things easier
There's this awesome game Floor 13 that I play every few months. Basically it's a puzzle game where you are the head of this secret police force and you have to keep the Prime Minister looking good. The fun part is how you approach the problems. You might get some intelligence that some terrorists are going to hit a restaurant. You can snatch the first guy in the plot you find and torture him for info. Or trail him and see if you can find his other contacts. Or break into his house for clues. Or set an assault team to raid the place at the same time your intel says the attack will happen. Or run a smear campaign against your enemies and ignore the whole thing.
However if you do too much stuff public, kidnappings, murder, libel, etc the public notice and get mad at the PM. Eventually if you keep it up you lose. So every mission has a dozen ways to solve it, but there's always 'the best' way and you never know what it is. Tail a dude too long and he might be able to pull off his crime. There's some sort of crazy conspiracy aspect to the game, but I never get into that because I always lose before too much of it happens. I have read online that once you find out the proper solutions the game has little replay value, but since I won't look them up I still consistently enjoy it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not insinuating that Hawkthorne is supposed to appear to be some kind of sequel to Blackthorne, I just thought getting rid of "black" from the title and the whole brother thing was just too coincidental to have been an accident.
Thanks for the link to that website though, I used to love the Crystal maze game as a kid.
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/483/Life+and+Death.html
LIFE AND DEATH!!!
I used to love this game when I was little. Any patient that came in, no matter what their symptoms I would always announce to myself "yep, thats appendicitis" and then get them in surgery asap so that I could promptly cut them open and then close them with several clamps left inside. Cue next screen with the image of them in a body bag and their name tag on their foot...
At this point no abandonware website can provide this game legally since it's no longer abandoned. Abandonia takes down downloadable games as soon as GOG releases them on their website: example
Here's what I've found: Legend of Kyrandia
Here's the manual. If you recall you'll need to find a password in it a couple times to continue playing.
Have fun!
Advanced Civilization, though my group recently switched to Mega Civilization, which is a worthy remake. Takes about 16 hours to play a full 7-player game. Apart from moving, almost all phases are performed in parallel, so all players are playing the game all the time. There's little chance of a player being put out entirely - it's very much not a wargame, and Civil War (and in Mega, some similar disasters) bring the player doing worst, back into the game.
There's a good single-player computerization from 1995 available.
But there is no way to purchase Warcraft II through Blizzard (or any other retailer I could find). There is no other way to get the game.
As for your question OP, I've never used that site, so I can't really say one way or the other, but I highly doubt it contains a virus. I've used abadonia.com in the past and everything I got from there was totally fine. They also have Warcraft II
Happy to help.
In the realm of dystopian sci-fi in the classics, Infocom's A Mind Forever Voyaging is widely considered one of the greatest pieces of sci-fi writing ever achieved in interactive fiction. I've never played it myself, so I can't speak to it personally, but I've heard that it's pretty great if it rubs you right. I think that I've also heard that it can be really, really hard in spots.
Aside from that, I'm sure that there's a ton of more modern (probably more 'playable') IF pieces that fit your genre better, but I can't be much help there I'm afraid. My previous suggestion of "look for things that sound like they have a story that interests you" is about the best that I can do for more modern stuff :)
Shadow President (excuse the Wikipedia-link) is a somewhat, ehm, older game (released in '93) which does basically just this. You control the US during a Cold War-like timeline, and get to make various fidgety tycoon-like political and economical decisions.
Sadly, good luck A) trying to find the game, B) getting it to run on any system alive today, and C) gritting through the child-of-its-time UI. If you manage that, you might just find it to your liking.
ninja-edit: Abandonia to the rescue, it seems; I haven't personally verified the download link nor file, though.
maybe you guys can help, I was looking at gameplay footage of gettysburg and it reminded me of a game I played way back when, I think it was a civil war game as well, I can't quite remember it because it was so long ago, I think it might have been called "fog of war", but I can't find anything useful googling that.
edit, found it, FIELDS OF GLORY
Detroit is an old game where you manage a car company throughout history. It's abandonware too.
