Post by Volyren on Jun 30, 2012 18:36:14 GMT -5
You will all love this!
If you don’t feel like reading the entire post, here is a summary. I will give you info on a program to put on your android devices, which will allow you to play hundreds of full, free, classic games using the touchscreen on your phone. Its 100% legal, free, and I will soon have a download available so that you don’t even have to set up anything on your phone. Just download, open, and you are ready to play until your fingers hurt.
This is going to be all about the MS-DOS emulator, Dosbox TURBO which runs on all android devices, from phones to tablets. So many games now are just little minigames hooked up to facebook which try to trick you into paying lots of money over and over. Most of these games are barely playable unless you pay for in game items, and even then you have to KEEP paying indefinitely in order to get anywhere.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting very, very sick of these games. That’s why I am excited to offer you a platform which will allow you to play some of the best games ever made. Sure they might be older games, but in a lot of cases, the graphics are just as good, if not better, than the games you download to your phone from the market. Many of these games have been the inspiration for the games that they try to handicap and force-feed you today, in order to raid your wallet.
Well, NO MORE!!!!
These games are all 100% free, 100% legal, and 100% FUN! These are full, commercial games. Expect hours and hours of play from each of them. There are no ads, no spyware, no bull. Each and every game I will be putting here for your playing pleasure is tested, configured, and ready to go as soon as you load them onto your SD card.
These old games are still popular because they are made to be fun. They don't try to weasel money out of you, and while some have nice graphics, the most important thing about ALL of these games is the GAMEPLAY.
Keep I mind, that these are games that came out in the early 90's for the most part. The vast majority of them were stored on those 3.4 hard "floppy" disks. (The good ol' A:/ drive.....)
Most of these games are just as good, if not better than the games available on the phone.
They take up very little space (I'm not putting any .iso/cd-rom games in the pack) and if you were to go buy a cheap calculator today, it has enough processor power to run half of these games. Put 4 of those calculators together and you could easily run 90% of em.
DosBox CAN run games like Fallout (the 1st and 2nd, and the off-shoot, Fallout: Tactics) and many more higher end games, but that’s where the phone can cause problems, due to space, processing power and can cause lockups and crashes.
I stick to the good old classics, like Ultima, Eye of the Beholder, Tyrian(an awesome R-Type-esque game/RPG), Dungeon Master, all of the gold box AD&D games (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons)
And despite its slightly larger size (still not as big as some of those games from Glu.) you can run the very first and second Elder Scrolls games! (Daggerfall, and Arena) I’m not sure about Hammerfell though.
And of course, there are the REAL classics, like Oregon Trail and Odell Lake ( Not the bullcrap Oregon Trail from the market where it's all mini-games and "buy coins" )
I’m shooting to keep the file below 200 MB. That should be enough space for at least 50 games, give or take, and I can post updates so that you can add games if you choose.
The real drawback with dosbox is the same drawback that everyone had with the REAL ms-dos. It’s hit or miss on getting your games to run. I don’t know if you remember a comp with dos on it, but my first one had Windows 95, and a lot of really cool games had to be installed and ran in MS-DOS mode.
And every single time I popped in the disks or the CD, as the case sometimes was, I was left to figure out what archaic commands I needed to type in to get the damned game installed, nevermind running. Too many times I ran into "not enough external memory" or "invalid command".
There was internal memory, external memory, virtual memory , and god knows what else. you had to find the setup utility which often didn’t even install the game, and figure out what video card you had, and what audio card you had, and then enter in all the data on them, VESA mode, VGA, Non-VGA mode, SoundBlaster, gravis ultrasound, internal speaker, MIDI device, which port #, 1-9999, Hard drive set to master or slave, IRQ#, number of sound channels, the list goes on and on.....
Some games you had to balance on your head while juggling rabid badgers and simultaneously drinking water and reciting pi to the thousandth decimal.
And other games, you didn’t even have to install or setup, you just typed in the name of the game, and there you were, playing an awesome game.
And don’t get me started on trying to get a mouse to run in a dos game if it didn’t work automatically.
