Earlier this year archive.org made a bunch of MS-DOS games available for play directly through an internet browser. From what I remember, many people were extremely excited about this fact, and yet you all know you just played Oregon Trail for a hot minute before promptly forgetting any of those games are ready to be played. I know, I did too (although I did play 2 minutes of Wolfenstein 3D to be the cool kid whose mom lets him play the violent shooter games). Yet there are 2,589 DOS games for play, most sitting with less than 1,000 plays, which means it is time to go digging through the pile to see if there is anything worthwhile being ignored.
It’s like a “hipster” graveyard in here.
By the way, when I said “go digging” 2 sentences ago, I really meant “pick at random”. Or rather, “whatever sounds weird enough to keep my interest”. If you are a discerning reader, there will be quite a lot to learn here. Shall we?
Number 1: Jim Henson’s Muppet Adventure No.1 - Chaos at the Carnival
Year of release: 1989
Developer: Micromosaics
Publisher: Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc.
Genre: Strawberry Throwing Simulator
I need to be transparent here. Apparently this is part of a mini-game collection involving other Muppets doing things at a carnival. But as I already said, I’m going in blind so this is what I deserve. Considering the collection doesn’t have Rowlf the Dog, Beaker, or Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, I can’t be bothered to check if the other sections are available.
In Muppet Adventure No. 1, you play as Kermit with an infinite supply of strawberries. He takes these strawberries and throws them at the ducks. This constitutes as hunting. More ducks continue to spawn from the background and try to get past you. Feed 100 ducks and the game crashes. Let 10 ducks get past you and the game also crashes. I can only imagine this is a result of being chopped from a larger game, but it’s quite the experience to hear a deafening noise after the silence of the game. I’ve had to make my own story as a result of being a cross-section, and I’ve decided it shall be a nightmare:
Behind the ducks is a horrific foie gras farm. Behind Kermit is safety. Kermit has become a duck farmer, a monster, and now we must also become the monster. Take your pick, will you feed the ducks juicy strawberries to make the quota or let them go? And now we know the importance of context.
Number 2: Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood
Year of release: 1985
Developer: Sierra On-Line
Publisher: Walt Disney Personal Computer Software
Genre: Adventure
Holy shit look at Pooh’s Face. After the title screen this is the first thing you see. I’m terrified. His face is actually the Lenny face: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° ). And I could talk about how in the game you need to search through the Hundred Acre Wood to find objects that characters have lost which you then return, but I’d rather talk about this exact screenshot. For instance, that Pooh Bear is sitting next to a book about him, which I imagine feels like waking up in your single bedroom apartment and on your nightstand is your biography. Yet you live alone and were not told a book is being written about you. Surprise!
Before I move on, I’d like to bring up what has now become a reoccurring theme of the importance of context. When I saw Winnie the Pooh in the title, I assumed I’d be playing Winnie the Pooh. Or at the very least, playing Christopher Robin. But that isn’t the case here. Rather you play as someone else who starts their adventure in Christopher Robin’s playroom. At the age of 7 this might feel perfectly normal, because of course I’d be playing in my friend’s playroom. But as a 23-year-old, I feel like either I just woke up after a 36 hour bender and somehow ended up in a different country in a small boy’s toy room, or that my character needed to introduce himself door-by-door before moving into the neighborhood.
Number 3: Beyond the Titanic
Year of release: 1986
Developer: Scott Miller
Publisher: Apogee Software, Ltd.
Genre: Interactive Fiction
Everyone remembers the stories of that fateful night the Titanic left from San Francisco to go somewhere else in the Pacific. My favorite part of that mediocre James Cameron movie is seeing Alcatraz in the background as they leave port. I’m lying. This didn’t happen. But as you can see from the text above, the game seems to think so. I hate to be that guy, but the ship was never even in the United States. That’s kind of the tragedy of the story.
But it’s no big deal, whatever, it’s your game. As far as the gameplay goes, it is a standard text adventure that gets a bit wild as the storyline progresses. But for me, the most fun part of looking at this game in 2015 is seeing the disregard for personal information being put out into the world in the 80s. Because, and I am not kidding, the creator of the game put his personal address into the game. I can only assume this phone number he also put into the game is his home phone number, or at least was at the time. How times have changed, huh?
