Re:Software Library: MS-DOS Games
by griffinkelly on Friday June 03, 2022 @01:50PM
(#31611521)
First time I played Doom as a kid I had nightmares for weeks. Looking at it now...
I remember being blown away by how intense and visceral the experience was, it probably helped I played it on my uncle's top tier 486 with a great sound system. Whenever I look at screen shots these I'm kind of shocked how pixelated the sprites were, I guess it wasn't a concern at the time.
CRT monitors made things look so much more vivid than on LCD. So when you look at old games today and think «Did it really look this bad and pixelated?», the answer is actually «no».
Ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/anwgxf/here_is_an_e...
Edit: typo
Doom didn't cause me nightmares as a kid, but when Dead Space got released I bought it, played a bit, then stopped because I didn't enjoy the jump scares at all. And I was an adult. Well made without question, but not for me.
I thought even Wolfenstein was creepy; today, not so much.
Are we losing our imagination or just becoming numb?
You should have seen Blood.
Re:Software Library: MS-DOS Games
by banana_giraffe on Friday June 03, 2022 @04:32PM
(#31613276)
Indeed. We used to play different puzzle games after we finished the work in our Math Computer Lab. I was obsessed with Aargh! back then.
It's very cathartic and nostalgic to go back and finish this one.
To this day I still think Prince of Persia is one of the best videogames ever made.
Don't get me wrong, Doom and Wolf3D were impressive tech breakthroughs and I played and enjoyed the hell out of them. But unlike them, Prince of Persia is still a genuinely good and enjoyable game, with impressive animations.
Prince of Persia: Massive nostalgia for the sound of those first 5-6 notes of the intro music in bold OPL3 MIDI, out of my oversized computer speakers. Inviting my friend over one weekend to play it, only to cheer him on as he beat the entire game. "...maybe you jump through the mirror...?!"
Doom: HS Physics teacher bribe. "In my hands I'm holding a stack of floppy disks with the Alpha version of a game called Doom. If you work hard today..." Worked so hard. Massive jump-scare weekend with friends over.
Wolf3D: "There's a full copy on the drafting class computers, and you don't have to shell out of anything, they boot straight to a DOS prompt!" What??! Incredible. Made every computer class after that year seem so restrictive. You'd walk in expecting to see CAD being done, and instead you'd see Wolf3D, POV-Ray experimentation, computer programming, and "I don't care, as long as you get your work done, hee hee" was the only response from the teacher. Loved that guy.