The real author, Rhett Anderson, explained that Arcade Volleyball was a type-in program from the June 1988 edition of COMPUTE!'s Gazette. Sure enough, I located a game listing from the June 1988 version and Arcade Volleyball was in it. This came as a surprise, since all of my research sources, including the Wikipedia, credited Microforum Mfg. Mr Anderson forgave my error and said that he does, in fact, give permission for the game to be distributed as public domain.
Which brings me to the point of this thread. We have a thread about favorite games and people, but we haven't had any really detailed discussions about why we love those games, and why we continue to play DOS games. Rhett Anderson remarked about Arcade Volleyball's retro appeal, and I'd like to share my response. If you have any stories about what DOS games mean to you, and your childhood memories of specific games, feel free to add to the thread.
I think DOS games are of retro interest because they're a convenient source of free games. It's nice to have hundreds of games that can be downloaded in mere seconds, then you can try them out and simply discard them after one play if you choose. I like them because they're simple and fun, and because of my childhood memories. I played Arcade Volleyball against a friend from school when I was 12, and my cat sat on top of the monitor and swatted the ball the whole time. We both laughed hysterically. My cat passed away last year, but Arcade Volleyball is an enduring memory of how much fun she was to have in my life, and I hope that a new generation of gamers will create memories like that with the games from my site.
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