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.

  • @[email protected]
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    12 months ago

    It’s a simple choice, really, considering how many hours I managed to invest as a kid:

  • Paul Drye
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    142 months ago

    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.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 months ago

        Such a gem… Oh go on then, I will revive my dosbox and play it all evening. You’ve twisted my arm :-P

  • @[email protected]
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    32 months ago

    Monster Bash! It was one of the better-playing platformers on the PC back in the day and I loved the halloween aesthetic.

  • @[email protected]
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    102 months ago

    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.

  • ivanafterall ☑️
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 months ago

      Loved the Hugo games. The jungle one was probably my favorite up to the point where I needed to find out some trivia question about the name of some person’s dog before the time of Internet.

      • ivanafterall ☑️
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        32 months ago

        I spent more time with Police Quest, which was similar. I remember trying the Hugo Jungle Shareware multiple times and getting frustrated going back-and-forth, stuck.

  • @[email protected]
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    82 months ago

    Want a fun piece of trivia? Epic Pinball launched Digital Extremes, the developer behind Warframe.

  • @[email protected]
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    32 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      72 months ago

      Was that a Dominos pizza sponsored game? I seem to remember “Avoid the noid” was a slogan of theirs.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 months ago

        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.

  • @[email protected]
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    72 months ago

    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

    • @[email protected]
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      32 months ago

      I actually bought the boxed version of the game on 4 separate 3.5" floppies :o

      Was in a clearance bin at Toys R Us for like 5 bucks. I remember being so stoked to be able to buy all the different weapons they teased at the end of the shareware episode!

  • Thassodar
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    2 months ago

    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.