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.
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Comanche: Maximum Overkill, the very first game to use VOXELS, the FUTURE of PC GAMING!
Tyrian
I can’t tell you how many times I played the shareware version of Gazillionaire.
Great deal.
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.
Was It shareware? Didn’t know it!
I’m still enjoying It with OpenTTD https://www.openttd.org/
The original Transport Tycoon was distributed as shareware, would have been 95 or 96 when I was playing it off a shareware disc.
Not sure if TTD got a shareware release too, but i got that one as a retail boxed version.
But for 94 or 95 if you didn’t have a shareware version then your game was pretty much doomed.
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 The Worm (found it!)
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.
Oh, would’ve been so frustrating! I remember having a Pentium 4 laptop with an NVIDIA GPU and that thing unsurprisingly cooked itself, so I then tried 1NSANE (Codemasters’ soft body physics car game) on my crappy little netbook instead and it just couldn’t handle it.
It would be some time before I was gifted an Acer Aspire with dedicated graphics and a busted screen that I could play 1NSANE again
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
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.
Oh my gawd. I was reading the comment above yours when Solar Winds popped into my head. Then I scroll down to see this. Bless you.
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.
For real though, I’d love to see a modern take on this - something in between NMS, Mechwarrior, and FTL. I’ve not found anything out there with the correct combination of exploration, ship customization and management, and sinister plot. Several games get closer, but they’re all missing something
Realmz
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.
Oh, I just remembered Castle of the Winds, too. What a great era for games!
I got my ass handed to me by Castle of the Winds when I was a kid. And that doofy-ass default barbarian sprite…
We always called that one Castle Of The Windows, since the entire game engine is constructed of 32x32 pixel Windows icons.
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.
it’s like that Indiana Jones Adventure game.
Castle of the Winds 1 and 2 were incredible!
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I was always struck by the similarity to the blue robot on that table to Cyborg from Rise of the Robots and I wonder if there was some cross-pollination there.
He’s actually based on the genie from Aladdin
Duke Nukem 3D probably. That or Rise of The Triad.
I eventually bought DN in the 90s and played the shit out of it.
RoTT WAS SO FUN! How about heretic, another Doom clone? The chicken weapon was a favorite of mine.
Heretic 1 and 2 were great fun
Might be pushing the limits of shareware, but the demo of Quake 1 on cd for a buck. A simple console command unlocked the full version.
Escape Velocity and its sequels.
Geez, I’d forgotten about that game. I spent an unreasonable amount of time playing those.
No such thing as unreasonable with those games because they were brilliant.
Time to sink into the next: Endless Sky (also @Azathoth@fedia.io)
Somewhat different style, but there’s also Starsector!
Right, I forgot about that one… Haven’t tried it yet. Come to think of it, Soldat was also shareware, and I sunk hundreds of hours into it.
I played a lot of TetriNET and Subspace Continuum with my old online community. Great times.
More detail edit: TetriNET walked so Tetris 99 could run. Version 1 does not install on Windows anymore (but has a Linux version). Version 2 works, complete with its archaic user registration that asks for too many details.
Continuum is a large PvP arena Asteroids-like 2D space shooter. It’s on Steam now. Starts tough to control and with a high skill ceiling, so be wary of the veterans. The Death Star Battle map is a blast with a big group. It feels like trying to speed through a narrow maze on bumper boats during a huge battle.
I could not for the life of me get my head into the classic version of subspace. Buuuut Trench Wars was sick AF especially when the server admins set up Zombies! Events on the weekends.
Oh I’d forgotten about Subspace; what a classic!
It’s a simple choice, really, considering how many hours I managed to invest as a kid:
