Years ago, Sam Gabrielsson ran The Tower of Pin site (http://www.pcpinball.com) devoted to computer pinball games. However, he also hosted some other games that he had written as HAND Productions, and some of these were DOS games or Win9x screensavers usually involving cows. You can still get most of the files via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080921124216/ht … misc/games.html
HAND Productions: https://web.archive.org/web/20080705054925/ht … nball.com/hand/

Also, the Go community has promoted David Fotland's (Smart Games) Igo as a free introductory program for Go players, although it hasn't garnered a lot of interest since the advent of Windows and the Windows-oriented Igowin: https://www.smart-games.com/igo.html

Good read on the preservation effort & download of the unreleased 1988 DOS game Thrust.

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2023/09/thrust/

Recently I've stumbled across quite obscure DOS games that have Amiga connections, but very little information in them is available:

(The) Puzzle Pits/Puzzle Pits '95, which I found via dosgames.com. It's a Soko-Ban variant with a plot of sorts, in a fantasy setting. I got stuck in one level and was trying to find a video walkthrough, but the only videos I found were for the Amiga release called Puzzle Pits II, which looks and seemingly plays the same, but has a pretty lengthy intro sequence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5UqKGDDNGs&p … SBwaXRzIg%3D%3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drO3nMyRcjs&p … SBwaXRzIg%3D%3D

The second game is a first-person grid-based RPG called Daymare I, which appears to have also been released on Amiga as The Mystic Well. The freeware DOS version comes with no documentation whatsoever, but the MobyGames description and screenshots suggest that the Amiga version might have had more features, like selectable character classes.

I'd appreciate any information on these two, if only just out of curiosity.

I decided to update my old list of free closed source games and did a major overhaul, both in terms of genre classification and the number of games featured. Here are some highlights (this is not the entire list but a sizeable chunk of it):

Adventure - Action-Adventure
Black Orb, The
SPISPOPD
Tower of the Sorcerer

Adventure - First-Person
Beasts
Beauties and Beasts
Desperabis
Fedora Spade
Great Mystery of Kheops, The
Missing
StarFight VI: Gatekeepers
Thor's Hammer

Adventure - Graphic
Denarius Avaricius Sextus
Lord Avalot d'Argent
Voodoo Girl

Adventure - Interactive Fiction
Empire of the Over-Mind
House that Nobody Wanted, The
Lost Crown of Queen Anne, The
Murder in the Mediterranean
Temple of Death, The

Adventure - Interactive Fiction (illustrated)
Crimson Crown, The
Oo-Topos
Talisman: Challenging the Sands of Time
Transylvania
Transylvania III: Vanquish the Night

Adventure - Point-and-click
5 Days A Stranger
7 Days A Skeptic
6 Days A Sacrifice
Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator Case 1 - In Search of the Skunk-Ape
Broken Sword 2.5: The Return of the Templars ~ ScummVM
Cosmos Quest
Eye of the Kraken
King's Quest III VGA Remake
Nippon Safes, Inc. ~ ScummVM
Runaway
Space Quest II VGA Remake
Stowaway
Udoiana Raunes - Special Edition

Adventure - Zelda style
BobQuest
GemWorld
Legend of Lezda, The: The Adventure of Jinx

Adventure - Other
Crime Fighter
Space Kids
TechnoVenture

Arcade - Arkanoid/Breakout
3D Pulsoid
BIPROLEX+
Blockage
Break Machine
Breakout (Ken Silverman)
Enigma (Geckosoft)
MEGA BreakOut
PopCorn ~ PopCorn 1988
PowBall [download] ~ PowBall Deluxe
Pulsoid

Arcade - Bomberman
Bombs And Bugs
Dstroy
Fracas
Mine Bombers
Xplosive

Arcade - Frogger
DIV Frogger
Revenge of Froggie

Arcade - Pac-Man
Greedy ~ Open Greedy
Munch Man
Pako

Arcade - Sports
Arcade Volleyball ~ GAV
Hairy Harry

Acrade - Other
Hopmon
Trick Blast

Educational
Aro & Elmi
BabyType
Blupi at Home
Blupi Explorer
Bug Brain
Color Wizard, The
Der Name des Bruders [download]
No Future?

