DOSBox RPGs

[Mikser]

Hey, fastpunk, I'd recommend using VDMSound rather than DOSbox for playing those games. It does a much better and smoother job.

This may've been sound advice in 2005 or so, but you're just shooting yourself in the foot if you persist with it today. DosBox has been massively improved, especially with regards to the speed and stability of the dynamic recompilation core, and since version 0.70 or so it works great for every game I've tried it with, whereas complex games such as Daggerfall or timing sensitive games like Ultima 6/7 are hopelessly buggy/unplayably fast when run with VDMSound and Windows's own virtual DOS machine.

 

[LaDoushe]

Might I also recommend torrents to find DOS games. There is a four-part series out there that has some games that are particularly hard to get otherwise. It had lightspeed, which is pretty much impossible to get, so its likely to have what you need.

 

[Saxon1974]

Bard's Tale is a primitive prehistoric dungeon crawl (get Wizardry 6-7 instead), and Lands of Lore is EOB with eye-candy (get Ishar instead).

Yes the Bard's Tale games are primitive dungeon crawls but they are superbly done and the gameplay is great. Actually the first one was mostly a straight dungeon crawl, but the second and third game had various towns and a wilderness. I prefer them over Wizardy 6 or 7 even though I like those games.

I put Bard's Tale II in my top 10 easily and maybe top 5 games all time. Maybe its nostalgia for me though, it was the first first person dungeon crawl style game I had ever played when it came out back in the 1980's.

 

[Fallouted]

No love for Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus ?

 

[afewhours]

Godammit. I'm jealous that people still get to play all these games for the first time.

 

[JarlFrank]

Might I also recommend torrents to find DOS games. There is a four-part series out there that has some games that are particularly hard to get otherwise. It had lightspeed, which is pretty much impossible to get, so its likely to have what you need.

A four part series of Torrents for DOS-games? Me wants. Where did you find it?

 

[Saxon1974]

Godammit. I'm jealous that people still get to play all these games for the first time.

Many of them I have played before but it was so long ago its pretty much like playing them for the first time. I think I played Bard's Tale II in 1986 or 87 so I would have been only 12 or 13 years old at the time, I remember bits and pieces of the game but not enough to ruin the replay for me.

 

[tunguska]

Great choice on Ultima Underwold. God I love that game. Some folks were trying to do a remake of it with more modern graphics but they never finished it. That's something that I would like to do. Finish that remake for them. Also play Ultima Underworld II. It isn't quite as good as the first of course, but it is still very, very good and the graphics are noticeably better. Thinking about those meats on a stick still gets me hungry. Arena is definitely also an excellent choice, although not in the same league as the underworlds.Also if you haven't played Daggerfall it too is well worth some play time. Although still sand box games, those first two from Bethesda were pretty good sandbox games. That was before they were bought out by Zenimax.

I remember the folks on the Compuserve games forum were completely gaga for Betrayal at Krondor. So I bought the game but I could never get into it. I would also give Shadows Over Riva a try. Nice battle chess kind of RPG, although it could get a bit frustrating at times.

No one has mentioned Stonekeep. If you can find it that may be good for a laugh. I could never play it due to the static movement. I remember waiting and waiting and waiting for that game and it was such a disappointment to everyone when it was finally released. Damn Interplay.

Now get off my lawn!

 

[mirrorshades]

A couple sources for old games.

Abandonia and The Underdogs are more or less the premier sites. In order to keep on the up and up, they do remove links to games when the copyright holder raises a stink. (Although I've actually been able to download games off The Underdogs anyway; I think they just remove the download link from the page... you can still hack it manually and it should work.)

Abandonware Ring ( http://www.abandonwarering.com/?Page=Listing ) may get you going into some of the smaller sites.

Check your favorite torrent site for "DOS Collection" or "Memories Project" for some fancy goodness.

Also, if you can navigate IRC, you can take a look at #oldgames on EFNet. ( http://defaced.co.uk/oldgames/ ) When everywhere else has failed, this IRC channel has never let me down... there are a few bots there that maintain very thorough collections, even including different versions of the same game, and different "rips" (e.g. by different groups) of the same game.

So I don't get banned, I'll say that whatever your own take on the matter is, it *is* still a violation of copyright to download a game that has not been released freely. There are some sites out there that only offer games that have been released by the publisher (of which there are a surprising number). You can also look at Abandonia's sister site, Abandonia Reloaded, for game remakes and games inspired by the classics: http://www.reloaded.org/ -- some good stuff there with enough old school flavor to give you your fix.

 

[headache]

Great resources here, I'm bookmarkng it. I got a shiny new computer, have played out the new games I wanted on Steam... and soon found myself playing X-Com and Wasteland on DOSBox.

A tip on how you can be a grafix whore with DOSBox: play with the scaler option in the .conf file. With it set to advmame3x, I am playing X-Com in fullscreen-widescreen (it works perfect in 16:9!) with jaggies smoothed out nicely. Also, if by chance there are any other Vista chumps like me around here, I can reassure that everything has worked fine on Vista.

 

[cazsim83]

slight necro - but I just thought I'd point out you can download at least one of the games you originally asked about, from abandonia, your one-stop legal downloading abandonware shop.

(also a slightly shameless plug, since I'm part of the news staff over there)

http://abandonia.com/en/games/208/Betra ... ondor.html

You can't download Eye of the Beholder mostly because the ESA are fags, along with their affiliates, but hey, whatever.

As a small consolation prize, if you google (or go to) vimm.net and look up EotB under SNES, you can get the first in the series, although you'll have to download an emulator from the same site, but it works pretty well and I've used it often for a lot of old SNES games I've found there.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions - I'll be lurking now and again.

