back in the early pandemic, with way more time spent in my apartment than was healthy, i decided to run a solo podcast about 90s gaming on the Macintosh, Windows 3.1, and MS-DOS. my aim was introducing a level of technical and historical detail not often found on general audience video game podcasts.
each episode took 10-20 hours of research and writing to explore in depth. i tried to pick less popular games that hadn't been talked about much, were underrated, or fascinating from a programming perspective.
in 2022 we moved, i began new programming projects, and the podcast went on the shelf. i always meant to get back to it, and received many e-mails about future episodes.
while i write the next episode, please enjoy some of the earlier episodes, including everyone's beloved SimAnt (episodes 14 and 15).
here are some box and browsies shots of SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony (Maxis, 1991) for 16-bit windows. i use the physical boxes and their documentation during research and writing. this has a 150+ page manual, which is 50% ant science!
A page from the SimAnt manual, showing a cartoon labelled Trophallaxis Funnies.
It shows two ants in the kitchen of their home. One ant carries a briefcase asking, "What's for dinner honey?"
The other ant, wearing a skirt and stirring a pot on the stove replies, "Oh, the same old crop."
Made a post-jam slightly updated version of Space Cats with redefinable keys and joystick support, among other things. Thanks to my nephew Ed for finding a glaring bug no one had yet spotted (you could fly through the doors in level 3 without keys! Wrong wall tiles, bah)
🏈🖥️ Ready to call the plays? In Football for Windows, created by an ex-college player, you step in as coach & run the game your way. It was once free to copy & play (with a $25 registration to unlock everything) — and now you can play it instantly in-browser at the
@internetarchive ➡️ https://archive.org/details/FOOTFW
Hey all, I’m Chuck. A literal graybeard these days with over 30 years in #opensource starting with TAMU #Linux in ‘92 and running a #shareware BBS for years prior. I was involved in early on with #LineageOS helping with encryption and daily builds for the HTC One m8 until they had their build environment up. My path eventually took me to #RedHat where I get to work with intensely cool and smart people from our customers, the communities and of course my colleagues. #introduction
while Apogee games have no Report Thy Feat screen, i am proud to announce that after 30+ years of trying, i just beat Crystal Caves shareware
@georgebsocial 😆
i don't know who just paid more than double for the registered version of #kiki at http://tomo-dashi.itch.io/kiki but thank you from the bottom of my heart. you don't know how much that means to me.
i put in 12 hour days, 6 days a week, into making the software as frustration-free as possible over the past three months. users like you make it possible to feed the real kiki - who is a voracious cacodemon despite her 1/3-kitty-size stature.
on your behalf, i disturbed her lordship speaking of your deed, and she granted you a 3X Greater Blessing of Exceptional Luck for the next week. 😻
A buggy-eyed black cat, with an oversized head and skinny little body, buries her chin into her tail as she sits on a windowsill perch, staring at dad's very annoying camera.
Cool game I stumbled on today! Haven't gotten very far yet (it's hard!), but I love the Castlevania 2ish backgrounds, the great spritework, and the catchy soundtrack! Interested to take a look at the QBASIC source code, too!
Official screenshot from the game "Anzu Castle Gracula", a retro metroidvania reminscent of the Castlevania franchise, made in QBASIC, and starring furry characters. The screen shows a pixelated view of old, mossy ruins in the woods and a bird woman holding a knife standing below an angel statue. Below the main scene is a HUD showing player health and various other stats. The overall graphical style is NESlike with the exception of the HUD which is very DOSlike.
back in the early 90s, i only knew of four ways to get new computer games:
buying my own (i could afford a new one every 3-6 months at best)
trading with friends (only 3 kids in my school had computers at home)
buying shareware diskettes at the grocery store for a few bucks
downloading shareware from local BBSes
of all of the above, only the last two were reliable sources of new games every week. i was one of the only kids in the school that had a modem, so i spent every evening sourcing out hot new shareware on my local boards. i'd wear out my credits and time limits downloading every single disk i could find at 2400 baud, usually taking about an hour
of the dozens of games I downloaded, two of them proved to be mega-hits: Tank Wars and Crystal Caves. for over a year, my two best friends and i huddled around the computer playing hotseat tank wars, and took turns trying to finish CC levels.
consider that, at the time, we owned AAA titles like Wing Commander II and Space Quest IV, and a sega genesis with a dozen games between us. and yet, crystal caves was the first thing we'd load up on sleepovers. it found the exact right balance of addictive, fun and friendly.
a few years ago i started collecting old shareware distributor diskettes - the kind you'd find for $2 at a grocery store. and i absolutely treasure them. 🙏
5 1/4-inch and 3 1/2-inch floppy disk copies of Crystal Caves by Apogee. Both use generic cover art and screenshots from the game in a vain attempt to be shelfworthy.