Fighting - Beat'em up / Brawler
Bonkers
Executioners
Franko: The Crazy Revenge
Little Fighter
Little Fighter 2

Fighting - Versus
Invincible
Tough Guy

Platformer - Cinematic
1213
Blackthorne
Iji
onEscapee
Skull Quest 1, The Cyan Sarcophagus
Skull Quest 2, The Vortex
Umbrella Adventure

Platformer - Hop and Bop
A Game with a Kitty
Akiko and Minami
Giana's Return
Giant Worlds [download] [installer]
Great Giant Sisters, The
Mister Kid
Stargirl and the Thief from the Exploded Moon
Todd's Adventures

Platformer - Lode Runner-like
Drilling Billy
Flynn Sprint
Infiltrator
Jetpack
Jetpack Christmas Special!
Lode Runter Maniac
Widget & Gold

Platformer - Metroidvania
Castlevania 2: The Lecarde Chronicles
Eternal Daughter ~ REternal Daughter
Haunted Castle II
HooperVania
Knight of Exile
Maria Renard's Revenge
MetroGalactica
Power, The
Silver Night's Crusaders
XGA

Platformer - Puzzle
Boondog
Happyland Adventures
Janitor Dan the Spaceman
Lao's Quest
Mick
Quadrax
Sint Nicolaas
Toffifee Fantasy Forest
Top Hat Willy
Trilby: The Art of Theft

Platformer - Shooter
Acter World
Beez
Cool Cat
Jack Flash [download]
Noitu Love & The Army of Grinning Darns
Pekka Kana 2
Putty Squad
Santaman
Special Agent
T2002
Tailchaser
Tom & Jerry
Tricky Quicky Games
Troy

Platformer - Other
Bonesaw: The Game

Puzzle - Bust-A-Move / Puzzle Bobble
Ball Blaster
Bubble Puzzle
Scrambled Eggs

Puzzle - Crillion
Crillion 97
Frozen Fruits
Frozen Fruits 2
HitBlock / HitBlock Deluxe
Summer Bound

Puzzle - Boulder Dash
Adventures of Robbo ~ GNURobbo
Cave Chaos
Cave Chaos 2
Digger (Harald Winkler)
Dot Valley
Fatal Dash
HamsterJam [download]
Heartlight PC
New Dash Dimension, The
Rock 'n' Spin
RockRush
RoX
StoneAge 1
Supaplex ~ OpenSupaplex, Supaplex Online
TunnelMan, The

Puzzle - Falling block
Blockout
Bref 2.0
Columns (Brian Boese)
FitUp!
Super ACiD Block Attack
Tetris Pro (Craig Rothwell)
Tetrix
Tristix

Puzzle - Lemmings-like
Ducks
Hamsters

Puzzle - Rolling ball
Ballgame 2
Ball Blazing Fantasy

Puzzle - Soko-Ban
Block-O-Mania
BOB and His Amazing Journey Home
Capt'n Squiddy's Bootleg Push-Push
Clone
Continuing Adventures of Cyberbox, The
Cyberbox
Pufiban!
Puzzle Pits, The

Puzzle - Tile matching
Boppin'
Japure
Marbleicious

Puzzle - Other
Bombzuka
Bricks
Fluffy Deluxe
Fool's Errand, The
Laser Tank
MonoKrome
Taking Care of Business
xyWords

Role-Playing - Dungeon crawler / Roguelike
Beneath Apple Manor
ELONA - Eternal League of Nefia
Telengard ~ Telengard Remake

Role-Playing - First-Person
Crawler
Daymare 1
Daymare 2
Escape from Ragor

Blobber
Bard's Lore, The
City Beneath the Surface
Darkside of the Sun
Gates of Integrity
Gene Splicing
Tower of Fortune

Role-Playing - jRPG
DarkPhear
Fenix Blade

Role-Playing - Ultima style
Dragon Engine
Helherron
Joyous Rebel
Kingdom of Syree, The
Kingdom of Syree II, The: Black Magic
Nahlakh
Realmz [reg. codes]

Role-Playing - Other
Heroine's Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok
Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire

Shooter - First-Person
Alien Cabal [download]
Chemical Warfare
Hades 2 [download]
Industrial Killers
Pencil Whipped
Renegade X: Black Dawn
Soldier of Empire
Soldner: Secret Wars
TECNO - The Base [download]
Trench Warfare
Wolfschanze 1944

Shooter - Fixed/wraparound screen
Submarine Fury

Buster Bros / Pang
Bubble Jeopardy
PANGG!

