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.
Probably Rise of the Triad.
Pretty sure I even bought the full game and never ended up getting very far. I also remember spending a little chunk of time on Hugo 3: Jungle of Doom, but could never figure it out enough to progress very far.
Edit: Another one I was trying to recall, the name was H.U.R.L.
ITT: everyone had the same “500 games on two CDs!” Shareware compilation CDs that I had growing up.
Commander Keen!
Jumping around with the pogo stick in Keen 6 was so much fun. I recently found the full game. Was surprised how hard that factory level was. But the music was still how I remembered it.
So many great titles in the comments. I'll add a few of mine:
Jill of the Jungle
Zaxxon
Heretic (Doom clone)
Stellar 7 (can't recall if shareware or if I just shared it)
Heretic was more than a Doom clone, it was developed using a modified Doom engine with the participation of Doom developers. It was a clever game in its own right, adding a lot of fresh elements to the then-budding FPS genre.
I don't know if it was their SDK or what, but Epic's sound design in this era was so good. Jill of the Jungle still stands out to me for that.
brave dwarves 1
The graphic design looks so much like Spelunky. Cool!
Realmz
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.
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.
Jazz Jackrabbit always crashed out on my 486 D: I wanted to play it so badly.
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.
We got mario kart at home
I loved Whacky Wheels so much but recently put it on my Steamdeck and eh, it did not age well. Very choppy gameplay. But it still has a place in my heart.
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
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
There's a pretty good Android port now! Look up OpenTyrian.
Woah didn't know about the Android port! Def gonna check it out. Thanks!