Stargunner

Apogee always released good flying shooter types. This one follows in the wake of Major Stryker, Raptor, and Zone 66. On the market in 1996, it features fast-paced action, good replayability and good graphics, all with an unrelenting difficulty that's sure to have you cursing your way through the first episode on the easiest difficulty. Tip: When you're at the buy screens, press F2 to save your game. Make a save for each level so that you can come back if you mess something up. You'll be glad you did.

 

Gameplay: 7/10

Fly your ship through a 2D plane of explosions, spaceships, and extra explosions collecting powerups, credits and points. Unique, no, simple, yes, but it does feature a buy screen where you can purchase upgrades to your ship and get it working the way you want. You can stack two extra guns of your choice, two orbiting moons that do various things, and install engines to keep your speed up. All of these features become apparently necessary, as you're not going to get anywhere without upgrading. Once you beat the stage, you face a boss, which is usually just some unimaginative spaceship with some weak points you've gotta hit.

 

Graphics: 9/10

 They're real good and they work very fast. Everything flying around you gives a great feeling of chaos and it takes a fine-tuned player to get used to its insanity. The enemies look good, the levels are okay, and your ship changes as you upgrade it. Cool. The enemies and bosses could have been cooler though, minus a point.

Sound: 8/10

There's some rockin' digitized music, entertaining digitized speech, and a punch of pew-pews. It does add a lot to the overall experience. Repetitive after a while, so I'm dockin' 2 points.

 

Overall: 8/10

It's an awesome addition to your freeware collection. You'll be playing it again and again as you discover the best weapon combinations for your play style. The story doesn't exactly keep you feeling gripped, but it does give you some sort of premise as to what the hell you're doing on this planet. Apogee went and gave the game away for free starting in 2005, which is quite generous of them, considering how great the game is. Check out the link below for some more information on a great game that time forgot!

http://www.3drealms.com/stargunner/

Caves of Thor

 There's been some games that annoy me. Some are new, some are old, but they usually have one thing in common, and that's me saying "I'm never playing this game again". Caves of Thor, though, man, it's on a whole different level of that phrase. Caves of Thor is like, almost the meaning of it. The epitome of my catchphrase, "I'm never playing this game again". It makes you think that if you ever went back to 1990, all there would be is Caves of Thor and we'd all be playing horrible PC games, but luckily that's not the case. This game was invented by Todd Replogle, who later became one of Duke Nukem 3D's lead programmers, and this is also the first title Apogee picked up that wasn't created by one of them. Let me explain this abomination a little bit more.

 Sound: 0/10

The first thing you will do is press the S key to turn off the sound, unless you were like me (who didn't see that to begin with) and just sat there listening to the worst-ever PC speaker orchestra. I'm serious, something is wrong with this game's music, it's absolutely nervewracking. All the points, gone.

Graphics: 1/10

Some miserable attempt at anything that resembles a crap is what you get with this one. You're going to need to decypher the games cryptic code of ASCII objects that are supposed to either be items, enemies, or doorways. There's a lot of nothing spectacular, -9 fat ones.

Gameplay: 1/10

The controls can be summed up to the equivalent of running a marathon in molasses. They're just that sticky. The screen can't even catch up with your smiley warrior when he's moving. Make sure that you're aiming in the correct direction, then press space to attack enemies with your exploding spear or something. If you try to throw more than one, your current one will disappear in mid-flight, so don't do that. You're going to need to find shields, potions, and keys to get to the next area. I got extremely frustrated in what I guess was a river, trying to fight my way against the current because I couldn't see anywhere else to go. -9 and don't whine.

Overall: 1/10

Basically, this game gets one point overall because it's a game. Other than that, it's a pretty horrible creation that probably should have never seen the light of day. Some people may like it, and my rebuttal is this: PLAY ZZT INSTEAD if you're looking for ASCII graphics and top-down gameplay. When I was playing this game, I noticed that you say "Oops" if you shoot a wall. This leads me to believe that, possibly, this is where Duke Nukem's "Where is it?" was created. It's even more credible when you consider who made the game. I could probably ramble on and on about how bad this game is, maybe so that you don't have to play it, or maybe so that we can learn from some of the fatal flaws of gaming. Give it a shot, it's free, but in the menu it says the source code is available for $199.

http://www.classicdosgames.com/game/Caves_of_Thor.html

Bio Menace

Bio Menace Episode Two

Lately, I've been playing a lot of games from 1993. It must have been a really good year for gaming, because companies like Apogee were cutting them out like no other. Bio Menace is a 2D sidescroller similar to the original Duke Nukem which came out in 1991, only with several updates. It uses the Commander Keen engine, which was also released in '91, but plays with much more aggressiveness than the retarded kid with a helmet. You're Snake Logan, and you've been sent to check out the mutants invading the city. That's right, Pliskin's not the only Snake in town. This guy sporting a V-neck and mullet has been here a long time.


Gameplay: 7/10
Okay, here's what sucks. You can't move while you shoot, and you can't point upward. -1 point for each of those. Otherwise, the jumping controls feel pretty nice, and the action never really stops. There's lots of platforming going on in this game, hopping around through cities and forests, also there's lots of shooting going on. At least they were decent enough to allow you to duck and shoot, which you're going to be doing frequently, because 50% of the enemies are too short to hit while you're standing up. Every now and then you have to find a crystal or key to open the door, which is amazingly cliche, but what's a sidescroller like this without it? Of course, you're going to be picking up some powerups, which will do stuff like increase your fire rate or bullet damage. There's also a few types of grenades to use. Additionally, you have a few "secret" combinations that allow you to use the plasma shot, shield, and some others. The levels are usually self-explanatory enough to let you just blast through it on your first try, and not have to run around trying to discover your way, but sometimes you have to open up a bunch of doors to find the crystal you need to proceed, and those require keys, so you get what's gonna happen. -1 point for that.

Skull Man in Episode One

Graphics: 7/10
Hey man, they're good, and the game runs pretty smooth to boot. The level graphics are great and the game portrays itself very well. There's some things that bother me, like why all the monsters are so cute. Blobs, smiley dinosaurs, robots and such. -3 points for that but hey, at least they blow up with a satisfying gib.

Sound: 8/10
Lots of high quality digitized sound and sweet adlib tunes keeps your ears entertained. There's lots of explosions and gunfire, but the music sounds a bit random, so I bit off 2 points.


Overall: 9/10

The secret Apogee room, portrait of a hero

It's really a great game, despite the fact that you're some creepo with a mustache. Wait... a... minute, isn't that Carlos Santana? What are you doin' disguising yourself as Snake Logan trying to shoot a bunch of cute monsters? Did you take mescaline again? Oh look, you've wandered into the secret Apogee room, where they were keeping all the spare Duke Nukem and Commander Keen items! Looks like they're working on a game that's going to blow you out of the water in the near future and everyone's gonna forget about you! It's alright, Bio Menace, you had a good run, and it was fun to see you again. Have a good one.
http://www.3drealms.com/menace/

Xargon

It's 1993, the height of the shareware trend, and online bulletin boards are distributing the content to personal computers via 56k more than any time before. One of those games was Xargon, developed by Epic Megagames using the Jill of the Jungle engine. You're this super-tan blond dude named Malvineous Havershim that finds himself knocked out by some putrid gas while performing an archaeological dig. When you wake up, you're in some sort of dream world, complete with strange vegetation, oddly defunct creatures, and a talking eagle that's telling you where to go. It's "beyond reality".

Gameplay: 6/10

The game has that classic arcade-action feel, racking up points while you try to jump around platforms and enemies to reach the end. You collect these emeralds, which the game tells you are "very valuable", so you can buy stuff from the shop that Malvineous keeps in his back pocket or something. You see, he can access it anywhere in the game by pressing B, and he's going to need it to buy health and weapons. This guy can only take 5 hits before he's out. Sometimes you're in the top-down map view, running around reading your notebook looking for new areas to explore, other times you're shooting enemies in a sidescroller. You start with this wimpy laser thing that you can guide into going a certain direction, but eventually graduate to better stuff to help slay the creatures. Still, the character movement is pretty rugged on this one. It just isn't as responsive as you need or desire. It feels like it needs some tightening up, so there's a loss of 4 points.

Graphics: 7/10

They are indeed pretty swell. It's a really nice environment going on here. You also find yourself in other areas like the Robot Factory. I like all the plants and just plain weird stuff that's going on here.

The scrolling action feels a bit messed up, so I had to -3 points.

Sound: 5/10

The digitized sound is raunchy and annoying, playing weird guitar sounds every couple seconds. The music is nothing to talk about, either. It's really not that great. -5 points.

Overall: 6/10

It gets an honorable mention amongst the Epic Megagames sidescrollers. Sometimes the game becomes a little egotistical, as seen above, or just plain ruthless, seen right. They're saying that they can't be held responsible for the fact that I had an anxiety attack from playing Xargon. However, if I happen to experience any of the aforementioned symptoms,  I should probably call Epic Megagames. For what, I don't know, hopefully not to order Xargon. One good thing about this game is that it was announced as freeware in 2008, and even the source code was released, and that's something a lot more companies should be doing with their old games!

http://www.classicdosgames.com/game/Xargon.html

Catacomb

John Carmack, the amazing programmer and lead in games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, and many others, released this for the Apple II in 1989. Later on, it was ported to MS-DOS, and given features like EGA graphics. You're a magician looking for treasure in the demon infested 10-level Catacomb. This shouldn't be confused with Catacomb: The Abyss, which came out some time later and was first-person. Here's the first Catacomb, a 2-D action/adventure title.

Gameplay: 6/10
I could just imagine plugging the 5½'' floppy into the drive and hearing the loading sequences. It looks, plays, and sounds exactly like you'd expect a game like this to. We've all heard of Gauntlet, and this is the first game that comes to mind when I play this. You gotta fight through the level, get the key to open the door to the mirror to the next one. The levels are fairly small, not too intricate, but always have some messed up trick about them. When I first started playing, I accidentally hit Enter, which cast fireballs in all directions, found a secret warp area, went to level 9, and got killed. I thought that was just a little bit funny. Eventually I picked up the strategy to the game and just started slayin' demons. I like that you can charge while you walk, plus points, the special attacks are super useful, plus points, but I hate how you can't walk diagonally. -4 points.

Graphics: 4/10
EGA graphics can support something like 16 colors. Now that we know that, it's fair to say they could have atleast changed the color scheme to the levels. You're looking at the same purple walls, green floors, and red demons the whole game. Your guy walks around in a hilarious fashion, sort of shuffling along. Just for fun, I tried it in CGA mode, and the former is a giant improvement, but still not enough for me to give points. -6 points for the ridiculous color scheme that never leaves you alone.

Sound: 7/10
I really enjoy the effort that went into the sound. It's constantly rocking these arpeggio boops and blips, sounds very similar to Commander Keen, everything has a sound and it's just a lot of fun to hear. No music though. -3 points.

Overall: 7/10
It's so easy to see how Catacomb Abyss was created using this as a backbone. The play style is inadvertently similar to its predecessors. I know one thing, I wish that I had this game back then rather than all the other crap I used to play. The Catacomb series is pretty badass, and there's quite a few games in it, but just how do they stack up? You'll have to wait and see. Snatch this game from the link below!
http://www.myabandonware.com/game/catacomb-27y#download

Alien Carnage/Halloween Harry

Alien Carnage was originally called Halloween Harry. It features you, Harry, on a little mission to save the world from some Aliens who are turning people into zombies and stuff. When I had it, it was called Halloween Harry, and I could swear that I remember the missions being different, but they changed a lot of it for some reason or another.

Gameplay: 7/10
Let's just get this off our chest right now; Harry can't jump. He must weigh like 500 pounds with giant gas tank and helmet he wears. What Harry lacks in mobility he replaces with the brute force thrust of his jetpack, subsequently draining his flamethrower fuel. That's right, they're linked together. If you run out, it sucks. You gotta go buy some more from one of these vending machine things, but in order to do that, you must make the money by killing a few of the many enemies in this game. There's blobs, spiders, zombies, aliens, and lots more weirdness. Every now and then Harry runs across a chick who's about to get some tentacle. He unties them and makes them disappear into another dimension or something. The controls are ridiculous and stiff, gravity just seems to suck in this world Harry lives in. That set aside, the game is still pretty fun to play and it runs well enough for me to only -3 points.

Graphics: 9/10
I've always enjoyed the graphics in this game. They're fresh and vivid, a little cartoon nature about them, and the levels look really good. Cut scenes are spectacular. It could have ran a little faster, as it seems a little skippy, but still very fast. Only -1 point!

Sound: 7/10
When I had this game around 1995, I don't think I had a Soundblaster, or even knew what that meant. I remember using the PC Speaker option, but it lacked music. Now when I play it, the music sounds pretty good, and the sounds are defiantly worthy. It's not very high quality, but I can't complain. -3 points.

Overall: 8/10
Alien Carnage, or Halloween Harry for that matter, is a staple of one of those wonderful Apogee sidescrolling games. Man, did they come out with a ton of them, but it's great. When I play this game now, it reminds me of many other games to follow in its wake, like Borderlands, running around getting money killing stuff vending machines and so on. I also can't help but wonder if Duke Nukem took a little piece of the storyline out of this game. I guess we'll never know. You should probably play this game, because it used to cost money, but now it's free to play and distribute.
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/alien-carnage/

Death Rally

Now we're talking. Death Rally was one of my favorite games. It came out in 1996, when video games were starting to be fast, graphical, intuitive, and challenging. It's a top-down perspective racing game against three other cars, doing laps around a winding street, using weapons such as machine guns, spikes, mines, or your car, to blow other racers off the road. Oh, and there's a little cameo. Some of you may know who I'm talking about.

Gameplay: 8/10
In Death Rally, the only thing that matters is to smash. Just straight blow through everyone you see and try not to get wasted while you do it. There's a bunch of other cars and weapons, but only one catch; you start with $495 bucks and a shitty Beetle lookin' thing. It handles like crap, too. Best win some races so you can upgrade this stupid car, or better yet, purchase one of the other ones. At first, you're probably going to get blown up a lot, which leads to having to repair the car, and eventually just being broke as hell, unless you can either not take that much damage during the race, or pick up enough of the repair powerups that you'll find along the track. The whole idea around this game is to enter races, rank up, and eventually race the badass at the end to become a total boss, or something. -2 points for the tracks being too short sometimes!

Graphics: 7/10
It runs fast and well. The menu screens are a little cluttered but look pretty good nonetheless. The cars don't appear to have enough detail, and the customization is nonexistent, with the exception of the color of the vehicle. The environments that you race in could have been a little more creative, as there was no animation or changing parts of the track. -3 points for those reasons.

Sound: 4/10
This game lacks severely in the sound department. The music is bland, repetitive, and the sound effects are a lackluster attempt with a lame product. They need some more kerpow, you know, more squealing tires, more gun sounds, more great music, all of this is practically not there. It sucks. -6 points.

Overall: 8/10
Despite the sound and graphics not being that great, even for 1996, this game is still a ton of fun to play. Guaranteed the minute you start it you'll probably be playing it for a long time. This game was ported to Windows, so there's no crazy stuff to run it, and best of all. It's. Free. To. Download and it has Duke Nukem in it. Pick this game up from here.
http://www.joystiq.com/game/death-rally/download/death-rally-for-windows-full-game/

Jetpack

When Jetpack came out in 1993, it was an instant hit amongst me and my gamer friends. The single player levels that come with the game are seen as only one thing to me; inspiration to create a much more amazing level with the built-in level editor.

Gameplay: 8/10
Jetpack's main focus is relentlessly speedy gameplay. You're some dude with a Jetpack, a helmet, and a vicious world where the very fabric of existence involves collecting all of the green gems to open the door and make way to the next level. The whole time, there's enemy robots chasing you as you blast your way around ladders, conveyors and teleporters. You're also running out of fuel for your canisters. Worst of all, if you get touched by one of these evil bots, you blow the hell up. Makes for a good game, but -2 points for repetitive nature.

Graphics: 5/10
Let's face it, this game is fugly. Random-ass tiles can make it seem like you're in a factory, on the beach, or in a cave, all at the same time. If you wanted to make the game environmentally correct, you'd have to design a pretty dumb level. That's just the way this game is. The title screen is pretty sweet, though. -5 points for graphics being practically useless in this game.

Sound: 6/10
The sound repeats itself quite a bit, however it provides a much more immersive experience when playing Jetpack. Screams and explosions, grit and grind, dings and dats, they're what they are. -4 points for lack of music to rock to.

Overall: 7/10
If you haven't played Jetpack, give it a try. There's a ton of user-created levels out there for you to load up and run through. They could have improved by making multi-room levels, and more powerups other than the time stopper, but I liked it enough when it came out to talk about it now. Oh, and like most of the games I post, it's free to download.
http://www.adeptsoftware.com/jetpack/