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/270/detroit.html
Also this list might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_business_simulation_video_games
I've done some sleuthing, and you were close! My recollection of the gameplay was a little off, but the entire bit about a guy getting cut up by a Dancing Blade spell revealing a skeletal lich is straight from the Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen. This is doubly funny because I had purchased the Might & Magic collection second hand back in the early 2000's but never went through all of them, and I was convinced the game I saw my friend at the time playing some 10 years earlier was different.
If anyone is curious, I got the manual from Abandonia. My next step is to buy the collection from GOG and figure out how to go back and play some games that make Dark Souls seem forgiving by comparison :)
Thanks for your help.
This game? http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/105/Pizza%20Tycoon_1.png
I played the heck out of that game when it came out, absolutely loved it. Pairing the decor of a restaurant with the kind of food was a great gameplay element.
At one point, I found a cheat to increase my funds and I could go all out on a bunch of places, sandbox style.
Arena is a fantastic game but had a different looking UI entirely.
Daggerfall followed suit with the UI and then it was, obviously, completely changed for Morrowind.
The free 1986 version is here. It offends me on some fundamental level that a game that I've played many times for free (because it's so simple) is now a $5 game. REALLY?
I could tell it was a Super Solvers game from your description of the main character, and so I figured out it was Outnumbered
I already support real game archiving. I donated $60 to Abandonia because of the large number of games I had downloaded, and my usual $10 to the Internet Archive last year. I buy as many games as possible from GOG because they have been active in clearing up many legal problems to be able to re-release old titles. There are also legions of fans saving ROMs, many in places beyond the insanity of US copyright (not everybody has been Disneyed).
And, no, I don't want academics with little understanding of gaming choosing what will be saved.
I still haven't seen a game like it. DCS is a better simulator but it doesn't have the pilot career aspect of F-19. If your pilot got shot down, he was dead and you had to start over.
God, I played that game so much.
It's actually available as abandonware, but I'm not sure how well it runs as I haven't tried it yet.
In Simearth it's basically impossible unless you're in "experimental" unlimited energy mode. You need to build shitloads of CO2 converters, then somehow manange to keep them alive while bombarding the planet with ice meteors. It's easy as shit to destroy them and turn it into a hellhole again. The atmosphere is too dense to work with and comes back too easily.
As far as I can tell as a layman, you would need to somehow blow it all off or solidify it somehow and start from scratch.
Mars on the other hand is barely winnable on easy mode. A few comets for water and atmosphere, and you can eventually get tundra and trichordates to populate the place.
I recommend playing the Mars terraforming sim a few times on Experimental to get the hang of it, dropping dozens of comets to get a very deep ocean and atmosphere machines before moving up to the challenge of doing it with limited resources and trying to make it a self-regulating ecosystem. The conundrum there is that the deepest spots with the most air pressure are the ones that would fill up with water first.
I'm going to try it out, looks like you can configure the resolution to a more acceptable level through the DOSbox settings:
http://www.ehow.com/how_8572201_change-dosboxs-simant-resolution.html
Abandonia link for anyone that's interested:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/250/SimAnt+-+The+Electronic+Ant+Colony.html
Way back in the day I used mario teaches typing, http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/987/Mario+Teaches+Typing.html
Because I'm weird and think about educating my future hypothetical children way too much, you might want to consider getting a smaller keyboard for her small hands to encourage proper typing technique: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=keyboard+for+kids&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=Yx3&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivns&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.&biw=1192&bih=637&um=1&ie=UTF-8&t... or something
Check this list of games (filtered to isometric)
Only 5 pages long you should be able to sift through it in about 10 minutes and possibly find it.
Or filtered by Isometric & Medieval at only 2 pages of results.
Ultima shows up in the list.
Stars! was an old 4x space exploration and empire building game that is now abandonware and last time I checked it was problematic to get it running on a 64 bit system. It has elaborate systems for designing ships and playable races.
Were you also able to mix your minions in a special machine to create hybrids? (Don't remember how the game was called, but remember reading about it.)
Upd: the game I'm thinking about is called Dominus.
