Vintage gaming community.
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I'm pretty sure Doom will be the most popular (and my pick too), but I'll throw a shout-out to Epic Pinball; that Android table was the best one in the game anyway.
I think this question just fried my brain. I don’t even know where to start.
Most played shareware of all time though was probably Transport Tycoon.
I've been playing some Jazz Jackrabbit and Duke Nukem 1, they are both great. I think I prefer the design of DOS games to the design of console games.
Colobot - don't think it was "shareware" but it absolutely came as a demo on ceebot.com (still hosted there today I believe). Literally THE game that got me into computer programming and whatnot.
Otherwise for actual shareware, I loved Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Crazy Gravity and some game unfortunately titled "Worm" (snake clone) with MIDI and sound effects still stuck in my head to this day
I really wanted to play a couple shareware games called Jetpack Joyride, and Hot Chix n Gear Stix as a kid, but neither of them would play on my Windows XP netbook as they had a hard check for if you were on either Windows 95 or 98, even with compatibility mode.
We got mario kart at home
What is the name of this game, I played it so much as a kid but I always forget the name
Edit: Wacky Wheels, got it though reverse image search
Comanche: Maximum Overkill, the very first game to use VOXELS, the FUTURE of PC GAMING!
A couple of people have mentioned Raptor: Call of the shadows, which was an absolute favorite of mine. Skyforce Reloaded is pretty close in terms of gameplay. I wish there were more games out there like Raptor
You try Tyrian? It was like raptor but dialed up to 11 with different planes and an actual storyline :o
I can't tell you how many times I played the shareware version of Gazillionaire.
Great deal.
I was a huge fan of Solar Winds: The Escape. Cool plot, aliens, dogfights, ship systems management, evil shadow governments, rebels.... what's not to love? It was my introduction to the genre and will always hold a special place
I'm so stoked to see this here. It was my first thought when I saw the thread.
It was a stand out experience from my childhood.
Solar winds blew my mind once I actually figured out all the controls. The universe they built was super cool and I really dug the combat. Can't count the number of times I got owned by this guy trying to blow him up from the get go.
MY DUDE
Save 5 rounds of cash for a death's head nuke
Shriek "Now tremble before Thor's Hammer mortals!" to your friends seated around you
Press fire
Accidentally blow yourself up when the wind pushes it back in your direction 🤡
One Must Fall 2097
You just heard the lightning strike
The theme song is the shit
Man. I love that game. Still fire it up every so often. That sequel was also an early example of just how terrible a sequel can be. So disappointing.
"Stars!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars!
A 4X game for Win 3.11 that was set up for multi-player by email and ftp turbo.
Fantastically ergonomic use of early GUI features.
You could design your own alien race and ships, the default races were well balanced, but all played very differently.
Who want-a some Wang?!
Memory unlocked
I played a lot of 2 games that nobody I've spoken to has ever heard of: Mordor the depths of dejenol Exile escape from the pit Both were great, I think exile had been remade by the programmer with a different title too
There was a Mordor 2 shareware as well. The game never got a full release but laid the foundation for Demise: Rise of the Kutan (2000). The rights to the game were sold to Decklin and they released expansions Ascension (2016) and Revenge of the Tavern Keeper (2024). Demos for Demise and the expansions are available at https://www.decklinsdemise.com/
Found out the exile games are now distributed as freeware https://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/exile/winexile.html https://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/productsOld.html
Avoid the Noid, Raptor, Commander Keen, Epic Pinball, Nibbles
Was that a Dominos pizza sponsored game? I seem to remember “Avoid the noid” was a slogan of theirs.
Indeed it was. Despite being mediocre, I played that game extensively. This was before Domino's Pizza existed in our region - they wouldn't expand here until a decade later.
Yup! There was also "Yo! Noid" on NES
There was some bootleg Tetris game I played the hell out of, because it ran on my shitty hand-me-down 286 with dual 5 1/4" floppy drives & no hard disk.
ZZT, the game that launched Epic. Say, there's gotta be a ZZT community somewhere on lemmy, right?
I didn't realize anybody else had ever played that game. I downloaded that from AOL back when I was signing up for a free month trial every month from those CDs in the mail.
There's a whole community around self-made games using the editor that came with it, including a website full of games and a forum. A few years back one of us published a book about the community (and how we all turned out trans).
Raptor: Call of the Shadows
Sky Roads, Test Drive 2, Jill of the Jungle, Halloween Harry, Jetpack, so many great games that I played the hell out of their shareware versions.
We used to play Sky Roads on the school computers all the time. Great game.
Monster Bash! It was one of the better-playing platformers on the PC back in the day and I loved the halloween aesthetic.
Pinball Fantasies, Raptor, Heretic
Commander Keen is probably the one that I liked the most that is also well known.
My personal favorite was Bass Class, which is weird because I've zero interest in real-life fishing, then or now.
I spent a lot of time playing Raptor: Call of the Shadows, a vertically-scrolling shooter with an upgrade system.
There was also Rise of the Triad, a pretty decent Doom-clone
Duke Nukem 3D probably. That or Rise of The Triad.
I eventually bought DN in the 90s and played the shit out of it.
Oh, I just remembered Castle of the Winds, too. What a great era for games!
Wow what a throwback. I feel like i was always getting cursed and poisoned. Now i feel the need to find this game and finish it.
Native Windows UI controls for a game. Classic.
Don't remember the name of it but it was a Geometry Wars style shooter where the playing field would tilt as you moved. Played a ton of that game.
