I was given these two DOS games by my buddy Jim (most of you know him as Saro). Nothing quite like some old school text games. People had to be pretty clever to make decent games back in the day. You couldn't hide behind terrific graphics and cut-scenes. The plot had to be interesting, and game-play engaging.
The first game is called Executive Suite. The purpose is to move yourself up the ranks of the company and increase your worth. You have to make solid business decisions to move up the company ranks. Screw up and you can get demoted or even let go. Not a long game, but interesting enough to try a few times. A couple of decisions will come back to bite you, and every result makes pretty good sense.
The second game is called Alter Ego. I haven't had a chance to play it all the way through - it's a much longer one. But the premise, is you get to control decisions made by a baby all the way up through old age. Every decision you make affects your personality, financial situation, social skills, and overall satisfaction. There are a lot of decision points, and I've only gotten to toddler stage. But it's a very interesting game.
One note: The male version creates you a female character, and the female version creates you a male character. This is because it's more interesting to try living a life through the opposite sex. Give it a try. I'd like to see what people think.
NOTE: Alter Ego can give people problems, especially anyone running Vista. If you can't run it, try using a DOS emulator like DOSBox.
Anyone who knows of any other cool DOS games like this...feel free to share them. The classics never truly go away.
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www.the-underdogs.info has the single largest and best organized collection of greyware out there. I know most of you guys are about ten years younger than I am so you didn't grow up seeing those games on the shelves or playing them on the original piece of crap computers that existed at the time, but it's incredibly fun to look back not just at how primitive the graphics were, but at how much more complex the games were. Genres hadn't really been defined the way they are now and most of the stuff defies easy classification. Some of the elements worked out incredibly well and some were incredibly painful, but at the end of the day, the creativity was in the games themselves, not in the quality of graphics and music and you can tell what a difference it makes to have one or two programmers busting ass to create an original work vs. a team of retreads kicking out textures for a game licensed off the Unreal engine.
If you ever want suggestions on games that transcend time and are still as fun and challenging today as they were then, feel free to let me know. There are plenty that are worth noting.
I think the first game i really loved was actually a series. The Quest for Glory saga. Im not sure the exact order i played them in, because some were re-released, but i have often thought about going to my dads house and digging through all my old junk to find those disks....than finding a drive to put those damn 3 1/2"ers in.
I remember playing some really crazy games on the our old Apple IIc but it's always fun to have a good time with great old games.
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