Back in the day they really tried to cater for the computers that were out there. As computers were quite pricey, people tended to keep them around for longer, and wanted to get the maximum use out of their investments. The construction of the early home computers were quite robust, and made to last for a very long time.

@@msdosgamereviews Very true, especially when "a very long time" was just a matter of a few years in that period of technology. Nowadays you can still play most games even on a 10 or 12 year old PC, but in the late 80s to early 90s just a few years was all it took to be completely left behind in some applications. Definitely don't miss that aspect of the era.

Dit is nogal nice om Afrikaans ook te sien op KZbin. Dankie vir die nice comment, die games gaan oor die algemeen nicer raak soos die publishing jaar later raak.

@@msdosgamereviews Ek sien uit daarna, dankie.

Glad to bring back some old memories!

That was a thing? I have to go look it up now.

@ yes

Yeah, the first machine I used was Amber as well, but it was not mine. Mine happened to be VGA monochrome. Better, but not the beautiful monitors that we have these days.

@@msdosgamereviews So fancy!

Interesting! I never knew about the bug. The game played fine as it was, though.

@@msdosgamereviews Yep, it plays fine indeed. This is a "cheat" to go much faster.

Yeah, the game was issued under that name as well. But, as this one has "Space Station Oblivion" in the title, it is going to stay that way. :)

I can't wait to review Xenon 2: Megablast, as that is a game I do remember playing in my younger years!

I know, right?

They certainly did. This could be just the title where they got their feet wet... Their later games played really well, and had great sound as well as graphics.

That red lines was me. I tracked down a copy of the star map, cleaned it up as best I could, and then noticed that you don't know where they jump points take you, so I played a bit, found out and added the info to my copy of the map. This game reminds me so much of the Wing Commander games!

Yeah, this game was a little tricky to get right, and even then it was not all that engaging.

I'll get to Speedball 2 eventually, thanks for the heads-up

@@msdosgamereviews What I mean by cheating is this; You only control whatever player is currently visible on the screen, and selected. The computer is responsible for moving your other players, and any members of your team who are currently off the screen. When the computer gets the ball and throws it down the field toward your goal, one of his players is almost always in a perfect position to catch it. When you do the same, and the ball lands, all your players are usually off on the edges of the screen, which is where the computer left them. Worse, one of his players is there to catch it about half the time. This is unfair because the computer can move his players into position, even if they're not visible, but you have to wait for your guys to both become visible, and be selected, THEN try to move them into position. Also, maybe not cheating, but at the start of a match when the ball is served, the computer always just runs right through my guy like he isn't even there. Even if I've upgraded my players, he still plows me over. And those score multiplying loops on the sides of the field are useless because any time you throw the ball around one of them, guaranteed the computer will be there to throw it right back. EVERY TIME!

Yeah, even the guy that wrote the walkthrough said that some places are unfairly difficult.

You're welcome!

Glad to bring back some memories!

If you want to cheat a little, you could get hold of the sid file and a sid player and have the best of both worlds. :)

Yeah, loads of people called it driller, but this seems to be the only version that I could get my hands on, and in the game itself it says Space Station Oblivion. Driller is a better title!

I was emulating the slowest PC ever released, so I am thinking the game tries to live up to its name of being speedy.

@@msdosgamereviews Well, it makes sense that a game named Speed Zone would be fast.

Your guess is as good as mine!

There certainly were a lot more games released than I realized at the time.

This was the grand daddy of the FPS. As it was, the animations are not smooth, due to the low frame rate, which was in turn due to the low processing power of the lower end of PC that this game was aimed at. I played some flight simulators of the same era that had slightly higher frame rates, but with low colors and only PC speaker available the idea of a first person shooter was still a little in the future at this point in time.

That is an interesting option!

Dark Side was a sequel to this game, and I reviewed that one already... I think?

@@msdosgamereviews It's all a very long tome ago :) Cheers

With the walkthrough you might be able to complete it now?

@@msdosgamereviews Probably not, as I had a walkthrough before 😁

Yeah, it was a long time that I was playing games on DOS machines before getting a joystick. The keyboard really was indespensable in a lot of these games!

Hmm, it does not ring a bell. However, you could search through the games at myabandonware.com and see if you see the game?

Yeah, and this time there are more enemies, coming from all directions. Next iteration would be 3D...

My plesier!

Shut up nerd

Thanks, but I already use a quite expensive Yeti Blue Boom mic.

Hi there. Yes, and EGA had some other tricks like frame buffers! There are already some VGA titles from around this era too, and many other games gave you a choice of which type of graphics adapter you can use.

Thanks for the pointer. I guess in other parts of the game the overall palette changes?

I guess a big chin was seen as manly in some cultures, and it then follows that an even bigger chin would be more manly, and since this hero is super-manly...

That would be cool. Also I loved the interface, which does not seem that popular these days.

It is quite a hectic game!

I think that might just be an effect of the video downscaling, it looks fine when displayed in high resolution.

It is a little tricky game, and took me a few tries to even get as far into the game as I did

And now I've made a trainer (actually a patch) for the PC version of Congo Bongo which disables decrementing the lives counter. It's still pretty hard, but at least you don't have to start from the beginning every single time. I can't put a link in here without my comment getting deleted, but I've uploaded a video on my own channel that quickly demonstrates it and has a link in its description, including a download.

It is quite frustrating to play, but that seems to be a common thread of the games of that era

I tried to redefine the keys for player 1, but it seems that there is a limited selection of keys that you can pick from...

@@msdosgamereviews I think it's mostly that they can't conflict, as there are keyboard configurations for 3 players. If you want to use a key used by either of the other 2, you first have to move it "out of the way" there?

I never thought that you would also need a special monitor. I thought if you bought a computer with an EGA card, you would also buy the monitor.

@@msdosgamereviews I'd assume it was far more common that people upgraded their existing system with an EGA card, but didn't have the budget for a new monitor, so they continued used their existing CGA monitors in EGA mode 1, limiting the resolution to 200 lines. According to PCGamesN, EGA cards cost the equivalent of $1,400 in today's money when they released, and that's without memory expansion!

Ah I have not played with the level editor, that could add a whole new dimension to the game as well.

It is not a common game at all, I could not even tag the game title in the video because according to Google it does not exist.

Thanks for the information! I did not know that you could shoot, that does change the game!

It's a great game, and probably the start of that subgenre.

Glad you found it! Now you can go play it again. :)

Ah, thanks for the tip!