Basically, when you bought a DOS based game, you only had about a 40% chance to actually play it, no matter what your system specs were.
Once you add dos-box, which is emulating the dos environment, you have a whole new slew of problems. Folders containing games have to be mounted as entire hard drives. if you are running a CD game, you will have to mount the CD as a CD-ROM drive and get it all to work together while still dealing with all the archaic crap that regular dos deals out to you.
Some games I still cannot get to work, despite trying different files, reading tons of message boards suggesting ways to fix it, and hunting down and reading the original installation guide which came with the game (now in PDF form)
That is why I wanted to post this up. The games will be already set up and tested to ensure that they work.
You can use the hackers keyboard (you need it, because DOS does not recognize some keys on your keyboard, and hackers keyboard is DOS compatible) to control the games, and when a mouse is required you have several options. You can actually use a USB or Bluetooth mouse, or emulate it with the touch screen. There is a relative mouse control, where you gently move your finger to make the mouse move all over the screen, or you can try the admittedly experimental absolute mouse movement, where you can simply touch the screen and have the mouse "appear" there so that you can use it just like every other touch screen game. They are working on that feature with every update. I have found that it works great for some games, but others don’t seem to register it very well.
Also, there are setup options so that you can use any Bluetooth controller, like a zeemote, and there's even a free program you can use to control games with a Wii remote, including the classic SNES gamepad.
If you have a phone with a slide out keyboard, you can get one of the best products for phones I have ever seen. Its called a Game Gripper and its essentially a rubber pad that slides over your slide-out keyboard and has a D-pad and 10 buttons (maybe less, depending on your phone model) which, when pressed, hit keys on your keyboard, essentially turning your keyboard into a game controller. (Keys can be programmed in dosbox and every other emulator. The game gripper has the same setup, more of less as a SNES controller, and is perfect for Super Nintendo emulators.)
The game gripper is made by one guy, in his garage with a rubber mixing kit. You can find it for around 19 bucks on Amazon and other sites, but if you are interested, I can get his direct URL for you, because that way you know you are supporting the creator, AND his prices are much cheaper, being 14 bucks. And using regular shipping, which is only 2 dollars, I got it 2 days after ordering it. It just comes in a plastic envelope, and there are no instructions or boxes, but really, there doesn't need to be. It’s very flexible, and you can either slide it on, or hook one side, and stretch it across to hook the other side. The buttons are all replaceable if you want a different color (he sells replacement buttons for 2 bucks) and they are very easy to remove in order to modify if you feel the need.
For me, the left and right on the D-PAD worked just fine, but it didn't "feel" right, like they weren't being pressed. I found a perfect solution. I removed the D-PAD and took a small piece of paper, and folded it over a few times, then rolled it into a ball a little smaller than a BB. I then replaced the D-PAD with the little paper ball in the center of it, and that worked great. The D-PAD then felt a little like a see-saw, which makes it feel more like you are pressing it down.
Last but not least, is the software controllers. There is a free gamepad app, whose name currently escapes me, that you can have appear on screen, with transparent, or even invisible buttons, and program them to do whatever you want.
Dosbox is already set up to use the software controller.
If you are interested in seeing some of the games you can play, including screenshots, reviews and the games themselves (its best to DL to the comp, then unzip and send to phone) then check out www.abandonia.com
They only offer abandonware (games that are technically legal to freely distribute.) so there’s no worry about getting in trouble. If a company decides to offer a game for sale, or re-submits a development license for the franchise, then abandonia removes the download links and instead posts links to where you can purchase it.
There are many other sites, some legal and some not so legal, and even more that may have viruses, or fake files up for downloading.
I will only post reputable sites that I know (to the best of my knowledge) to have only legal files free of viruses and malware.
In some cases, there may be several versions of games available, as the media of the time was changing from either floppy-floppy disks, to hard floppy's or from hard floppy's to CD-ROM. Many games with extra cutscenes have had their cutscenes removed to make the downloads smaller. There are also patched and non-patched versions, hacked versions, modded versions, and just plain different versions that you have to take into account. (MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95)
Then there is the small problem of game documentation.
