MUSINGS

DOS Gaming . Codename - Iceman

I know some of you are already familiar with DosBox and abandonware gaming, but I’ve just started messing around with it, following a nostalgic trip to the Imagination Network.

My latest addiction: Codename: Iceman. I played this a few times through back when I was a kid (I loved Jim Walls’ Police Quest games), but I completely forgot about it until I stumbled across it on abandonia.com. And you know what? The game is still pretty darn good.

This is one of Sierra’s EGA text/graphics adventures, which means you’ll have to type. To be honest, I always liked the typing games better, as the gui games seemed to dumb down the puzzles a bit. Anyways, Codename: Iceman is a break from the Police Quest games as this go round you’re a naval officer attempting to solve an oil/terrorist crisis in the futuristic year of 2004. The game sees a lot of standard Sierra adventure gaming setups, while adding a nice bit of submarine simulation and political intrigue. And, can you name another game that allows you to get a girl stone drunk at a bar, and save another’s life through CPR within the first 10 minutes? I thought not.

But Codename: Iceman’s not the only old DOS game I found. Also on Abandonia were:

• Gateway (Legend’s Frederick Pohl game)
• Castle of Dr. Brain
• Conquests of Camelot
• Conquests of Longbow
• Eric the Unready,
• Ghostbusters 2
• Leather Goddesses of Phobos
• Les Manley 1 and 2 (accolade’s Leisure Suit Larry ripoff)
• Life and Death
• Mines of Titan
• Neuromancer (yes, THE Neuromancer!)
• Realms of Arkana 2
• Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender
• Rise of the Dragon
• Spellcasting 101 - 103
• and many many more

Most of these I actually used to own, but have long been boxed up in my parent’s garage, due to the lack of a supporting OS and 5.25″ floppy drives (yah, remember those?). Abandonia claims these are on the good side of legal, as the copyright holders have ceased to sell and support those games. Some seem to have been recalled at a later date (ie: Burger Time, my first computer game ever), while others are being distributed with the full support of their original authors/publishers. Anyways, as long as these are there, you might want to check them out. I’m also thinking current adventure gaming companies should check them out, just so they can see exactly what they are doing wrong these days.

You can grab DosBox here, and some games at Abandonia here. For a history of DOS, and why these old games no longer work in windows, even when executed through the command line, check out the wikipedia MSDOS page.