 

[fastpunk]

slight necro - but I just thought I'd point out you can download at least one of the games you originally asked about, from abandonia, your one-stop legal downloading abandonware shop.

(also a slightly shameless plug, since I'm part of the news staff over there)

http://abandonia.com/en/games/208/Betra ... ondor.html

You can't download Eye of the Beholder mostly because the ESA are fags, along with their affiliates, but hey, whatever.

As a small consolation prize, if you google (or go to) vimm.net and look up EotB under SNES, you can get the first in the series, although you'll have to download an emulator from the same site, but it works pretty well and I've used it often for a lot of old SNES games I've found there.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions - I'll be lurking now and again.

I'm playing some Ultima Underworld every once in a while but I'll be starting Betrayal at Krondor and/or Darklands when I have more free time. The info is appreciated though. :D

 

[Wyrmlord]

Hmm, there's something that has really bothered me about some of these older early 90s games.

Alot of these first-person party-based RPGs use only one-ninth of the screen for showing the world. The rest will be occupied by avatars, arrow buttons, options,.etc. When playing the game, would the player really be paying attention to anything other than the world and moving around in it? This is why I just could not get into Wizardry VII.

I thought Betrayal At Krondor was just right, because the world occupied most of the screen and you had only the three avatars and the six icons at the bottom of the screen and they did all that you needed to do. There were no excessive superfluous interface elements cluttering the screen.

 

[Zomg]

In most of the step blobbers like the early Might and Magics the "viewport" was small because there wasn't much detail to bother showing. In games like Ultima Underworld the viewport was small because, given the rendering method, any bigger view area would have caused the badass computers of the era to choke anyway.

Edit - Looking at Wizardry VII videos on Youtube, I guess this wasn't what you were talking about. I dunno why they fagged it up with so much interface.

 

[aboyd]

Dark Sun 1+2:
http://retrogames.intranet.hu/sub/darksun.zip
http://retrogames.intranet.hu/sub/dsun2.zip

Yes. Somebody recommended those to me a while ago and I loved them. I thought that I had played through all the Baldur's Gate/Planescape-ish games I could find. Finding Dark Sun was like getting a second dose. Thanks to whoever suggested it to me.

 

[mondblut]

In most of the step blobbers like the early Might and Magics the "viewport" was small because there wasn't much detail to bother showing. In games like Ultima Underworld the viewport was small because, given the rendering method, any bigger view area would have caused the badass computers of the era to choke anyway.

Edit - Looking at Wizardry VII videos on Youtube, I guess this wasn't what you were talking about. I dunno why they fagged it up with so much interface.

Back in 92 or so the game was supposed to fit on 2-3 3.5" diskettes. The larger the playing window resolution, the larger are corridor bitmaps and monster sprites (which take up 90% of game graphics), the bigger the game, the more diskettes it occupies and the more expensive to produce and purchase it therefore becomes. Compare it to Clouds or Darkside of Xeen - the size of the world and amount of enemies is about the same, the window is 1.5 times larger, and the game is like 10 times as large bytewise.

Besides, there isn't much details to bother showing anyway. DM/EOB type realtime games aside, there aren't even pickable items onscreen, they are handled via special interface; and wall bitmaps are all the same anyway. I typically spend far more time looking at automap than at actual world view in such games.

 

[Binary]

I feel I have to mention one gem that Codexers overlook, Legend aka Four Crystals of Trazere.

If you can overcome the fact it has real time non pausable combat, you have one of the best RPGs ever. (definitely best magical system ever)

 

[Zakhal]

You can't download Eye of the Beholder mostly because the ESA are fags, along with their affiliates, but hey, whatever.

Som stores are still selling eye of the beholder trilogy in the value edition of forgotten realms archives.

 

[BloodyJellySubmarine]

I have to play Wiz7, or at least try to. Anyone know how to get it running? I downloaded the files from the link posted, but I don't know how to get it running. I'm well-versed in dosbox and vdmsound, but I don't know if I need to install it or what. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Fenril]

Give "Bloodnet" a try if you like cyberpunk settings, good dialog, a few cliches but overall a decent story, great atmosphere, quite hard in its own style, the character development aspect is very underdone im afraid.

Another fairly unknown old school rpg, actually a shareware production that I enjoyed was "The Aethra Chronicles", sort of a tweaked rip off of DnD for stats and other things, but the combat, exploration and character development can get addicting fast.

 

[JarlFrank]

I have to play Wiz7, or at least try to. Anyone know how to get it running? I downloaded the files from the link posted, but I don't know how to get it running. I'm well-versed in dosbox and vdmsound, but I don't know if I need to install it or what. Any help would be appreciated.

http://www.abandonia.com/en/forum?url=s ... .php?t=995
Try that thread, I think I found a solution in there back when I played it.

 

[mondblut]

"The Aethra Chronicles", sort of a tweaked rip off of DnD for stats and other things

Tweaked ripoff? Aethra uses the Rolemaster pnp system, which is almost as old and venerated as D&D itself.

 

[jaylittle]

A word of warning: Every single build of Darklands that I've ever gotten off the web has been bugged. Oh sure they start and work but you can't seem to complete any quests. The only good version I have, is one that I bought on a CD years and years ago. That worked out well until I made my way into some underground complex where fiery creatures ripped me to shreds.

And if you want the single best collection of PC-DOS games that I've ever seen (without regard to copyright issues), there is a British torrent site called Pleasuredome that I'm part of that hosts it. It's a ratio torrent site, but joining is free from hassle and requires no invitation. It's about 17 gigabytes of compressed DOS gaming. Truly awe inspiring.

 

[BloodyJellySubmarine]

Thanks Jarfrank. Got it up and saving. Here we go....