Game wishlist

[MrFlibble]

May I suggest yet another game, called HacX. It appears to be not very well known because it started as a commercial add-on/total conversion for Doom II that did not sell well, and eventually the developers have released it as freeware. By version 1.2 (released last year), HacX no longer requires Doom II to play, and thus has become a stand-alone, freeware game that can be described as a Doom lookalike with a cyberpunk theme.
HacX official site
HacX screenshots (from older versions)
HacX page at MobyGames
HacX article at Doom Wikia
An interview with Perry "Bow" Bowman at DoomWorld

[leilei]

The standalone release isn't exactly 'official' though.

[MrFlibble]

The standalone release isn't exactly 'official' though.

Isn't it? But it's still legal, or did I miss something?

[leilei]

It's not the 1.0 or 1.1 addon versions Banjo released in '96/97, it's a voluntary fixup by Xaser (which unfortunately replaced the historical versions)

[MrFlibble]

Well, since both the engine and the media that comprise this game have been officially released as freeware, it's okay from the legal standpoint, right? It's just not an official release as a whole - a fact that I have missed.

[MrFlibble]

It's not the 1.0 or 1.1 addon versions Banjo released in '96/97, it's a voluntary fixup by Xaser (which unfortunately replaced the historical versions)

BTW, DoomWadStation still hosts HacX v1.1, as well as a four-level demo (which also requires Doom II to play). They also have an archived copy of the old version of the HacX official site.

[MrFlibble]

Since we've got Warcraft II and Diablo on the site, maybe you'd consider adding games from the Rage of Mages series? It's a curious mix of RTS and RPG elements inspired by both Blizzard's classics, with some good graphics and interesting gameplay.


Rage of Mages
The first game is set in a medieval fantasy world that has been sundered by cosmic powers into isolated "allods" - great islands of solid land floating in mystical energy. Each allod is protected by a powerful wizard who prevents the allod from being consumed by the energy surrounding it. Travels between allods are possible through teleportation gates. In the first game, a party of adventurers from an allod is sent by their king to the "neighbouring" allod, Umoir, with the quest to recover a powerful artifact, and also find out why all magical communication with Umoir has become severed and people are seemingly unable to travel outside that allod at all.

There are two character classes, fighter and magician, and the player can choose either a male or a female character of each class. Initially, the party consists of these four, but other characters of either class join the player's party as the game progresses. As in any other RPG game, characters can pick up and equip weapons and armour, various potions and magic scrolls, and magician class characters have an extensive spellbook divided into five schools of elemental magic. The RTS part comes into play with various mercenaries that can be hired to accompany the party in each quest, acting like regular units in the Warcraft series. The demo allows to play several quests with any of the four playable characters.

Rage of Mages official website
Rage of Mages at MobyGames
Download Rage of Mages Demo at Nival FTP
Download Rage of Mages Demo at C|NET Downloads

Rage of Mages II: Necromancer
The second game introduces a new threat, the necromancers, and a new allod divided into three main regions - the woods, the plains and the desert. This time, there are noticeable differences in how the story progresses depending on what character has been selected. Certain control improvements have been introduced like auto-casting, and lots of new characters, monsters and locations have been added too, but the engine and gameplay basics remain the same as in the first game. The demo features several quests and only the male fighter player character is available.

Rage of Mages II official website
Rage of Mages II at MobyGames
Download Rage of Mages II Demo at Nival FTP
Download Rage of Mages II Demo at C|NET Downloads

[MrFlibble]

Another possible game to add is Amulets & Armor, a very good 3D first person RPG game from 1996. Unfortunately i've been unable to contact Janus Anderson about its status, maybe you could have better luck getting it released for free (especially since it was self published until some point in january 97, stopped being sold since). Three shareware versions are available that I know of (1.0, 1.2 no music and 1.2 with music).

I also second the addition of Amulets & Armor. This game has been lecking the attention it deserves, and it's nice that you maintain an Unofficial Amulets & Armor Shrine. The game is also featured at The DOS Multiplayer Archives (BTW, they have the 7zip installer /w DOSBox version of the demo). The demo v1.0 also appears to have at least different versions (at least, different in size).

