xjas wrote on 2020-07-18, 07:47:

Epic's "Fire Fight" from a few years later had some similar gameplay elements and could qualify as a near-successor. Free-roaming, top-down shooters are scarce though.

Engh, kinda. I've played the full version of Fire Fight (I don't own it) and I know from experience that it's a neat game with some fun to be had but is more of a level-based structuring where you clear specific objectives while scouting around mostly linear levels and work with a turreted ship with a fairly unique and unusual arsenal of weapons at its disposal. While it has a few similarities to Zone 66 I would definitely consider them to be very different games. :B

Kosmonaut wrote on 2013-03-19, 04:33:

Hey I heard about your videos via LGR on youtube last week and have since watched most of the episodes, I am hooked, great stuff […]
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Hey I heard about your videos via LGR on youtube last week and have since watched most of the episodes, I am hooked, great stuff!:)

Can you please do another video sometime like the 2000 shareware games video? One of my most cherished memories as a kid was browsing through shareware compilation disks, magazine cover disks and what not, running random games I find and not having a clue what to expect, sometimes being pleasantly surprised and sometimes being horrified. For me, that was what DOS gaming was all about! I would love to see another improv video where you just randomly run some games from a compilation disk, maybe you could do some more from that 2000 shareware games cd.

Regarding youtube, honestly it should be fine, worst that can happen is that after a year or so you get a lot of views and youtube start to scrutinize and possibly take down a few videos (although I think this is unlikely), in which case you can just return to blip and you would have still benefited from the much increased exposure which you can direct to your pixelmusement site if they want to watch the rest of the series, which makes you better off overall. You should also be able to disable comments on your videos if you want.

Also, I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this already, but you should watch your habbit of saying "like I mean" between sentences/clauses, it sounds a bit off, sorry to be a nitpick, your commentary is still great!

(emphasis mine) - so when do I get my royalty check? 😁

But seriously, happy this has turned out to be a successful series for you and happy I may have helped nudge you in that direction!

Ancient DOS Games Mod 8 - Level Editing - SkyRoads is online!

I was really surprised at first how little there was in the way of custom SkyRoads content and editors despite there being TONS of clones and remakes and such. Then when I actually looked into how SkyRoads levels are stored on disk it made too much sense...

But yeah, the editing process itself isn't too bad, though the only working editor I can find is pretty cumbersome to use at first and takes a lot of practice to get any sort of design speed out of it, as you're tripping over its controls every step of the way. In the end though, it does the job, and made it possible for me to put together six custom levels for everyone to download and try out and provide some insights into how levels in SkyRoads actually function!

Also...

Kosmonaut wrote on 2020-07-30, 14:43:

(emphasis mine) - so when do I get my royalty check? :D

But seriously, happy this has turned out to be a successful series for you and happy I may have helped nudge you in that direction!

I wouldn't say "successful" yet, but certainly well enough that I'm paying my half of the bills. I would need to hit twice my current income to properly call it successful because then I'd be earning minimum wage! :B

All joking aside though, getting Patreon stuff going early was the smartest decision I've made by far as it's helped to demonstrate to me that I have one of the most loyal and friendly followings of just about anyone on YouTube; something I am extraordinarily grateful for as I would not have been able to bring the series as far as I have without all the support! (Seriously, only 10% of my income from making ADG and Shovelware Diggers comes from ad revenue and the other 90% comes from Patreon!)

Ha, I had no idea that there even *was* an editor for Skyroads. Nice going!

BTW, I think this is the first time I've ever heard "xmas" pronounced as written ("ex-mass"). Or was that supposed to be "XMS edition"? 😁

VileR wrote on 2020-08-01, 13:19:

BTW, I think this is the first time I've ever heard "xmas" pronounced as written ("ex-mass"). Or was that supposed to be "XMS edition"? :D

If it visually said "Christmas" I would've called it that instead. I prefer not to mince words as I already have trouble actually saying them! :B

Ancient DOS Games Episode 273 - Theme Hospital is online!

Given how much I typically enjoy games made by Bullfrog, it might come as a surprise that there's any exceptions to that rule... but this is one of them. I actually avoided this game for the longest time primarily because of the health care theme, as medicine and medical things all equate to stuff I don't like thinking about unless absolutely necessary.

Playing this game for my first time, I totally understand why people love this game. It's loaded with satire, not a single ailment is real, and it's a well crafted game with only minor quirks to get used to... but I just didn't enjoy playing it at all. We all have our different tastes in aesthetic qualities and this is just not one of the ones that appeals to me even slightly... Don't let that stop you from giving it a try though; there IS a decent game here! :B

Oh nice, an absolute classic ! 😀

Did you try CorsixTH ?

It fixes a lot of issues.

Edit : Ha ! The manual actually makes fun of first time players who didn't read the manual / didn't grasp the game at first.

Edit 2 : My CD has both a DOS and a Windows 9X (Win32 + DirectX) executable on it. It's the european release.

Ancient DOS Games Filler #83 - Useful Gaming Websites is online!

Despite exceedingly loud early morning drilling and a bat problem destroying my ability to sleep this week, I managed to squeeze this video out as I fully intended to do something fast and easy. I think in total I spent maybe 12 hours working on this one, editing and all! :B

But yeah, decided to take a look through 11 gaming websites I still regularly visit and utilize, or just enjoy perusing when I have some spare time... and yes, both the DOSBox website and the VOGONS forums are in that list! ;)

Ancient DOS Games Episode 274 - Toonstruck is online!