These games were made in a time where games being offered digitally were nearly unheard of. The very first game I remember doing a game download was Wing Commander Prophecy, when they offered a multi campaign download (minus the wonderful live acted cutscenes that Wing Commander is known for) called Wing Commander Prophecy: Secret Ops.
That means that when you bought a game, you either had to muddle through a myriad of papers and booklets to see how to play, or like me (and I assume most of us), you looked forward to opening the game on the ride home, so that you could dive into the instruction manual, and read the story, begin memorizing the controls, and prepare yourself for that wondrous excitement that builds as you insert your game into the system or computer, and turn on the power. The splash screen comes up, and as it fades, and the game's music begins, you prepare to lose yourself in a world you are eager to explore, whether its donning the attire of a plumber and inspecting pipes to find walking mushrooms to jump on, or strapping armor onto your body to ward off the blows of the next monster who you just know is around the next corner of the maze, waiting for you.
We didn't need virtual reality, motion controls, or augmented reality. We barely needed graphics to become immersed in our game worlds, because we had something better.
We had books.
We had maps.
We had Imagination!
And if that wasn’t enough…
We had little plastic decoders, jewels, coins, laminated cards printed to look like aging papyrus with arcane symbols that we could only hope to understand by beating a boss in the game and finding a translation in his horde of loot. We thrilled when the wizard would appear on screen and demand of us, "Before I let you pass, hero, you must prove to me your worth...Hold you not the book of Yendor? Then prithee, chosen one, what symbol graces the fourth line on the ninth page?" We hurriedly searched the jumbled mass of papers around our desks, moved a dirty sock out of the way, flipped through them all, before that slight twang of panic began to seep in. "Am I going to fail in my quest? Have I let everyone down? Why did I not take better care of that book!?" With a resolute sigh, we sink into our seats, defeated and depressed. Staring at the screen, we contemplate searching our fallible memory for the symbol the wizard requires. When we draw only blanks, we shakily put our hands on the keyboard, prepared to put the fate of the kingdom into our unworthy, and shaking hands. Taking a deep breath, we type our answer, and exhale slowly as we resign ourselves to the loss of our game save, or at the least the premature end of our wondrous adventure. Our hand descends ever so slowly as we wince in preparation of the wizards wrath. The enter key waits silently, to determine your fate.
At the last moment, a tiny glint of light from something shiny catches our attention, and the enter key sits idle. We turn to look at that reflective bit as our eyes widen in elation and triumph! For sitting in the floor, near our bed, at the corner of our computer desk is that which we have sought. That small, card-sized booklet with the knowledge of the cosmos contained within. (slight exaggeration there....). We flip to page 9 and stare at the solution. Quickly we delete the inappropriate word, which began with F, that we had typed in the wizard's answer box, and replace it with the correct "symbols". Your hands tremble with joy as you triumphantly type the answer to the wizard's query. "T H E".
We double and triple check that this is in fact the correct answer before finally hitting enter, with the satisfaction of knowing that your quest will continue, and the world may yet be saved.
The computer makes a loud "BEEP" sound that comes from within, and not from the speakers, and we quickly turn our attention to the wizard, our stomach's knotted with fear.
"Dear hero, you disappoint me! Mayhap your hand did slip whilst entering the symbols of power? Pray, dear hero, try again! But be forewarned! If you be an impostor, then know this! Incorrectly answering me again will result in your legacy being forever erased from history!"
"I repeat, hero! What symbols dost thou find on page 9?"
Now completely freaking out, we look at page 9. There are words, artwork, and symbols at the bottom of the page. There are two paragraphs detailing how to interact with the in-game menu system, and a few other topics. What word does he want? Does he really want the symbols? More importantly, if that is so, then HOW THE HELL DO I TYPE SYMBOLS!!!!"
Fearing the loss of our saved game, and the hours of work we put into it, we do the only thing we can do.
Yank the power plug out of the wall.
Collapsing back into our chairs, we wipe the sweat from our brow and turn our attention back to the manual. We flip through it in hopes of finding the answers to our distress.
