What is your favorite MS DOS games?

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I have been playing a lot of MS DOS games lately. The likes of Doom, Elder Scrolls Arena, and other games like it come to mind.

Since I want to expand my gaming library beyond Doom and Arena, I though I'd be wise to ask around in this section of WP what is your favorite MS DOS video game(s) you have played.

It can be any game so long as it has to run on MS DOS.

-Eva

Tyrian. Great shooter with huge amount of gameplay.

Sounds like an awesome game! I'll check it out.

I typically go for older games myself. As in, MUCH older. If you know what CGA is, it's going all the way back to that. Many fond memories of those days.

Arctic Adventure was always a favorite of mine. I never could finish it as a kid, recently I finally did it.

Also loved the entire Kroz series.

And then ZZT and Megazeux were freaking legendary as far as I was concerned. I must have spent a bazillion hours with both of them. They were the earliest type of "Mario Maker" or "LittleBigPlanet" games that I know of. I still remember, when travelling, playing (or trying to play) ZZT on this ridiculously ancient "laptop" that had a monochrome LCD screen (so absolutely everything was a sort of blueish color on a clear background), and despite it being a rather simple ASCII game, that machine could barely handle it. Ah, how technology has changed since then. I wonder whatever happened to that thing.

It occurs to me that I had ALOT of games that were rendered in ASCII like those two were.

....And I still have alot of them that are rendered in ASCII even today. Kinda amazing that graphical style has stuck around for so freaking long, but it is indeed still common even now. Always been fond of it. Dwarf Fortress being the most prominent example.

Jetpack was another favorite, from the days of VGA. That one is very well known. Spent so much time with the excellent level editor.

Round 42 was a Galaxian-style shooter I loved. Lots of variety in that one.

And then Flightmare (another CGA one) was... er... something. There wasnt and still isnt anything quite like that game. Learning curve of nightmares but I really liked it.

For arcade-style games, there was Digger (CGA). I was terrible at it back then. I'm still terrible at it. It actually had, for no reason I could figure out, a remake on the PS3 (which also contained the CGA version, which must be unique among console games).

Finally, Thexder. That got a much more direct remake on the PS3 as well, where the gameplay (right down to hitboxes and stuff) was replicated *exactly* but the graphics were redone in 3D. Both that and the original were fantastic (and extremely hard). Very unique game mechanics, that one.

I have less fond memories of the DOS version of Megaman. That... that was not so good. Only three Robot Masters, and I never even got to the selection screen because I could never get past the horrid opening level with those godforsaken dogs.


I miss DOS. It simply did what I told it, unlike Windows. And I miss the simplicity of games back then. They werent all about freaking graphics or having a million cutscenes.


Honestly I could just keep listing endless examples of these but that's enough for now.

- One Must Fall 2097
- Syndicate
- Dune II
- Duke Nukem 3D
- Blood
- Hexen
- Warcraft II
- Llamatron 2112
- Carmageddon
- Descent II
- Dungeon Keeper
- Raptor: Call of the Shadows
- Turrican II
- Falcon 3.0
- Traffic Department 2192

Just some of my faves that haven't been mentioned yet.

Star Control 3

I like games like Zork, and Wolfenstein 3D.

The CHAMP games are really good if you're looking for recreations of classic arcade games like Donkey Kong and Galaga. Early versions of Zelda Classic also had DOS releases, and they're pretty neat if you're a fan of the original Legend of Zelda and want to make custom maps and stuff.

I used to really enjoy the DOS version of Battle Arena Toshinden, even though it's honestly not that great of a fighting game. Still has nice music and extremely configurable graphics settings though. If I remember correctly, it took something like a Pentium II 300MHz to run it at 60 fps in 320x200.

Jazz Jackrabbit is another game I used to like. I played it in slow motion mode though because you move extremely fast otherwise, and you have a limited viewport. It's basically Sonic with guns.

ROGUE

XCOM : UFO Defense. I really wanted to get into Daggerfall but I could never get the bug-fixes to work.

NFL Challenge was one I really enjoyed. We even had a league where we took all the players from the team rosters and had a draft. I drafted Joe Montana and went to the Superbowl.
Another I enjoyed was Harpoon.
Of course Wing Commander 3, and the best star wars game ever Tie fighter.

Tie Fighter was awesome with the Side Winder joystick. I used to love flying inbetween two enemy capital ships and getting them to start killing each other once they shot at me, missed, hit each other, and became hostile to one another lol.

Well, I do like to play Elder Scrolls Arena CD version, but that's because you can download it from a couple of places where it's been DOSBox configured. Also, I play the game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on Twitter under the name @WizardryPony . For an hour or so I play the game and tweet about what happens. Each member of the party is named after the mane six from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. If you like first person RPGs with wireframe graphics, you might want to check that one out.

Doom. 'Nuff said.

The classics:

Shoot em up walk through RPG Games.
The Catacomb series.
The Wolfenstein series.
The Duke Nukem series.

Space oriented games:
The Wing Commander series: An interesting, award winning game series in which you are fighting humanity's arch nemesis, the Kilrathi, with a "choose your own adventure" type nature and story line filmed like a movie, with Mark Hamil, Malcom McDowell and other actors. There are spin offs which do not have live filmed parts, such as Wing Commander Privateer, in which you are engaged in space commerce.

Solar Winds, but it's time intensive. If it takes 2 hours for your ship to get somewhere, it actually takes two hours. There's a sequel which was not widely distributed and is difficult to find.

Then of course there are a variety of Star Trek and Star Wars games.

Strategy:
Sanitarium

But unless you are making money off of it somehow, gaming can quickly become a waste of time better spent doing more productive things.

I remember that game fondly, though I only ever played the first episode which was released as shareware. Back in those days it was typical of game developers to release a first 'episode' as shareware, which often had quite a lot of content.