...despite spending the whole day and night working on this while writhing in agony from spoiled food due to a malfunctioning fridge.

...yes, seriously. Fridge is replaced now thankfully. :P

But in any case, I kinda went into Toonstruck expecting a game that would be a bit too weird or convoluted but was pleasantly surprised to find the game's actually extremely entertaining and not even remotely convoluted, with some really good puzzle design (for the most part), no walking dead situations, no game overs; it's a solid game in every way!

And yet, it sold really poorly. The mid-to-late 90s (and even the 2000s) were not good periods for graphic adventures, despite some really good ones coming out in that time. :/

Ancient DOS Games Pro 15 - Whip Investigation - Kroz Series is online!

This is something that's always bugged me with the Kroz games, as you'll sometimes be making good progress in a level and suddenly your whips can't even cut through hot butter, and then at some moments it's like the whip's made of freaking force energy. :P

So I decided to investigate the RNG once and for all to figure out what the true odds are for breaking the walls down in Kroz. The result actually turned out rather interesting! (I mean, in a mathematical sort of way... ;)

Ancient DOS Games Episode 275 - Crystal Caves is online!

So... I'd never actually played Crystal Caves until this week... :O

I'm not really sure exactly why I missed it, though I think my logic as a kid with limited modem bandwidth was that I'd rather play the newer stuff than the older stuff. Regardless, because there's an HD remake coming out soon I FINALLY got around to playing this thing and... it's not bad, but it's definitely rough around the edges, thus this video is more about discussing that roughness and making suggestions for how the HD remake could be so much better with just very simple changes/additions! :B

Thanks for the heads up about that remake. Which looks cool, but I gotta wonder about that "HD" buzzword since everything's just as pixellated as before, only recolored! (Not a bad thing mind you, actually a refreshing change compared to certain poor attempts at resolution upgrades.)

I see in the video description you learned about the border changing color. DOSBox doesn't handle this well compared to actual hardware. There's a thread from 2005 discussing it here.

Ancient DOS Games Episode 276 - SWIV 3D is online!

Here's a game I originally played the demo of a long time ago and really enjoyed, but for the longest time I never got to play the full game, and now that I have... well... I like it for sure but MAN is this thing hard! It's that special kind of hard too where it's not that the actual gameplay is challenging, rather, the punishment for making too many mistakes is SEVERE, as you only get one life and getting a game over means having to replay the mission you're on from the beginning. Wouldn't be so bad if each level were only 5~10 minutes long but ALL of these levels each tend to take over a half hour to complete! (Presuming you actually explore and get everything so that you're powered up enough to survive the later levels.)

Ancient DOS Games Pro 16 - AI Investigation - Stunts / 4D Sports Driving is online!

I kinda went into this one expecting it to turn out fairly mundane and got a little more than I bargained for! Yeah, turns out the AI in Stunts isn't as well balanced as it would have you believe and many of the traits described in the driver profiles are either wrong or just plain pointless. Not to mention, they're SUPPOSED to be ordered from worst to best, but that doesn't seem to be the case either! :o

Ancient DOS Games Episode 277 - Realms of the Haunting is online!

So, I already had an idea of what I was getting myself into with this game, but despite that, I was kind of both pleasantly surprised and surprisingly disappointed at the same time. This is game with some extremely fine attention to detail, superb graphics, and even decent acting for an FMV title, but at the same time, has abysmal controls which cannot be reconfigured without a patch update and a story which revels in not explaining anything and leaving everything vague at best.

Suffice to say, this was a tricky one to go over, but I think I did alright on the gameplay/mechanics side of things. For anyone who wants a BIG dose of the story, I linked through to Ross Scott's old video about the game in the video description. ;)

Some clarification. It looks like GOG used the UK release of the game. The "patch" provides the files to convert the UK release to the US release. So owners of the US 4CD set will already have the patched game.

Ancient DOS Games Filler #84 - End of 2020 Update is online!

This is just a quick video talking about what to expect for the rest of the year and how I intend to handle the whole "seasons" thing going forward. :B

Also...

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote on 2020-10-20, 01:00:

Some clarification. It looks like GOG used the UK release of the game. The "patch" provides the files to convert the UK release to the US release. So owners of the US 4CD set will already have the patched game.

Good to know! I'll go add that info to the video description on the video! :)

Ancient DOS Games Filler #85 - Crystal Caves HD is online!

So... wasn't quite expecting to make this followup this soon, but Apogee decided to send me a free copy completely out of the blue, no strings attached, so... here we are! :D

The funny thing is this actually turned out to be a much more involved filler than I thought it would be as there was a lot to discuss not just about the changes I was hoping for, but also some of the new features and some of the minor issues which cropped up as a result of the remaking process. Overall though, I would rather be playing the HD version than the original and I kinda hope more old DOS games get this kind of treatment in the future! ;)

Happy New Year, everyone! :D

Time to get back into the swing of Ancient DOS Games with the first new ADG video of the year: Episode 278 - Zeliard

I actually finally got hold of this game several months back, but wanted to wait until now to do a video on it because I had a feeling it would be perfect to kick off the new year with, and... well, short of the game being VERY DIFFICULT, I wasn't wrong on that point! :B