I want to create a topic here for one of my favorite all time things, old school computers. My childhood computer was an old IBM PC (possibly a 5150) which had a black and amber monochrome monitor and ran on an old version of DOS. However, the computers I'm most nostalgic for are my original Windows 95 and 98 PCs and my MSX.

Anybody remember MS-DOS and all the weird shareware games? How about the old-school look of programs with black screens and chunky fonts? Somewhere in my parent's house there's still have a roll of old computer paper with the tear off things on the sides. Post any old school computer memories you have here and any fascinating stuff you have, whether it be PC, DOS, MSX, Commodore 64, whatever.

I'm going to start this topic by talking about the Adventures of Microman.


My first ever computer (that was able to play games at least) was a Windows 95 computer. With it I had a "101 Games" shareware disk that included a lot of classic games and demos like Shadow Warrior, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Terminator Future Shock and of course this game, the Adventures of Microman. By today's standards it's not a very remarkable game, it had some questionable level design, plain graphics and there was a bug in the game (visible in this video) where the instruments of the MIDI turn to piano for no apparent reason. However, the PC landscape of the 90s was very different than what we have today. While today we have Steam and PC gaming is often considered the cream of the crop, back in those days PC gaming was the wild west. Anyone can release anything on the PC regardless of quality or content, but most games were free and came as shareware.

The Adventures of Microman is the most "early Windows" game I could think of. The look of the game combined with the General MIDI soundtrack, the fact that you had to play it with keyboard and the overall gamefeel brings me back to the days when the internet was primitive, most websites consisted of only a single page of animated GIFs and MIDI music and small game developers like ourselves released whatever we had the skills, patience and imagination allowed. I guess not too much has changed, I'm still making Astral Fantasy and other independent games and many of you are doing the same, but stuff like this hearkens back to a more innocent time I genuinely miss.

I love the old MS-DOS and shareware stuff. I still occasionally play games like Master of Orion and the games by Apogee to this very day. One of my favorite games was a game on my old computer called Astrorock, it was basically a fancier and more rock n' roll version of Asteroids.

Ultima was great! Thank goodness for DOSbox. My first computer (which might have been an IBM 5150) I mostly just used for writing, school assignments or farting around, and didn't really have any way of playing games on it. As bad as 4 colors sounds, at least it wasn't just black and some shade of orange-y gold like mine was. It's funny that despite its incredible limitations I still have a soft spot for that old machine with its Frankenstein-esque lever for turning it on. I think I mostly liked the keyboard and all the computery sounds it made.

Last time I checked yes, through private servers at least. MMORPGs aren't really my jam, but I'm sincerely impressed they kept that game alive for so long.

Here's some screenshots of my MS-DOS (DOSBox) layout that I have on my computer.



I use Norton Commander for convenience, plus I like the old school look of it.



Believe it or not, this is my main word processor that I use. No fancy bells and whistles, a simple layout and nice color scheme I can customize. And before you ask, yes, I am able to save my works just as easily as any other word processor.



And here we have Nesticle. It's a pretty crappy emulator, but it's as nostalgic as it gets. I used to good around with the bloody hand back in the day like you see in this screenshot. I have this emulator for pure nostalgic purposes, nothing more.

I have also found ways to move some of the Steam games I downloaded like Doom and Master of Orion to DOSbox and have them working. It's easier to play them through Steam for the most part, but the purist in me likes loading them up from DOS and playing them like a kid back in the 90s.

i like going through the archives of world builder games that were preserved online sometimes. world builder was an ancient adventure game development tool for macs with some rudimentary support for RPG combat mechanics and it's kind of cool perusing all this recovered media made in the late 80s/early 90s regardless of whether it's actually any good or not

I agree, I'm very much a purist when it comes to old technology. I still play all my retro games on the original hardware and even with a CRT TV. To me part of the joy of vintage stuff like old school games and DOS is the environment, which often had a feel and environment which adds to the mood that you don't get with modern tech.

NESticle and ZSNES were my emulators of choice back in the day. I remember in the early 00s on GamingW when I was a newbie I used to play Tales of Phantasia and other RPGs people recommended on ZSNES. I love the aesthetic of it's GUI and was thrilled when I discovered ZMZ, the ZSNES GUI made for BSNES.

I'll have to find it again, it was a pretty small project as far as I remember. You might have seen it once when I was streaming SNES games a long time ago, it looks exactly like ZSNES but isn't ZSNES.

I honestly love the aesthetic of old emulators with custom GUIs like ZSNES, NESticle, NEOrage nd MEKA, it looks way cooler than typical emulators which just look like basic windows programs.