What was your favorite shareware game?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Zombiepirate@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨retrogaming@lemmy.world⁩

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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DmMacniel@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Hail to the King Baby (Duke Nukem 3d)

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- abbadon420@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I’m getting flashbacks
  
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mysticpickle@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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- Thcdenton@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  MY DUDE
  
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  - mysticpickle@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Save 5 rounds of cash for a death’s head nuke, accidentally blow yourself up when the wind pushes it back in your direction 🤡
    
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- Adderbox76@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Spending every lunch hour on the library computer with three friends in 1994 playing this is probably why I didn’t have a girlfriend.
  
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- Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Great game.
  
  Did this exist before or after worms?
  
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  - s38b35M5@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Long before
    
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- Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  My first internet game was a Scorched Earth-inspired game where you’re in space, on planets, with gravity and stuff. I wish I remembered the name of it, it was amazing.
  
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SplashJackson@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
One Must Fall 2097

You just heard the lightning strike

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- Poop@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  The theme song is the shit
  
  youtu.be/1FA6UdL7-ls
  
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  - TGTX@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Kenny Chou! He also composed Zone 66 which is another awesome DOS game soundtrack.
    
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  - Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    What a banger
    
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  - BobsAccountant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Man. I love that game. Still fire it up every so often. That sequel was also an early example of just how terrible a sequel can be. So disappointing.
    
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- banazir@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  So good. I wish OpenOMF matures soon.
  
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Thcdenton@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
We got mario kart at home

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- ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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- TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  What is the name of this game, I played it so much as a kid but I always forget the name
  
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Zombiepirate@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Oh, I just remembered Castle of the Winds, too. What a great era for games!

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- dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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- CrayonRosary@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Native Windows UI controls for a game. Classic.
  
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  - ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    it’s like that Indiana Jones Adventure game.
    
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- hobbsc@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  came here to post this. my buddy had it and i still play it every couple of years.
  
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- Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Castle of the Winds 1 and 2 were incredible!
  
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- RainyTank@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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pauldrye@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

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Thassodar@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Sky Roads, Test Drive 2, Jill of the Jungle, Halloween Harry, Jetpack, so many great games that I played through hell out of their shareware versions.

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- Zombiepirate@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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  We used to play Sky Roads on the school computers all the time. Great game.
  
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- nailbar@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Oh boy I loved Jetpack and Skyroads!
  
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almost1337@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Raptor: Call of the Shadows

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iStone@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Avoid the Noid, Raptor, Commander Keen, Epic Pinball, Nibbles

Avoid the noid

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- AbidingOhmsLaw@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Was that a Dominos pizza sponsored game? I seem to remember “Avoid the noid” was a slogan of theirs.
  
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  - ouRKaoS@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Yup! There was also “Yo! Noid” on NES
    
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  - iStone@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.
    
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bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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.

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ninjakttty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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

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- mysticpickle@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  You try Tyrian? It was like raptor but dialed up to 11 with different planes and an actual storyline :o
  
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  - Klear@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    There’s a pretty good Android port now! Look up OpenTyrian.
    
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lordnikon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Tyrian

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ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Probably Rise of the Triad.

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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.

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- mysticpickle@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.
  
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  - ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.
    
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Madblood@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Shadow Warrior Who want-a some Wang?!

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- s38b35M5@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  “I am da Shaddo wahdiyah. Lessuh fight!”
  
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- ramenshaman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Memory unlocked
  
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Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
ZZT, the game that launched Epic. Say, there’s gotta be a ZZT community somewhere on lemmy, right?

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- __Lost__@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I didn’t realize anybody else had ever played that game. I downloaded that from AOL back when I was signing up for a free month trial every month from those CDs in the mail.
  
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  - Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    There’s a whole community around self-made games using the editor that came with it, including a website full of games and a forum. A few years back one of us published a book about the community (and how we all turned out trans).
    
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- rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I was so addicted to ZZT back then! The player-made worlds were such a delight, and my slow-ass computer which choked on so many then-current games ran them without trouble.
  
  Now I want to try it out again.
  
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  - Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    People are still making games using it! When I get a bit more free time I want to polish up and republish the ones I made.
    
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Gerudo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

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Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
ITT: everyone had the same “500 games on two CDs!” Shareware compilation CDs that I had growing up.

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- renrenPDX@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Or we are old enough to remember them the first time around vs reruns.
  
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- mysticpickle@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I’ll show you mine if you show me yours:
  
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zabadoh@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
“Stars!” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars!

A 4X game for Win95 that was set up for multi-player by email and ftp turbo.

Fantastically ergonomic use of early GUI features.

You could design your own alien race and ships.

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eRac@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Want a fun piece of trivia? Epic Pinball launched Digital Extremes, the developer behind Warframe.

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- argentcorvid@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  And is named Epic because of Epic (Mega)Games
  
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ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
To me, it was Raptor Call of Shadows, a very nice shmup where you could buy new weapons between missions

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h0rnman@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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

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- mysticpickle@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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- null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - h0rnman@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    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
    
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- Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  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.
  
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Glytch@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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

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- mysticpickle@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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!
  
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Kaput@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Wolfenstein 3d, and commander Keen

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KeenSnappersDontCome@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Mordor 1 The Depths of Dejenol
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still available from Decklins Demise

Its the game that got me into dungeon crawlers particularly Demise: Rise of the Ku’Tan, and the epxansions Ascension and Revenge of the Tavern Keeper

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JustARegularNerd@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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.

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- Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Jazz Jackrabbit always crashed out on my 486 D: I wanted to play it so badly.
  
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  - JustARegularNerd@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    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 and it just couldn’t handle it.
    
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weirdo_from_space@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
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.

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Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I can’t tell you how many times I played the shareware version of Gazillionaire.

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killeronthecorner@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold

My first FPS and an excellent one. Sooo many hidden rooms and insane enemies.

Apogee was on fire during that whole era

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ProfessorProteus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I spent so many hours as a kid on my dad’s Thinkpad playing Gravity Well. It came on one of those “50 Great Games” CDs or something like that. The goal is to claim all the planets in the system, which you do by simply landing on them, then building defenses against your opponents. It’s so much fun because your ship has pretty realistic inertia and the planets have actual gravity wells. The AI opponents can be quite difficult and aggressive. Challenging and fun, with great sound effects for the time!

This screenshot is from an Internet Archive page for the game, but I’m pretty sure it’s only the shareware version. I gotta check again when I get off work!

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loam@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
I played a lot of TetriNET and Subspace Continuum with my old online community. Great times.

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