Play Commander Keen 4.. In Browser!

 

Click here to play now! No setup needed. 

Blood [DOS] (1997) Full game in browser!

 

This game is just as badass as it looks.

     Think of a Doom and Duke, Hexen and Heretic... but refined, more features, and a ton more horror elements and gore. Blood was the first FPS games that used Voxels, advanced lighting effects, and far improved sound and level design. It retro-futuristic wild west feel was far ahead of its time, and has a last effect on gaming to this day. 

Play it now in your browser for free now!

Circuit's Edge Theme on an MT32

 

Dark Seed (1993) - An Overlooked H.R. Giger DOS classic

 

Even the box art was ahead of it's time. 

He has a splitting headache. 

     Before we get started, you can play this classic game free in browser online, located here. I highly suggest you get started. Dark Seed is a point and click game, modified from its SCUMM engine roots, and features a robust and dark theme from the very beginning. You visit other worlds that make little sense, aliens are abundant, and the scenes are vast. You play the game through a curtain like you are watching a show, which adds to the tone of the game. 

Forget the door, there is an alien baby here. 

     This game does have it's flaws, but when you mix equal parts H.R. Giger artwork and Michael Cranford of Bard's Tale fame, you are going to land on something special. The music was generic, but haunting in a low budget horror movie way. The game is strangely monotone in color, but advanced in resolution;  Giger himself said he could not work with the pixelated 300x200, and insisted on 640x350, at the sacrifice of the enhanced color pallet. The cover comes from one of Giger's famous art works from 1974, Li II. From the wikipedia article on the production of the game:

"Developers used an Epson flatbed scanner to import selected body parts and landscape fragments in monochrome, then with Deluxe Paint II Enhanced for MS-DOS assembled them into single images. An Amiga and an S-VHS camera digitized actors' poses that Cyberdreams further edited on PCs. After the company decided that the images were inadequate late in the development process, developers hand colored the art for six more months.^[7] The main character, Mike Dawson, is named after the game's designer and producer. He also lent his appearance to the character's sprite."

The NES version is a Famicom oddity, turned real.

     Dark seed is one of the rare games that only comes along every so many years. It has no right to exist and have the budget it has, and was made to work with available resources and technology of the day. I find it very facinating that it's following was so vast that an unknown person created a Japanese port of the game to NES, unlicensed of course. A fan made translation is underway. 

     Dark Seed 2 came out in 1995 with further enhanced graphics and more of that nightmare feel and ambiance. Not nearly the sleeper hit of the first game, Dark Seed 1 and 2 had their fair share of ports, including the Sega Saturn with rare mouse support. Either way, put this game on your radar on any platform, it's really worth it.. and what do you know! You can play the second one online in the browser for free as well. 

Circuit's Edge is a 1990 DOS Masterpiece.

Play in your browser for free!

   Very recently.. like in the last 3 years or so, I discovered you play old DOS games in your browser at several different websites. Archive.org Macintosh and Atari 800 games is where I got my start, then starting moving through all the old DOS games. I always had a hard time with DOSBox on my PC, and getting it just right, so this was a new revelation for me, really eye opening, and a creative use of emulation. I've talked about Dune several times, but today I thought I would do a quickie about an amazing game that changed my childhood- Circuit's Edge. (CE)

Gibson approved.

     I had seen a few "Cyberpunk" movies as a kid, namely Bladerunner, and I had no idea they were based on books. CE is based on an amazingly well written book series called When Gravity Fails by George Effinger. Forget all you know about Bladerunner, here is the dark and gritty version in a place called Budayeen. Dropping with sex, drugs and ultra violence- this was the first game I played that pulled no punches. Before this, I had been playing Secret of Mana for Super Nintendo, so you could say this was a huge change indeed. I remember getting to a point at a bar where a woman propositioned me for sex, and it showed her ass. I had to quickly exit the game until my parents fell asleep before I attracted too much attention. I had never played or read Neuromancer, or even heard of William Gibson at this point of my life.

The story is top notch.

     Story on rails would be a good descriptor of how the game plays out. You are aimed in the right direction and set free to talk and see whatever you want. Very close in story and vibe to Johnny Mnemonic really. Spend too much time talking to bartenders, you get a call on your watch to keep things on track. Almost right away you get in some fights, which keep things super exciting and add the super violent gritty nature of the game. Absolute masterclass in storytelling and pace, even for an old game. You could release this today on Steam and people would think it was the new retro storytelling game everyone should play.

They are real.. if I can touch them.

     I felt like a total degenerate staying the night at a friends house, watching my buddy play for the first time late at night. I told him how good it was, the rated R/X nature of it, so of course he had to try it. CE is of those games you really can't put down, and was most kids first hard exposure to a world we had no idea existed. 

Flying Luna Clipper (1987) Full Movie & Thoughts

 

Flying Luna Clipper is a DOS demo scene fever dream.

    I don't know why this movie exists to be honest. Did the world need a 55 minute movie made in 8 Bit PC art? Don't get me wrong, this is worth a watch. As people get more nostalgic for their DOS games, this film is going to resonate with more and more fans of the genre. If you just submit a little and watch this without asking for too much, it is actually a pretty soothing 55 minutes. Does the intro to Space Quest IV give you the warm fuzzies? Then this is 100% for you.

Half fruit, half person, this sums up the movie perfectly.

    Created by Ikko Ono on a MSX 8 bit computer, the video plays like a slideshow, and less like a movie. One piece of surreal art moves to the next, thinly animated at it's core. You have to really use your imagination at times. About 10 minutes in I was asking myself.. Why did Sony fund this? They had to obviously know this was not going to go over well. God, they even considered a sequel at some point. I don't want to shit on this too much, because It's super interesting, and I think it's important in many ways. Matt Repetski rediscovered this gem on Laserdisc at a thrift store, and uploaded this to his youtube channel, which makes you wonder; how many other things like this got made and we forgot about them in the stream of time?

More info on this oddity here. 

Dune 1992 (DOS) Was way ahead of it's time.

 

Play Dune for DOS in your browser here. Works with no bullshit!

     Dune for DOS holds a special place in my gamers heart. It's one of the very first DOS games I was introduced to, being a tried and true Macintosh user. It has DOS demo-scene quality graphics and sound, animations, and awesome call backs to the movie. It has lots of relatability and paved the way for games like Warcraft, Command and Conquer and more. The fully voiced cut scenes, changes in gameplay types and modes were way ahead of their time.

World of Longplays Video

Screen shots from the game I grabbed below:

Wizardry (1991) Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord - Full Movie OVA + Bonus!

 

Based on the hit old school game series of the same name, Wizardry: Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord is a hack and slash anime delight. 

Of course you can play the DOS version of the game in browser.. thanks technology! Click here to play it now. 

BBS Games Are Back - Legend of the Red Dragon Online

 

Click here to play now! (I'm on the River Realm as Morganstern)

    As you can imagine, when I found out I could play BBS/DOOR games in a browser, I was so excited and forgot about work for the rest of the day. It's no secret I'm old and use to get on BBS's a long time ago on my Tandy 1000, and was always limited to a few minutes on each BBS per day, with a very limited amount of things you could do on each one. It was rare for the places I lived to have more than two or three nodes, so running in to other players was rare. Well not anymore! A quick signup which was required no verification by email, and we were off to the races. 

I quickly made a character. Oh god the memories came flowing in. The green text! I always go thief so I can get first strike in the forest and when other players are sleeping.

A few forest fights in, and I left my mark in the flowers... Comment below if you saw it.

Awesome random event with ANSI graphics. Creepy event!

A floating head visited me. 

...and of course I died a horrible death. Perfect!

    Super awesome site. No advertisements and totally free. Can't wait to die again tomorrow. For those who are familiar with the game, it looks like lots of aftermarket and supported add-ons that were sold originally with the program have been loaded. In the recent news scrolling at the beginning it appeared that people were getting married, robbing banks, and visiting places I had not heard of when I played as a kid. 

If you wanted to download the game yourself to run in DOSbox and try out different IGM's, click here!