Home of Retro PC Gaming
Currently hosting 2 1985 games!
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Home of Retro PC Gaming Currently hosting 2 1985 games! |
| Psion Chess 1985 | ||
| User rating: No rating | DOS Freeware (former commercial) | Traditional |
| Developed by Psion Software | ||
| Published by Psion Software | ||
| Graphics: Hercules 720×348 mono CGA 640×200 mono | ||
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Using an engine written by legendary chess engine programmer Richard Lang, Psion Chess was ahead of its time. Despite monochrome graphics, Psion Chess could be viewed in either 2D or 3D. Designed for high resolution monochrome Hercules Graphics Cards, the Hercules option sets the resolution to 720×384 and uses dithering to simulate shades of gray. The "IBM color card" option reduces the resolution to 640×400 for color graphics cards, still in monochrome, but without dithering. The playing strength doesn't go quite as low as modern chess software, but the easiest level can be beaten by a novice player, and it makes a great opponent for even very skilled players. To illustrate Psion Chess at its weakest level, I played this game as white on Level Novice E0. 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. Nc3 b5 6. Bb3 b4 7. Nd5 Nxe4 8. d4 d6 9. Nd2 Ng5 10. Nf3 Nxf3+ 11. Qxf3 Be6 12. O-O exd4 13. Nf4 Kd7 14. Nxe6 fxe6 15. Qf7+ Kc8 16. Qxe6+ Kb7 17. Bd5 Qe8 18. Qg4 Qe5 19. c4 Rd8 20. Bf4 Qe8 21. Bg3 Kb6 22. a4 h5 23. Qf4 Qe2 24. a5+ Nxa5 25. Qxd4+ c5 26. Qh4 Re8 27. Qh3 Nxc4 28. Qd7 Na5 29. Rxa5 Kxa5 30. Ra1+ Kb6 31. Qb7# White checkmates Psion Chess v2.13 (96k) Play online Author Richard Lang and copyright holder Psion Software have generously released this game as freeware.
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| Telengard 1985 | ||
| User rating: 8 | DOS Freeware (former commercial) | RPG |
| Developed by Daniel Lawrence | ||
| Published by Daniel Lawrence | ||
| Graphics: CGA 320×200×4c | ||
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Daniel Lawrence's dungeon crawl game for mainframe computers, DND, was so popular that university students were using up all the system resources playing it. Under increasing pressure from system administrators, Lawrence bought a Commodore PET 2001 and decided to port the game for use on microcomputers. Unfortunately, the maps wouldn't fit in memory any more, so he reduced the number of dungeons from three to one, and instead of a map, he had the game generate the map algorithmically. This allowed him to create a 200×200 grid with 50 levels – that's two million "rooms" – from a small piece of code at runtime. The game was ported to many different computers and published by Avalon Hill. While DND was text-based, the PC version of Telengard featured CGA graphics. As in DND, you can pick up magical items, fight monsters, cast magic, and find treasure. Hit points and skill at casting magic increase as you gain experience points and level up. Whereas DND is turn-based, Telengard is played in real time, which means that monsters can attack you even when you're not moving. Telengard v5.04 (53k) Play online Author Daniel Lawrence has generously released this game as freeware.
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