Centipede
Crawly-Pede
Megapede'95

Choplifter
Airlift Rescue

Defender
Abductor
Glook

Robotron
Llamatron
Robotica

Snake / Nibbles
Snake (Abhijeet Meshram)
Snake (Ilija Mihajlov)
Zonker

Space Invaders / Galaga
Cash Invaders
Cheesy Invaders
Cosmic Ambush
Galacta: The Battle for Saturn
Space Crusaders

Shooter - Isometric
Outbound

Shooter - Side-scrolling
Attack of the Mutant Camels (John M. Dow)
Hydorah
Operation Vulture III: Cyber Chopper
Operation Vulture IV: Escape from Station 7
STARCOM
Revenge of the Mutant Camels

Shooter - Third-Person
Frenetic
Frenetic Plus
Noxious
Path of Shadows
Warscape Alpha

Shooter - Top-down
Alien Assault II
Alien Breed: Obliteration
Alien Breed Remake (Rob Farley) [download]
Bert Higgins: The Man from H.E.L.L.
Enemy Lines
Factor X

Shooter - Vertical scrolling
Cosmo Dragon
Firecrow
Invasion Alien
Vanguard Ace: Vertical Madness
XOP Ultra
XOP Black Ultra

Simulation - Mecha
Giants of Steel [download]

Simulation - Rail
Mechanik [alternate page]
RAILSIM

Simulation - Space
BACKLASH: A Turret Gunner Simulation
Babylon 5: I've Found Her - Danger & Opportunity
Battlecruiser 3000 A.D.
Battlecruiser 3000 A.D. v2.09
LineWars II
Orbiter
RiftSpace [download]
Star Wraith 2 [download]
Star Wraith 3: Shadows of Orion [download]
Star Wraith IV: Reviction [download]
Universal Combat Free Full Singleplayer

Sports - Football / Soccer
Football Glory

Sports - Racing
Overheat
RetroFuel

Strategy - City-Building
City of Rauma
I, Mayor
Kulavanem

Strategy - Real-Time
Command & Conquer: Dawn of Tomorrow
Devolution - Global Warming
Fertile Crescent, The
House Globe
Loria
R.A.D. - Rapid Area Deployment
Subpar Commander
Trash
Twisted Insurrection

Strategy - Real-Time Tactics
Battleships Forever
MechCommander Gold

Strategy - Turn-based
Lost Castle, The
War of the Solstice, The
War of the Atomic Gods

Traditional - Boardgame
Ishido
Viking Siege

Here are the original downloads of liberated games by the Polish developer L.K. Avalon:
http://www.lkavalon.info/lka/index.php3?dzial=dow
http://lkavalon.com:80/download.html

Alternate downloads (also Wayback Machine):
Sfinx
Soltys
Skaut Kwatermaster

MrFlibble wrote on 2023-11-15, 13:58:

Recently I've stumbled across quite obscure DOS games that have Amiga connections, but very little information in them is availa […]
Show full quote

Recently I've stumbled across quite obscure DOS games that have Amiga connections, but very little information in them is available:

(The) Puzzle Pits/Puzzle Pits '95, which I found via dosgames.com. It's a Soko-Ban variant with a plot of sorts, in a fantasy setting. I got stuck in one level and was trying to find a video walkthrough, but the only videos I found were for the Amiga release called Puzzle Pits II, which looks and seemingly plays the same, but has a pretty lengthy intro sequence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5UqKGDDNGs&p … SBwaXRzIg%3D%3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drO3nMyRcjs&p … SBwaXRzIg%3D%3D

I've found a bit more info about this game. It looks like the Amiga Puzzle Pits II by Abe Pralle indeed came first and was a shareware thing. It was even covered in an issue of the CGW magazine (No. 112, Nov. 1993):
https://archive.org/details/Computer_Gaming_W … e/n115/mode/2up

Some bits of information about this game's development background can be gleaned from this snapshot of the "About Us" page on the former Plasma Works website:

Plasma Works was started by John Abe and Abe Pralle (hitherto referred to as John and Abe). John sat behind Abe in a chemistry class at Northern Arizona University in 1993. They didn't know each other (nor have they ever shared another class), but John spotted a review of Abe's Amiga shareware game "Puzzle Pits 2" (long story) in Computer Gaming World. The two soon found out they shared a common passion for and a common vision of computer games. They've been friends and game designers ever since.