Amulets & Armor Shareware Demo v1.0 (1.1 Mb) (this seems to be the earliest version, or part thereof [?])
Amulets & Armor Shareware Demo v1.0 (6.7 Mb)
Amulets & Armor Shareware Demo v1.2 (MIDI music) (8.3 Mb) (Unofficial Amulets & Armor Shrine)
Amulets & Armor Shareware Demo v1.2 (MIDI & PCM music) (22.4 Mb) (Unofficial Amulets & Armor Shrine)
Amulets & Armor Shareware Demo v1.2 (MIDI & PCM music) (22.4 Mb) (FilePlanet)

[theLarom]

I just stumbled across this site, and I'm glad I did. Thank you to the Admin. for keeping such wonderful games alive. I'll be playing several of the old DOS games I recognize over the next month.

One game I've been looking for for a long time, and is hard to get your hands on (much less get it to work properly) is: Little Big Adventure (aka Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure) As released by Adeline Software and distributed by Electronic Arts & Activision back in 1994. You can find screenshots of the game with ease, and even some websites that claim to let you download it, but I haven't gotten one to work properly.

(Note: I did find a new website with a download I haven't tried Here when digging up URLs to link in this post, and I'll report back when I try it...)

I have no problem getting a screenshot of the game and writing a review for the site, if the game can be found and legally posted here. Thank you for you time and effort!

[Update] The the file you get from the download link above does work with DOSBox, and the game plays correctly, but I haven't gotten the sound working. Which has been my problem all along whenever I do manage to get one of these that let me play some of the game.

[MrFlibble]

Yet another nice RTS game:

Tzar: The Burden of the Crown
It's a medieval fantasy real-time strategy made by a Bulgarian studio Haemimont Games that closely follows Warcraft II and The Age of Kings, successfully blending the features of both into a very nice gaming experience. The graphics and music are above average, and a lot of thought had been put into balance and design of factions, tech trees and units. As a result, the gameplay is very smooth and immersive.

Tzar: The Burden of the Crown Official Home Page
Tzar: The Burden of the Crown at MobyGames
Download Tzar: The Burden of the Crown Demo from C|NET Downloads
The demo contains a tutorial level, one single-player scenario from the campaign, and two skirmish/multiplayer maps. You can only play as the European civilization in the demo (but the other two civilizations are featured as enemies in the skirmish mode).

[Litude]

Knights and Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom - 1998, Win9x
Knights and Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom is a real-time strategy game by the German company Joymania Development. Taking you back to Middle Age Europe, the game offers an unusually complex economic system with over 25 different types of resources. Whilst the end goal of the game is the same as that of most other RTS games (for those not following, I'm talking about obliterating your enemies), the way in which you reach it is quite different. People who want quick games should look elsewhere since it can take around an hour to build up enough to be able to produce any kind of worthwhile army. Whilst the title was quite modestly received in the United States and United Kingdom, the game was very successful in certain parts of Europe, especially in Germany. In late 2001 the long delayed expansion pack, titled "Knights and Merchants: The Peasants Rebellion", was released for the game bundled together with the base game.

Complete Version History:
The Shattered Kingdom 0.73 English Shareware Demo - 2 June 1998
The Shattered Kingdom 0.91 German Shareware Demo - 10 June 1998 (Not originally distributed in a .ZIP file)
The Shattered Kingdom 0.92 English Shareware Demo - 11 June 1998
The Shattered Kingdom 1.20 English Shareware Demo - 14 August 1998 (Not originally distributed in a .ZIP file)
The Shattered Kingdom 1.20 Russian Shareware Demo - 6 December 1998
The Shattered Kingdom 1.21 English Shareware Demo - 20 August 1998 (Not originally distributed in a .ZIP file)
The Shattered Kingdom 1.30 Polish Shareware Demo - 23 September 1998 (Original file name is "demo.exe")
The Peasants Rebellion 1.471 English Shareware Demo - 2 December 2005
The Peasants Rebellion 1.471 German Shareware Demo - 24 October 2001

Buy at GOG.com

Oh and by the way, the 2005 year for the English 1.471 demo is not a mistake. It just took them 4 years to finally publish the expansion pack in English. (I took the date from an e-mail sent to me by ZUXXEZ, the producer of the game, notifying of the demo versions availability so whether it is the very same day it was released is not completely sure).