Between four games and a few books over 30 years the details have changed a bit. This is the current known lore: https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/uid/57ada8969657baeb6e876c6c
Any lore before ED may have been changed to better suit the new game.
There was a paragraph or two from the 1984 manual that gave some detail, but it did not mention they lived in witchspace but rather:
>Thargoid battle-cruisers believed to be able to "hover" in Witch-Space (hyperspace) and destroy through-coming craft http://www.abandonia.com/files/extras/Elite%20Plus_Manual.pdf
In Frontier First Encounters lore the Thargoids had a connection with Ammonia worlds, but the events of that game are only partially true now. In that game the Thargs were suggested as a possibly peaceful race, who had been provoked by humans. The player could have helped cure the human-designed plague that had made them retreat.
Great choices, though there are plenty of amazing games:
- Shufflepuck Cafe - play it online; sadly the sound on the linked site doesn't work properly for me
- Turrican 2
- Rick Dangerous
- Golden Axe
- Monkey Island 1 and 2
- Robocod
- Populous
- Frontier (the best!)
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/221/Ascendancy.html It's an old dos game and the graphics don't hold up well but it's pretty much what you asked for. Unless you are the telepathic species. Then you know all the other species right off the bat.
I remember Afterlife. Very interesting concept... but was definitely a bit confusing. Same with Free Enterprise. And I normally love these types of games.
For me it's entire genres... I suck at (and just can't get in to) any kind of RTS (best experience I had was with CoH and the WarGame series) and Grand Strategy games (Civ is about as deep as I can go... and I still can't get right in to it).
If you really don't mind age or graphics, Stars! is available from abandonia. http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/27002/Stars!.html
It's a good way to spend an evening, but not something you'll keep playing month after month.
Edit: Wait... I just realized... The banner on this subs is Stars!? :P niiice.
Magic Carpet.
Lode Runner, but not the version I know.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (not the more widely known Warcraft 2, which had a slightly different interface).
Mechwarrior 2, the very first game I bought when I got my first proper PC (no Steam sales back then... games were crazy expensive) and one of my favourite games ever to this day. Based on the HUD, the weapon names and the fact that this is not, mercifully, a screenshot from the awful Titanium edition, this must be the Mercenaries sequel. I preferred the original MW2, but Mercenaries was a lot of fun too.
Couldn't agree more. Anyone who enjoyed it should also check out the old Discworld and Discworld 2 games which are both available for free. I can't speak for Discworld Noir, nor it's availability on PC but I presume it's pretty good too.
A quick google search finds Super Solvers - there was also a Number Muncher cut scene where your character climbs up a mountain, which was the first thing I thought of when you said that, but no elves.
It looks like you've already listed all the Western VNs I'm familiar with, but I have a teensy question. If we're allowing raising sims in the list, might we perhaps mention text adventures? I know they aren't VNs so don't deserve a big section, but just brief mention might be nice as if we're looking for hidden gems that VN fans might find interesting then that's where you'll find them.
In particular I'm a big fan of Fredrick Pohl's Gateway games, you can download them free and legally here.
But I'll understand if you don't think they're appropriate as including something like that opens a Pandora's box of endless non-VN inclusions like The Stanley Parables or Gone Home.
Also, back in the ooooold days there were two doctor simulator games, Life and Death and it's sequel. They were painfully hard and graphically quite primitive but worth checking out. I was never able to complete the first operation, which was an apendectomy.
A bunch of the early Command and Conquer games, up until Tiberian Sun I think, are now freeware.
System Shock 1 is also freely available, and a classic.
I was bored by the original Bioshock. I found the design was good, the combat was ok but nothing special, but then I kept having to hack things and think "I'm playing Pipe Mania. This is a game my dad used to play in the early 90s!"
(Not that I want to beat on pipe mania - perfectly good game, for 1989 - but it sort of broke the atmosphere and gameplay experience for me.)
The original Mechwarrior. You start off in a banged up Jenner, all alone, trying to make your way as a merc in the Inner Sphere. To date, I think the Jenner's the most prolific 'mech in the series. It's the only 'mech from the original lineup that wasn't Unseen.
edit: How did it feel? I was about 5 at the time so it felt fucking awesome. I do remember that game getting significantly easier as one's literacy level increased.
I put some names, someone more pertinent to your description, somene less.
- Dementia (Telstar)
- Down in the Dumps
- The Feeble Files
- Innocent Until Caught
- Guilty
What you described remind me of Innocent Until Caught, but it was released in 1994. There is the leather jacket wearing dude, the pronstitute and you start in a spacelike airport. I remeber me and my cousin (we were 11 years old) making lots of attempts with the "red girl", the point was no longer beating the game but "going" with the girl. It was a waste of time. after reading a guide, we understood that it was impossible . :D http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/299/Innocent%20Until%20Caught_5.png
Well, it came out in 1989 so it's pretty old. I still have a copy that I'll occasionally play using Doxbox (you can get the game here: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/264/Sword+of+the+Samurai.html)
It's great though - you're basically a Samurai and your goal is to become Shogun so you rise through various ranks. In doing so, you have specific rivals you have to compete against. You can actually sneak into your rivals' places at night and kidnap their children and wives. It was always great fun to pick on one guy by kidnapping his entire family and then threatening him. Seriously, everybody should download this game right now and play it, it's a classic. :)
Wow, great drawings. I have made games before for older cellphones, but art was never my thing. I learned a lot of pixel art when I did Doom and Wolf3d modding back in the day, but it usually was really blurry.
Ninja Edit: Holy crap, found my old Wolf3d pixel art... here is a flamethrower enemy I did, modding the Schutzstaffel Guard
http://img83.exs.cx/img83/40/09-ATTACK.png http://img84.exs.cx/img84/353/l0qattack.png
Old thread on the creation of that mod. Brings back memories from old Abandonia...
http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=1156&page=3
Hmm. Apparently one cannot 'legally' download the retail version of Jazz Jackrabbit, because it is still sold being sold by Epic (who also made Gears of War and Bulletstorm. Somewhat different no?) for $25. I don't think many people are going to buy it at that price though...
The sequel is classed as abandonware though, and is available for download from abandonia here.
Darklands is set in the Holy Roman Empire during the 15th century. While the geographic setting of the game is historically accurate, the game also includes many supernatural elements base on the lore of that time. http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/194/Darklands.html
I think it might be this one if you want to try the abandonware version http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/5575/Wrath+of+Earth.html
It looks like it’s from the “as quickly as possible churn out games like Duke Nukem” era.
Agreed, they are all awesome.
Discworld 1 and 2 are HARD. Or atleast, they were when I was playing them as a kid. They puzzles just made very little sense and when stuck I'd spend hours going to each location on the map and trying each item in my inventory with each object on the screen, it got real annoying real quick.
That being said, the voice acting is awesome. The artwork is great and the stories are of course wonderful. Lots of hours enjoyed :-)
It's even on 'Abandonia' if anyone wants it. I can't rate this site, never used it.
If it helps, I learned BASIC on Tandy computers in middle school. Even made a simple text RPG with a couple classmates, based around being lost in a school. We pretty much borrowed the concept of text-adventure Amnesia.
My mom was a programmer/analyst for 35 years and taught computer science at a community college during that time (they had day care and easier hours for teachers raising young kids). The first machine she worked on in her couple college courses is sitting in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. We had an Apple IIe about the time I hit elementary school. I was making web pages in HTML in college, with a pirated copy of Photoshop 1.
tl;dr - Computer science evolved very, very quickly. Many "Xennieals" like me were the first generation exposed to a home PC and can still remember green screens, "Cannon Fodder" on the 1gen Mac, etc. I'm only mid-40's.
I don't know this game, but yes, if a came came out for both DOS and Windows (and Google tells me Montezuma's Return did indeed have versions for both operating systems) then they are completely separate entities.
In console terms, the difference between a Windows release and a DOS release is the same as the difference between a PlayStation and an Xbox release. They may look similar, play similar, but they won't run on the same systems.
Anyway, since I Googled on this one of the threads I came upon may have exactly what you're looking for. There's apparently a version of this game called 1.29w which has been modified to run under Windows 7. Have a look at this thread on Abandonia: