What happens when a lowly Stellar Patrol ensign, stuck with endless busywork aboard the S.P.S. Feinstein, suddenly finds himself the lone survivor on a mysterious, crumbling outpost? Intercom's 1983 Planetfall isn't just another text adventure. It's a mix of sci-fi exploration, survival, and an emotional punch to the gut. Will we uncover the secrets of the abandoned alien world? Can we repair the failing base before it's too late? And what about that quirky little robot who insists on following you everywhere? Friend, nuisance, or something more?

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") on this episode we have three guests to discuss the game. First of all returning DGC member Hannes ("Mr Creosote"), who wrote a review of Planetfall for his website GoodOldDays.net. Also joining is Tony Longworth, a music composer who contributed music for Jason Scott's "Get Lamp" interactive fiction documentary and also made an album inspired by Infocom games called "Memories of Infocom volume 1". Last but not least we are joined by Jimmy Maher ("The Digital Antiquarian") who has written about the history of videogames in general and Infocom in particular for many years for his website Filfre.net.

We received a voice message by Jon ("BogusMeatFactory"), for which we are very thankful! If you, too, want to be part of a future episode you can send one to club@dosgameclub.com

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2025/10/ep107.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (230 mins, 263 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for making us all stick to actual schedules (did you notice we're not really lagging behind anymore?). And thanks to DGC member Console for editing the episode, you're a lifesaver!

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you.

RELEVANT LINKS:

* Mr. Creosote's review of Planetfall on GoodOldDays.net

* Memories of Infocom - Volume 1 by Tony Longworth (also available as physical release from polyplay)

* The Mind Electric - a selection of music from Get Lamp by Tony Longworth & Flesh-Resonance

* The Digital Antiquarian offers many relevant articles, for example this one about Planetfall and this one about the roots of Infocom

* The Literate Pixel podcast hosted by Jon ("BogusMeatFactory") and Nick

* Get Lamp documentary about interactive fiction by Jason Scott

* Steve Meretzky's personal homepage

* In 2008 Steve Meretzky wrote about how he created Floyd the robot in Planetfall

* Steve Meretzky kept meticulous notes, the ones on Planetfall are available on archive.org: part 1 and part 2

From Episodes – DOS Game Club via this RSS feed

I do not remember how or when I acquired this shareware game, but when I briefly lost internet access in '96 I play a lot of it. I have been trying to remember the name of the game for years, this weekend I found the manual in storage.

Time to try getting it to run again and see if it is as good as I remember it being.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aethra_Chronicles

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/the-aethra-chronicles-volume-one-celystra-s-bane-31i

Update: after reading the Wikipedia entry, I likely got the shareware version via a magazine in '94-96, then mailed away for the full version in '96.

With Earthworm Jim previously and Planetfall up next, you could say we're on a bit of a space-themed streak here. But while those games have lots of other things going on, the Elite series puts the vastness of outer space absolutely front and centre.

When the original Elite came out in 1984 the sheer scale of the game blew everyone away. A whole universe on a floppy disk, who would have thought it possible! It was going to take a lot to amaze the audience again when the sequel was released, a whopping 9 years later. But Frontier: Elite II had kept up with current events. Gone were the wireframe graphics, a new colourful galaxy was there for you to explore. Just request take off permission and fly off, commander!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") on this episode we have two guests to discuss the game. First of all returning DGC member Brian ("SpaceGameJunkie") who as you can tell by the username is all about space games. See the links below to find his YouTube and Twitch channels as well as the two (!) retro gaming podcasts he hosts. Also joining for the very first time is Tane, for who Frontier is one his favourite games. He also made a cool space visualiser inspired by Frontier that's linked below.

We received no voice messages this time (boo!), but if you want to be part of a future episode you can send one to club@dosgameclub.com

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2025/08/ep106.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (144 mins, 164 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix, who also recorded the audio clips from his retro hardware which you hear in the episode's intro. And thanks to DGC member Console for editing the episode, you're a lifesaver!

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you.

RELEVANT LINKS:

* Check out Brian's stuff at spacegamejunkie.com and retrodogfight.com

* teskooano.space is Tane's procedural space viewer

* Ian Bell's website

* Frontier Fundamentals is a fantastic beginner-friendly tutorial series on YouTube by JimPlaysGames

* Great Frontier fan sites: Frontierverse and FrontierAstro

* Some games mentioned on the podcast are: Frontier First Encounters D3D, Oolite and Pioneer

* We mention Starflight, which was discussed on DGC episode 17 and Nomad, which was discussed on DGC episode 40

From Episodes – DOS Game Club via this RSS feed

"It's a day like any other. A crow is chasing a worm, a worm named Jim. Today the worm escapes to safety and the crow eats dirt. Jim looks left, then right. It seems he has given the crow the slip. Jim returns to his normal daily life, cruising about avoiding crows and doing other general worm-like things. Jim is suddenly struck by a very large ultra high tech indestructible super space cyber suit." This is all the backstory we get from the manual to explain why a worm is walking around in a space suit. And to be fair, it's all we need!

Earthworm Jim (1994, Shiny Entertainment) is the kind of 2D platformer, with its cartoony graphics and smooth animations, that was becoming quite commonplace on the consoles of the time, but was still pretty rare to see on the PC. As a product of the 90s it's full of bizarre humour, only elevated by its eclectic soundtrack. There's no doubt this game has a great production quality. But is it fun to play? Let's find out!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we are joined by two guests. First of all DGC member Wouter ("Jefklek") is back, who previously was on the Heretic episode. Newly joining the show is Lukasz ("Red Hexapus") who turns out to be a big fan of the game, so that's always good.

Once again DGC members Watchful was so kind to send in a voice message, for which we are very thankful. If you also want to send in a voice message, you can email them to us at club@dosgameclub.com

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2025/08/ep105.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (117mins, 134 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix, who also recorded the audio clips from his retro hardware which you hear in the episode's intro. And thanks to DGC member Console for editing the episode, you're a lifesaver!

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we can't do this without you.

RELEVANT LINKS:

* Earthworm Jim DOS and Windows comparison by DGC member dr_st, who also suggested we play the game!

* Very colourful Earthworm Jim fan site full of drawings and other cool things

* All of Jim's idle animations by Master0fHyrule on YouTube

* Shiny Entertainment was previously discussed in DGC episode 96, on MDK

From Episodes – DOS Game Club via this RSS feed

I loved this game, and this intro is great. Stick around for the 2nd video in the playlist for the "GROK" drop lol and the chief talking. Some real core memories for me.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33491044

I'd like to just casually boot straight into a game sometimes, or at least a mounted floppy. I don't want to type commands is DOSbox for casual situations like this.

I'm focussing on games that can run straight from the floppy drive. Thanks!

Edit: I tried variations of this command in the macOS terminal:

/Applications/DOSBox\ Staging.app/Contents/MacOS/dosbox -c "imgmount a '/Users/io/Downloads/Prince.img' -t floppy" -c "a:" -c "dir /p"

The idea is that it would open DOSbox in the A: location, run dir /p. I should see prince.exe listed. Unfortunately what actually happens is I'm given a listing of Z: instead. When I try to switch to A:, I'm told that it needs to be mounted first. But I thought my terminal command takes care of that.

"Rise, son of Cygna. It is the dawn of your seventeenth year. The Elders await you in the sanctuary." If you didn't listen to the 30 minute audio drama first, you'd have no idea what's going on when you first play Loom (1990, Lucasfilm Games). And if you did listen to it, you probably weren't any less confused. And on top of its unique magical fantasy setting, there's an unfamiliar music-based user interface to grapple with! Loom is probably one of the stranger Lucas point & click games, but its definitely not without its charm and therefore well worth checking out.

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") for this podcast we have three guests. First of all returning veteran DGC member Esko ("Firefyte"), who has been speedrunning Loom for many years. Joining the podcast for the first time is DGC member Eino ("Evil Taco"), we love it when we get new people on! And last but not least we are joined by Mads from the Retro Asylum Podcast, who did a podcast on Loom themselves a few years ago.

On top of all this, DGC members Watchful, Juan ("Reidrac") and Christian ("stdevel") sent in a voice message. Thank you so much, we love hearing from our listeners! If you want to send in a voice message too, you can e-mail them to us at club@dosgameclub.com

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2025/07/ep104.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (161 mins, 185 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix, who also recorded the audio clips from his retro hardware which you hear in the episode's intro. And thanks to DGC member Console for editing the episode, you're a lifesaver!

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we can't do this without you.

RELEVANT LINKS:

* Retro Asylum Podcast episode 220 about Loom

* Loom on Speedrun.com

* Space Quest IV on Speedrun.com

* Loom EGA vs VGA video by DOS Nostalgia on YouTube

* A webpage dedicated to the EGA vs VGA graphics of Loom on superrune.com

* Interview with Loom designer Brian Moriarty

* Forge is an unfinished fan-made sequel that's worth checking out

* Mark Ferrari's website has some other gorgeous pixel art he made over the years

* Interview with George "The Fat Man" Sanger on the Retro Hour Podcast

* Loom review by the International House of Mojo

* Florian was a guest on the Focus On Linux podcast in an episode about retro gaming on Linux

* We mention some previous DGC podcasts during this episode, including #45 Gateway, #22 Monkey Island, #54 Day of the Tentacle and #53 Interview with David Fox

From Episodes – DOS Game Club via this RSS feed

Florian has been counting all of our regular "one game a month" episodes, and it turns out we've hit 100 of them! We started this club back in March of 2017 with the first DOS game that came to mind, which happened to be DOOM (id Software, 1993). In hindsight this was a bit of a big game to kick things off, so even though we did have a great time with our very first guest Mike ("toasty", who was on the Cricket episode not that long ago), much of the Doom rabbit hole was left untouched. We've long felt it would be good to correct this by diving into Doom again, and a 100th episode anniversary seems as good an occasion as any, so here go!

This month also saw the creation of the biggest DGC community project yet: a full episode of custom Doom levels!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") on this episode of the podcast we have three fantastic guests, who are all not only keen long-time Doom players, but also Doom content creators. The custom content and community aspect of Doom is especially an area we felt was left unexplored in our first episode, so we tried to focus on that specifically.

First of all joining this episode is long-time DGC veteran David X Newton, who has a fantastic YouTube channel that's for a large part filled with videos related to Doom. We are also joined by Scwiba, a prolific and award-winning Doom level designer who focuses mainly on levels that are compatible with the original vanilla Doom. Last but not least we have Jazz Mickle, a wide-ranging artist who does everything from graphics to music to games, including a ton of different Doom things such as maps, songs and tools.

And on top of all this we received two voice messages, both from long time friends of the show. The first is from Watchful and the second from Spoonboy. Thank you very much for sending these in, it's always great to hear from club members!

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2025/06/ep103.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (132 mins, 151 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix, who also recorded the audio clips from his retro hardware which you hear in the episode's intro. And thanks to DGC member Console for editing the episode, you're a lifesaver!

And finally thank you, the listener, for sticking with us for so many years. Here's to the next 100 episodes!

RELEVANT LINKS:

* David X Newton has a YouTube channel and runs the yearly RAMP Doom map project

* Scwiba organises NaNoWadMo and many of his levels can be found on DoomWiki.org

* jmickle.com holds all of the many things Jazz Mickle has made, many of the Doom things were posted between 2014 and 2018

* Doom Is An Art Scene, YouTube video by Jazz Mickle

* Our very own DGC map pack created by the community!

* Doom Connector multiplayer tool for Doom

* Doom World one of the oldest and biggest surviving Doom community websites

* Zdoom offers different source port variations for playing Doom on modern hardware

* Retro Ahoy on Doom video on YouTube

* Action Button reviews Doom video on YouTube

From Episodes – DOS Game Club via this RSS feed

We're back with a big one, in more ways than one! Normally we do a different game every month, but between December and February we've focused on Ultima Underworld for three months in a row. This was mainly done to give ourselves a chance to catch up, as we've been lagging behind with the podcast a fair bit. But also it's not easy to beat an open world RPG like Ultima Underworld in a single month, so this way everyone had a chance to check it out and see what's what with this groundbreaking title.

Enjoy!

Sadly our trusty co-host Florian ("rnlf") again couldn't make the episode. We promise it's just a hiccup, there's no drama and he'll be back for future episodes! Joining host Martijn ("Tijn") we have no fewer than four great guests. First of all there is DGC veteran Richard ("Pix") who is not only very keen on talking about Ultima Underworld, but he also been helping us as a producer the past months to make sure we get back on schedule. Next up we have two returning DGC members on the show: Patrick ("patrick_wd"), who was on the Jazz Jackrabbit episode, and Lars ("fastwinstdoom"), who joined us for Dungeon Keeper and Wacky Wheels. Last but not least we are joined by Chester from the excellent CRPG Addict Blog, where he has covered many RPG games over the years, so he can tell us a thing or two!

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2025/05/ep102.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (191 mins, 218 MB)

Thanks to all who help us make this show possible, we can't do it without you!

RELEVANT LINKS:

* The CRPG Addict blog by Chester

* Ultima Underworld 3 design document from Pix's website

* Reddit thread about the item limit as brought up by patrick_wd

* Monomyth is a spiritual successor to UUW that was mentioned by Lars

* Excellent deep dive in the making of Ultima Underworld by The Digital Antiquarian

* Some 10 years ago PC Gamer posted an hour-long playthrough of UUW with creator Paul Neurath on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=6sh_DY28wl4

From Episodes – DOS Game Club via this RSS feed

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/44808323

The actual play is over 6 hours, and surprisingly amusing to watch!

Link here if you have 6 hours of free time.

Does anyone know of any good DOS games that fit the Easter, spring, colorful aspects of the holiday?

I'm in the mood to play something festive later and I've been on a retro PC kick lately, so I'm just curious if anyone has any suggestions for me to try!

We all play the same games most of the time. From the classic FPS grandfather's to the Point 'n Click adventures that never really got any traction past the 90s.

What are your favorite hidden gems? Games that few people know, but should know?

I'll start. Ascendency. A strategy space game where you pick an alien race, and try to take over, or befriend, the entire universe. Getting spaceships, going to planets, building bases and diplomacy. The time can be sped up, but do it at your own risk, because the AI does not wait.

Standout entries:

• 9:19 - The 7th Guest https://youtu.be/xcSXDwQYac8?t=559
• 9:58 - The 11th Hour https://youtu.be/xcSXDwQYac8?t=598

Demo

Fash thread preview.

Do not involve me on this. I made this post as an e.g. for a friend.

Personally I just set up an ftp server and connect to it on the old hardware. But here's a decent overview anyway.