VOGONS


List of Older DOS Games that Run too Fast

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First post, by fsmith2003

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I was curious if there was a list that exist on some older DOS games from the 80's that would run too fast on say a mid 90s era PC? I want to test out my turbo button on a 486 with one of these older games.

Reply 1 of 20, by Zup

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Most CGA stuff.

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Reply 2 of 20, by derSammler

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Wing Commander 1

Reply 3 of 20, by fsmith2003

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Ok cool! I will check into WC1 and some other CGA games and see how they work. Thanks.

Reply 4 of 20, by Tiido

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Supaplex apparently runs at twice the speed on hardware much faster than 286. There's a fix (and other improvements) available for that game under name spfix63.

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Reply 5 of 20, by Errius

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Zup wrote:

Most CGA stuff.

I was amused to find recently that the original booter of Dig Dug (1983) runs perfectly fine on a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 6 of 20, by leileilol

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Almost all SCI games from 90-93.
Older Bullfrog games (i.e. Theme Park)

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Reply 8 of 20, by gdjacobs

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Deathtrack (1989)

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Reply 9 of 20, by clueless1

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Lode Runner, Ultimas I to VII Pt.1, Might & Magic I to V. Also, check here:
http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_C … sensitive_games

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Reply 10 of 20, by noshutdown

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i think bullfrog's magic carpet runs too fast, so fast that i can't even see what the game is all about.

Reply 11 of 20, by leileilol

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they capped it in the sequel thankfully enough

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Reply 13 of 20, by Revolter

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clueless1 wrote:

Lode Runner, Ultimas I to VII Pt.1, Might & Magic I to V. Also, check here:
http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_C … sensitive_games

More games for this list:

Battle Zone (1980), disable L1 cache + use Throttle and adjust it to ~XT
Conan The Cimmerian (1991), disable L1 cache to correct the overhead view movement speed
Defender (1983), disable L1 cache + use Throttle and adjust it to ~XT
Dune II (1992), use Throttle and adjust it to ~Pentium 1 for audio to correctly initialize on fast PIII's
Gabriel Knight (1993), disable L1 cache to fix certain timed events (Day 6 and police precinct, for example)
Grand Theft Auto (1997), use Throttle and adjust it to ~Pentium 1 to remove the speed-related glitches in the main menu
Prophecy I: The Viking Child (1991), disable L1 cache + use Throttle and adjust it to ~386
RoboCop 3 (1992), disable L1 cache + use Throttle and adjust it to ~386
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996), use Throttle and adjust it to ~Pentium 1 to remove the animation and jumping glitches

By "Throttle" I mean this thingy: http://www.oldskool.org/pc/throttle/DOS/

It is capable of introducing cycle skipping (unlike mo'slo etc.), effectively making CPU work at a lower frequency for the purpose of software performance (the real frequency remains unchanged) - kinda like ghetto ODCM. It requires ACPI (so Pentium II onwards).

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Reply 15 of 20, by Exploit

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A nice list where all these games are collected and listed would be great.
In principle, the games can be divided into three categories:
1. Games that use a hardware clock or hardware timer and therefore always have the right speed, no matter how fast the processor is.
2. Games that don't do that. And implement delays via program loops that the CPU only has to process. These games run too fast on fast machines and are thus usually unplayable or need some sort of slowdown.
3. Games, that use a mix of both. These games use usually a hardware timer for game-relevant processes, for example, but animations are classically implemented through a program loop. The latter causes the animations to play too quickly on fast PCs.

For the above List:
* Oil Imperium, also known as Black Gold from ReLine Software is another one. It is playable on a 286er. But on a 486 it is much too fast when drilling for oil. This game belongs to category 2.

Reply 16 of 20, by ux-3

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Careful with throttle. It may break sound.

Retro PC warning: The things you own end up owning you.

Reply 17 of 20, by Skoynay

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Hi - Octane runs too fast even in Dosbox, and all of this happened in an old PC. Or maybe there is a patch for it.

Reply 18 of 20, by clueless1

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Exploit wrote on 2024-07-05, 18:07:

A nice list where all these games are collected and listed would be great.

You are in luck.
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … sensitive_games

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks