MS DOS games I always wanted to try.

For #DOScember2023 I try out five games that I always wanted to play back in the day, but which I never had the opportunity to, for one reason or another.
0:00 Welcome
0:35 Ken's Labyrinth
4:26 Lost in Time
9:27 MegaRace
13:12 DreamWeb
16:42 Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse
21:54 Conclusion

[@andersdenkend]

Dreamweb was actually pretty cool. Nice atmosphere.

[@countersurprise]

I remember Megarace quite well. Played it a lot with a buddy of mine. Loved it!

[@justinwormleighton7433]

Thanks Pete, another interesting choice of games. I remember Ken's Labyrinth but not the others. I always think of this era as the 486 era of gaming and anything less just wasn't going to do it! Some great games and lots that I will have never played. If I don't see you before Christmas I hope that you and your family have a very Happy one! See you again...next time (sorry) lol

[@Zontar82]

ken's labyrinth has always been a favourite of mine, since i found it in an old shareware cd rom. i loved the game so much that when i got the full version, I was disappointed at how different it was from the demo version

[@tmgunter]

Saying that Lost in Time could have been in the running for best Adventure game of 1993 if it had a better ending seems pretty generous considering how incredible of a year 1993 was for the genre. That's the same year as games like Myst, Day of the Tentacle, and Gabriel Knight after all.

[@Right_Said_Brett]

I wonder if Lost in Time came out before Myst, Day of the Tentacle and Gabriel Knight? Because if not, it would indeed be mad to say that it could have been the adventure game of the year (particularly in regards to Day of the Tentacle and Gabriel Knight).

[@tmgunter]

I suppose it's fair that Gabriel Knight and Myst were fairly late-'93 releases (and Myst was a Mac exclusive until 1994), and the CD-ROM version of DotT likewise came later in the year. But similarly it appears that the mid-'93 release date for Lost in Time was for the floppy version of the game that was lacking a lot of the voice and video, and from what I can tell the CD-ROM version also wasn't released until late '93 or early '94. Computer Gaming World didn't seem to cover the game at all until April 1994, and when they did so it was in an overview of CD-ROM titles available at the time. Their writeup was mostly about how it didn't look or sound as good as Coktel's earlier game Inca. Somewhat humorously it had the bad luck of being juxtaposed next to a screenshot of Myst (called out as "the current high-water mark in gaming graphics"), which almost feels like an intentional slight by CGW considering Myst's own writeup was a few pages later in the issue.@@Right_Said_Brett

[@WhatHoSnorkers]

Lovely selection there Pete!

[@BeyondTheScanlines]

Ken's Labyrinth always sat in sort of an "it's important, but I"m not sure I can go back to it" category for me - probably the result of me not getting a PC until quite some time after Doom II came out, so experiencing the jump from raycasting engines to Doom's more complex geometry (let alone what Quake would do in '96) kind of doesn't hit the same way. Al-Qadim feels very out of phase for SSI, let alone AD&D, but feels like one to consider, doubly so as it floats about in my GOG library. Some interesting picks for sure - and being able to tackle off those ones which you're curious about is always a good bit of fun!

[@ThisIsPete]

Yeah. I definitely have a ton of fondness for raycasting engines because I was there when they first appeared. They have a very distinctive feel quite separate from Doom and its imitators. Al-Qadim is indeed a very odd anomaly, but one I really found myself getting drawn into (many, *many* deaths aside) while I was trying it out!

[@Zontar82]

i got my first pc in 1996 so the first fps i experienced was duke 3d, but got no issues in going back to doom 2 and yes even ken's labyrinth :)

[@thomasriis1987]

Great video! Great recommendations!

[@ryansease7066]

Great stuff as always. Really just goes to show what all is out there DOS wise to discover if/when someone chooses. For me, personally, I do good enough to be exploring PS2 era stuff and earlier console and handheld wise. Still, these looks make me appreciate all that is still out there gaming wise for people to explore, discover, and enjoy. Take care, Merry Christmas, and I look forward to many more videos yet to come.

[@roguerifter9724]

Your why you didn't play Ken's Labyrinth story is a perfect example of what I hate when people call a game a clone of another just because they share a genre. I love Ken's Labyrinth because it was one of the few FPS games I could play openly at home until my parents oked me to play games with gore in the summer of 97. I actually had Dreamweb and luckily dad never discovered the sex scene because while he liked Point and Click games he never liked Cyberpunk settings. I fail to see what Bladerunner and Highlander have in common or what the latter's link to Dreamweb is. There were no Immortals and the protagonist doesn't grow stronger after taking out the targets. And targets die if they suffer any mortal wound rather then just dying if their head is chopped off. In fact I don't remember ever using a Sword in the game. I remember mainly using Guns as weapons, or environmental means to eliminate targets.

[@ThisIsPete]

The devs specifically cited Highlander as an inspiration in terms of Ryan being a "chosen one" and having to eliminate others, plus the combination of fantasy elements with a modern-day (or, in this case, futuristic) setting. A tenuous link, perhaps, but still one worth acknowledging.

[@brianbarker2551]

I only remember Ken's Labyrinth from back then, I thought it was juvenile to be honest. The others look interesting.

[@ThisIsPete]

Ken's Labyrinth was juvenile because he was a kid when he made it! I think I can forgive him for that. :)

[@zockeromi1970]

On my list are the SSI games - my pc was way too weak for those games

[@ThisIsPete]

And now you need the *time* to play them! :)

[@zockeromi1970]

@@ThisIsPete rrright

[@keithfulkerson]

I never tried Ken's Labyrinth because of the name, I guess. It just seemed like some guy named Ken cobbled something together all by himself, and that didn't sound very promising.

[@ThisIsPete]

That's exactly what it is! Silverman was a teenager when he made it, with a little help on graphics, and that's sort of exactly why it's enjoyable today :)

[@maxmuster7003]

I never had to install MS DOS. I make the drive bootable and copy all files from an installed DOS. Thats all.

[@lordterra1377]

Megarace was awesome. The presentation blew my mind back then. The quickly future world was captivating. The humor was pretty awful but I can give it a pass, reminds me of Robocop.

[@ThisIsPete]

Yeah, I'm pretty certain that MegaRace's campiness was entirely deliberate. It was supposed to be a gameshow (the '90s understanding of that, which was a tad more bombastic than now) taken to the EXTREME. And I think it nails that aspect for sure.