The company appears to have been founded initially to port the game to the PC and sell it. I've no idea why the story with the evil wizard's spell was dropped in favour of a more vague setting where a wizard's apprentice needs to solve the puzzles for the sake of training his mind.

I was able to find the demo, which includes three unique levels, on an even older page of Plasma Works:
http://www.infomagic.com/~plasma/Pits/aboutpits.html

They included some pretty though levels in the demo, which they probably shouldn't have because I'm afraid that it might have scared the potential players.

BTW, I figured out the puzzle I'd got stuck at last time. It was using a certain mechanic that is never explained and you must figure it out on your own through trial and error. It's pretty clever, but again, I'm afraid that this kind of difficulty has not been conducive to building a fanbase for what is actually a very decent game.

Here's another batch of completely random finds, resulting from chaotic dips into the Wayback Machine.

• BlockOut OpenGL & WinBlock -- two BlockOut clones/remakes
• Deluxe Snake -- very neat Nibbles variant made with Allegro
• Halflight -- good quality vertical-scrolling shmup made with Allegro
• CRTetris -- Tetris variant with an option to create your own themes (Allegro)
• Rally Cross -- freeware top-down racing
• Maruni Land -- some kind of platform game
• AtroriX -- breakout clone
• Airpro -- airline management simulation (text only)

Not really a game, but a new DOS "toy" to play around with. Reminds me of the Electronic Arts Kaleidoscope demo disk that came with the original Commodore Amiga.

https://bjbest60.itch.io/psychesketch

Just found this really nice Tetris variant called Fairtris 2: The Ultimate Challenge, written in Pascal.

Does Nectaris for Windows qualify?

Wikipedia explains it was available for free from the publisher's site and the download has been successfully archived.

ludicrous_peridot wrote on 2024-12-06, 18:18:

Does Nectaris for Windows qualify?

Nectaris rings a faint bell, lemme check...

Indeed you're right, this info is found on the Military Madness Wikipedia page (which I did not immediately recognize as I went to the page titled Nectaris), and indeed the download links for what seem to be Win95 and Win98 versions of the game (rather unusual to distinguish between the two platforms) are available. The Win32 installer unpacks an InstallShield Setup routine which is for Win16, it works with winevdm, but everything is in Japanese, and I don't even have the correct fonts on my system. I guess that without the fonts, the game will have garbage for interface, and if I get those installed, it will be in Japanese, which I don't know (perhaps it's time to start learning?). Anyway, nice find, thanks!

I would be keen to try and get it running in an English version of Win98SE myslef, since this seems to be the precursor for both Dune 2 and Advance Wars, but sadly can't stand military games since few years ago... 😀

So taking an opportunity to mark it for inclusion into a list I might one day want to revisit.

There's a fairly interesting article on Nectaris I was reading the other day: https://retroxp.substack.com/p/remembering-hu … n-soft-military

ludicrous_peridot wrote on 2024-12-07, 15:10:

I would be keen to try and get it running in an English version of Win98SE myslef, since this seems to be the precursor for both Dune 2 and Advance Wars, but sadly can't stand military games since few years ago... 😀

I found some screenshots of the Windows version, and it appears that I was wrong and the game does not rely on Windows menus very heavily after all. It's still in Japanese though. I might give it a try at some point, since the visuals are pretty nice. I also think that, having never played it, I remembered the title because the FOSS games Crimson Fields might have been characterised as a Nectaris clone or inspired game (perhaps).

In other news, I was finally able to track down the freeware version of Centaur which is a pretty obscure DOS-based chess engine. The game was sold in the early 90s, but in 2003 its author gave the free version to the developer of another chess programme called Adamant to upload for public distributions, but the site is long gone and the Wayback Machine has not preserved the file:
http://adamant1.fromru.com/files.html

Luckily, this free version 3.0 was found in a private collection, and I uploaded it here (the ZIP archive is not original but the date stamps on the files seem to be): centaurdos.zip

Here's a couple of screenshots:

As a kid I used to have Cyrus, which has kind of a similar presentation with the 3D-rendered board. I might have also seen Centaur somewhere, but I'm not sure.

There's also a Win3.x version, which you can still download off the Wayback Machine from the link above, but it lacks the 3D board, and the program itself is updated with code from yet another chess engine, Mirage. The Win3.x version works rather well in winevdm.