RGB Classic Games Forum

I wonder, how many of you know this game? Genewars is a real time strategy game made by Bullfrog in 1996. Players move through a series of different planets, where they have to repopulate them. In only 24 levels, player will have to build many constructions, create and buy creatures, attack enemies and defend it's own base.
This is a very good game, unfortunately not well known.
If you want more information, look on fansite:
Edit: Link removed

Hi Neko. Welcome to the site!

I'm a big fan of Bullfrog games, but I'm a bit picky about links to external sites, especially if they host illegal content. It's illegal to distribute the audio clips and cinematic sequences from the game unless the copyright holder has granted permission. Also, I'm not that happy that the site encourages people to search for illegal copies of the disc image and cracks to defeat the anti-piracy measures built into the game. The site looks like a great resource, though, and I would have no problem with the link if the copyright violations were removed.

As for screenshots, I believe that the fair use doctrine allows websites and print media to include screenshots as part of reviews and such, so I have no problem with your attached screenshots, and I try to include screenshots for every game on this website.

I'm sorry for any trouble. I didn't know that it's illegal, when I read about genewars here:
http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showth ... t=genewars
I thought it means it's freeware since 2012.
Well, my mistake.

The copyright on software with more than one author is 95 years from the date of publication, so Gene Wars will be protected by copyright in the United States until at least 2091, and probably forever if Disney continues to be successful in extending the length of copyright every 20 years. The discussion in that thread doesn't say anywhere that the game is freeware. It says that the ESA is no longer prosecuting people who pirate the game, and they couldn't find anyone who was still actively selling it. The concept here is that, if no one is selling the game, then no one loses money if you download an illegal copy. In English we call this concept "no harm, no foul". I agree with that principle but it is, nevertheless, illegal to distribute copyrighted material even if the owner isn't financially harmed, so I refuse to post any illegal content on my website, and I try to prevent links to illegal content from being posted in the forum.

There's a playable DOS demo of Genewars (IIRC the game was also released under Windows), which is about 20 Mb in size. FilePlanet has it, and I also think it's available elsewhere too.

Readme.txt wrote:NO PART OF THIS FILE OR THE SOFTWARE MAY BE COPIED, REPRODUCED, TRANSLATED, OR
REDUCED TO ANY ELECTRONIC MEDIUM OR MACHINE-READABLE FORM WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN
CONSENT OF ELECTRONIC ARTS, P.O. BOX 835, SLOUGH, BERKS. SL3 8XU,

Bummer. I hope FilePlanet keeps it online.

Power Play 13/96 had an exclusive CD demo of Gene Wars. The readme even mentions Power Play:

****************
RUNNING THE DEMO
****************

The Gene Wars Demo CD will not run in native Windows 95 mode.
It must be run from MS-DOS.

Please refer to the Power Play magazine for full details on how to install this demo.

The download link can be found here:
http://www.kultcds.com/index.php?id=powerplay&lang=en

DOSGuy wrote:

Readme.txt wrote:NO PART OF THIS FILE OR THE SOFTWARE MAY BE COPIED, REPRODUCED, TRANSLATED, OR
REDUCED TO ANY ELECTRONIC MEDIUM OR MACHINE-READABLE FORM WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN
CONSENT OF ELECTRONIC ARTS, P.O. BOX 835, SLOUGH, BERKS. SL3 8XU,

Hmm, are you absolutely sure it's not a leftover from the full game's readme file?

Anyway, archive.org has a project going to archive FilePlanet's files "just in case", although for now the downloads aren't in exactly the friendliest format, being large chunks that are tens of gigabytes in size.

Hallfiry wrote:Power Play 13/96 had an exclusive CD demo of Gene Wars.

Nice find! Is it different from the FilePlanet's demo?

MrFlibble wrote:

DOSGuy wrote:

Readme.txt wrote:NO PART OF THIS FILE OR THE SOFTWARE MAY BE COPIED, REPRODUCED, TRANSLATED, OR
REDUCED TO ANY ELECTRONIC MEDIUM OR MACHINE-READABLE FORM WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN
CONSENT OF ELECTRONIC ARTS, P.O. BOX 835, SLOUGH, BERKS. SL3 8XU,

Hmm, are you absolutely sure it's not a leftover from the full game's readme file?

I thought exactly the same, when I first saw it. They simply forgot to change their standard copyright phrase.

MrFlibble wrote:

Hallfiry wrote:Power Play 13/96 had an exclusive CD demo of Gene Wars.

Nice find! Is it different from the FilePlanet's demo?

Yea, it's 65mb (17mb are just screenshots), packed it's 44mb (or 32mb without screenshots). The CD has an audio track, but I don't know if it belongs to the demo, as it was already extremely difficult to make it run at all

Hallfiry wrote:The CD has an audio track, but I don't know if it belongs to the demo, as it was already extremely difficult to make it run at all

If YouTube has any gameplay records of Genewars, then perhaps it is possible to check if the CD tracks belongs to the demo.

Why was it difficult to run though? I think the FilePlanet demo at least runs nigh seamlessly in DOSBox.

MrFlibble wrote:

Hallfiry wrote:The CD has an audio track, but I don't know if it belongs to the demo, as it was already extremely difficult to make it run at all

If YouTube has any gameplay records of Genewars, then perhaps it is possible to check if the CD tracks belongs to the demo.

I couldn't find any video with the track...

MrFlibble wrote: Why was it difficult to run though? I think the FilePlanet demo at least runs nigh seamlessly in DOSBox.

First it didn't want to install, then it gave me a black screen and froze dosbox and now I finally got it to run by mounting the CD as CDROM and using the Power Play menu from the CD...

The original Genewars page indicates there was a downloadable demo, probably the same thing as the one at FilePlanet (but maybe not, since EA is known to have published exclusive demo content on CDs).

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