[MrFlibble]

Excellent suggestion, Litude! Personally, I prefer the demo of The Peasants Rebellion, as it has CD-quality music, one mission in addition to the original tutorial found in all other versions, and the save\load function is not disabled here.

I think some earlier versions have an additional battle-only map where you don't build anything, just have a skirmish of two forces. It's definitely in the Russian demo, but IIRC not in the 0.73 English demo.

I like the game for its strong visual resemblance of Warcraft II, although it plays much like the Settlers series games regarding economy, production, settlement planning and resource gathering. It is my understanding that Knights & Merchants preserved some elements from the earlier Settlers titles (like the obligatory roads) that were dropped in later instalments.

Also, it is interesting to note that the Russian title of the game translates as War and Peace, while another game, Carcassonne, got a title in Russian that literally translates as Knights and Merchants (leading to some confusion among the players).

BTW, here are the links to the official websites of the game:
Knights and Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom Website (English)
Knights and Merchants: The Peasants Rebellion Website (German)

[Litude]

Excellent suggestion, Litude! Personally, I prefer the demo of The Peasants Rebellion, as it has CD-quality music, one mission in addition to the original tutorial found in all other versions, and the save\load function is not disabled here.

Well I personally never liked the additions of The Peasants Rebellion that much since there were such excess problems with all the added bugs. But when trying the demo I agree that the demo of The Peasants Rebellion might give a slightly better view on the game since less features have disabled (but then again, it doesn't have multiplayer).

I think some earlier versions have an additional battle-only map where you don't build anything, just have a skirmish of two forces. It's definitely in the Russian demo, but IIRC not in the 0.73 English demo.

Yeah the additional battle tutorial map is available since version 1.20 (but it was removed in The Peasants Rebellion demo).

And there really is that certain something in this game that makes it stand out of the crowd for me. Some people hate it, some people love it. Personally I can't really understand why some people hate it so much but I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion of the game. I've written reviews for both of the games and actually run a quite major (major in the scope of this game's English speaking fan base) fan site for both of the games over here. The website hasn't really been updated all that actively lately (well it has never been all that active) and the design is horribly outdated (not to mention it was outdated already back when I launched it) and the different website creators I used back in the day really left a scar in the website coding which can result in some very weird rendering errors under certain browsers. Oh and please excuse the tons of spelling/grammatical errors that also appear there.

[MrFlibble]

I've written reviews for both of the games and actually run a quite major (major in the scope of this game's English speaking fan base) fan site for both of the games over here. The website hasn't really been updated all that actively lately (well it has never been all that active) and the design is horribly outdated (not to mention it was outdated already back when I launched it) and the different website creators I used back in the day really left a scar in the website coding which can result in some very weird rendering errors under certain browsers. Oh and please excuse the tons of spelling/grammatical errors that also appear there.

Thanks for the link! The site looks very nice IMO. BTW, I didn't know until now that the tutorials in the demo are different from the ones in the full game, as I've only played the demos. I'm collecting facts about "extra" content you can find in demo/shareware versions but not in the full releases of games, looks like this is another nice find!

[MrFlibble]

Whoops, I'm sorry I've incorrectly indicated earlier that in the Tzar demo you can only play as the European civilization. In fact, in one skirmish scenario, you control the Arabian civilization.

Now, the following two games might be interesting to you guys. Three Kingdoms: Fate of the Dragon and it sequel (apparently) Dragon Throne: Battle of Red Cliffs are set in the Three Kingdoms era of Ancient Chinese history. Both games look and play very much like Age of Kings, but have quite a few original twists in economy management, army maintenance and battles.


Fate of the Dragon screenshot.

Download Fate of the Dragon Demo at FilePlanet
Download Dragon Throne Demo at FilePlanet

More Fate of the Dragon screenshots:


More Dragon Throne screenshots: