"Rise, son of Cygna. It is the dawn of your seventeenth year. The Elders await you in the sanctuary." If you didn't listen to the 30 minute audio drama first, you'd have no idea what's going on when you first play Loom (1990, Lucasfilm Games). And if you did listen to it, you probably weren't […]
Florian has been counting all of our regular "one game a month" episodes, and it turns out we've hit 100 of them! We started this club back in March of 2017 with the first DOS game that came to mind, which happened to be DOOM (id Software, 1993). In hindsight this was a bit of […]
We're back with a big one, in more ways than one! Normally we do a different game every month, but between December and February we've focused on Ultima Underworld for three months in a row. This was mainly done to give ourselves a chance to catch up, as we've been lagging behind with the podcast […]
We've featured a lot of different kinds of sim games over the years. We've piloted fighter jets, space ships, a ww2-era bomber and even giant mechs. But never before have we gone under water! In a lot of ways, 1993's Subwar 2050 by Particle Systems and MicroProse could be described as "aquatic Wing Commander". But […]
The Serpent Riders have made the kings of Parthoris their puppets and their undead legions are swarming the land. Only you, the Elf Corvus have the power to - you know what? The story probably isn't one bit more important than it is in DOOM, the masterpiece that this month's game is based on. Heretic […]
UK studio Revolution Software might be most famous for their "Broken Sword" series of adventure games, but before they released those they had found quite some success already. After their first game "Lure of the Temptress" in 1992 did well, they had higher ambitions for their second game: "Beneath a Steel Sky". Working together with […]
When we started DOS Game Club back in 2017, one of our earliest members Mike ("toasty") asked us if there are cricket games for DOS. Being a keen cricket fan, this was a genuine interest of his. Or perhaps he was joking. Either way, the thought of checking out some DOS cricket games lingered in […]
Niccolò Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat, author, philosopher, and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince (Il Principe), written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death. None of this is in any way relevant for Microprose's 1995 strategy game "Machiavelli […]
!!!Newsflash!!! A huge City Minecrawler is headed straight for the gaming community of DOS Game Club, DGC And you are Kurt Hectic, janitor on board the space station Jim Dandy and Earth's only hope. So get into your "Doctor Hawkins' Amazing Coil Suit" and strap on your "Doctor Hawkins' Incredible Ribbon Chute" and start skydiving […]
In 1992, Nintendo released Super Mario Kart and all we PC gamers were terribly envious of our friends with a Super Nintendo. In 1994, Beavis Soft came to rectify the situation and gave us our own Mario Kart clone "Wacky Wheels". People rejoiced and everybody thought it was a really great game. But was it […]
After successfully keeping the Holy Grail out of Nazi hands, Indiana Jones returned in 1992 with a brand new adventure. And unlike 1989's The Last Crusade, Fate of Atlantis is not based on any of the films, but instead presents us with an entirely original story! With two playable characters (sometimes), three possible paths, randomised […]
You're in a Nazi prison, with a dead guard on the floor in front of you. You take his gun. Now you can fight your way out. This is the exciting premise of 1992's Wolfenstein 3D, developed by id Software and published as shareware by Apogee. Now we all know Wolfenstein 3D was not the […]
You start out with a single city on a map that's mostly covered in a fog of war. Use the city to produce units. Use the units to explore the map, seize more cities as you grow your army and eventually conquer the map by beating the AI. Sounds familiar? Before Sid Meier's Civilization there […]
Do you ever feel the world is just too... nice? If so, perhaps Dungeon Keeper scratches that itch, because even though it's a classic game of heroes vs demons, in this case you are the demon! Dungeon Keeper was a big hit for Bullfrog Productions back in 1997, but by no means their first. After […]
Can you believe we're 90 episodes into this show and still haven't looked at Lemmings? Lemmings! What a classic! When Lemmings (by DMA Design, published by Psygnosis) arrived on the scene in the early 90s it was an instant hit. Everyone's played this game, apparently over 15 million copies were sold over the span of […]
We've done Prince of Persia, we've done The Last Express. So when The Making of Karateka was released in late 2023, we figured this was the perfect opportunity to have a look at Jordan Mechner's very first published game. Originally released in 1984 for the Apple II, the PC got a port of this game […]
For the Halloween season we try to pick suitably scary games, so back in October (welp) we took a look at Realms of the Haunting (1996, Gremlin/Interplay). This game ticks a lot of boxes: haunted mansion, ghosts, scary monsters, but also... Time travel? A psychic partner? Interdimensional portals? Building a bong?? It's no exaggeration to […]
Everybody know The Secret of Monkey Island. But few people have ever heard of Donkey Island. This game was made by two Czech teenagers on their school computers in 1994 and ended up being the first commercial game to be developed and published in Czechia. Besides a sub-par and, frankly, weird German translation, this game […]
There is one game that showed everybody that the PC was starting to become as viable a gaming platform as any console on the market. While DOOM was an entirely new experience, Jazz Jackrabbit replicated the experience players had on their SNESes and Mega Drives. Its protagonist even became a mascot for PC gaming at […]
You're in some sort of cave. A red light eminates from the northern wall, while a green light pours in from the cave's exit. This is Azra, a strange far away world where many dangers loom. You are an acolyte of the Scarlet Lady's Red Court, and have no memory of how you ended up […]
Making commercial games for DOS nowadays is not a good business model, right? Hadrosaurus Software is hard at work proving this claim to be totally wrong. Their games Acronia and The Aching (which we played in July) are getting a lot of attention from the DOS gaming community, and rightfully so, we think. Company founder […]
The late 80s and early 90s were filled with "true 3D" polygon-based first-person driving games. There was Hard Drivin' in the arcade by Atari, Geoff Crammond released Stunt Car Racer, Spectrum Holobyte published Stunt Driver, to name a few. But the one game that proved to capture the hearts of many and remains being played […]
The original Speedball from 1988 was already a highly acclaimed futuristic sports game, lauded for its action-packed arcade-style gameplay and superb audiovisual presentation. But when the Bitmap Brothers released the sequel in 1990 for Amiga and Atari ST they truly outdid themselves. Both horizontal and vertical scrolling at a blistering pace was an achievement rarely […]
The official Terry Pratchett-approved Discworld point & click adventure game has been pinned on our forums for over two years, as April 2023 would have been his 75th birthday, had he lived to experience it. Although Pratchett was initially apprehensive about the project, after been shown early demos he gave his approval and by 1995 […]
"It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, and space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet." - Sound […]
In 2119 the United Nations Seedship Calypso was launched. Headed for Beta Caeli, the farthest star yet attempted, this ark ship holds thousands of people in cryogenic sleep ready for colonising this remote system. Ever since the first interstellar war with the Centaurians broke out in 2043, the future of Earth and therefore the human […]
Europe, 1943. World War II is in full rage, the United States joined the war effort and are now supporting the British air raids against German occupied western Europe with their legendary B-17 Flying Fortress bombers. Can your crew help end the war by successfully bombing strategically important targets while German fighters and Flaks turn […]
In 1995 Blue Byte released Albion, an ambitious 2D/3D scifi/fantasy RPG, exclusively for MS-DOS PCs. It's made by some of the same people who previously, under the banner of Thalion Software, made Amberstar and Ambermoon, an ambitious series of RPGs that shares some cosmetic similarities with Albion. But despite this overlap, Albion is very much […]
This is a special extra bonus episode! In December we played Albion, the 1995 fantasy/scifi RPG by Blue Byte. We had the chance to speak to Erik Simon and Jurie Horneman, two of the creative forces behind the game. We discuss everything from the early days at the German demoscene, Thalion software, developing Amberstar & […]
In 2097 the World Aeronautics & Robotics corporation (W.A.R.) is looking for a suitable representative to watch over Ganymede, the Jupiter moon that will soon be colonised. The Board at WAR has decided that the applicants for the position, being equally qualified, should fight for it. Now, the ten applicants must choose which Human-Assisted Robot […]