Unable to locate the solution to our problems, we close the book, and toss it onto the desk, along with all the other games we have had to stop playing for one reason or another. As it comes to a stop, the front cover of the booklet catches our eye. "Saviors of Ardennia" it reads.
Wait......
Weren't we playing Tales of Grolag Keep?
The scream we let out is echoed all over the computer game-playing world, in a chorus of frustration were all races and sexes join together, hand in hand to yell our aggravation at the computer and the evil game programmers who made that dreaded game-killing function, which-shall-not-be-named......
COPY PROTECTION!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, yeah. That's a big problem with older games. If you don't have the hintbook, or decoder, or original manual or whatever it is you needed (sometimes it was even a gemstone that you had to set over a paper with what looked like squiggles and static, and would reveal a word or phrase when you turned the gemstone just right.) then you cannot play the game. At the very least you are unable to leave town or progress past a certain point. And forget looking up the answer, because there is no internet (at least not available to the public at the time) and even if you have a friend who has the game, you will never get him to let go of the booklet, because the questions the wizard, or whatever thing in each game uses to ask you, will ask a random question. It will be different every time.
And to make matters worse, there were many examples of the books not lining up with the questions, due to the booklets being made by different companies than the games, and their editors would format them differently.
So when you need to enter the 3rd word on page 4, first paragraph, you better hope that the editor did not change the formatting, because half the time, they did.
Well, I want to state something for the record, right here, and right now!
There is NO copy protection in ANY of the games that I am loading here. The few that DID have copy protection have been modified so that you can type ANYTHING in the field, and the computer will accept it.
However, not all the materials that came with those good old games were so reviled. If anything, they added to the game. There are hintbooks, story books, reference cards showing the controls as they are laid out on the keyboard, even full walkthroughs which came with some games.
And that's why I will be including a link to sites which have the old books and accessories that came with these games, as well as a site which has the controls for just about every game, and one that has just about every manual available (except those requested removed by the game's owners).
I will be posting all these links below.
On a final note, if anyone has any requests for games, or questions about, or need help with a certain game, just let me know and I will do what I can. I cannot give you anything illegal, but if you are looking for something you can't find, I can usually find a site or service you can use (at your own risk) which I can PM you.
I will provide a copy of Dosbox TURBO, which is the absolute best dos emulator for android. Keep in mind that this is not a FREE app. Truthfully I should not give you a copy of Dosbox TURBO, but the original Dosbox is free, and open source, so I don’t feel quite as bad. If you like it, please by all means pay for it. Mainly because if you don’t pay for it, you will miss out on the updates and improvements which are constantly being added.
The games I will be adding ARE free, and perfectly legal. I will have them in a zip file that you should transfer directly to your SD card. (after unzipping, of course) There will be a folder titled “DosGames” which should be placed directly in your SD card directory. This will ensure that the folder/directory structure will be correct for all the game configuration files. Doing it this way will ensure that if I have a game working on my phone, then you will also have it working, no matter what kind of phone you have.
It will take a little while to get all the games set up, but I will have them posted for download just as soon as I possibly can. In the meantime, if you feel like searching for the Dosbox TURBO apk file, you can find it fairly easily. Please remember, there are many other Dosbox apps, such as AnDosbox, but these are inferior, half-assed programs that have a hard time running most games, and have almost no options for controls or setup.
You can find plenty of info on the web about how to set it up and get it working. Don’t forget to download the Dosbox TURBO Manager, which gives you a super easy way to play your games. You simply open the manager, which will look like a wooden shelf with games on it. Then you just click the game you want to play, and it reads the configuration files I will provide you, and auto start the games with no need to type in those aggravating DOS commands.
If you DO decide to mess around with the Dosbox TURBO, manager and games, then please put your games in a new folder called “DosGames”. That way, no matter what you do, or what you download, you will still be able to add the file that I will post here, and it will add all the games in the file without messing up anything that you have already done.
Well, that’s about it.
I know, I know. I make long posts that make you groan when you first see them. But I hope that this one at least puts a smile on your face, since in the end, you are going to get some killer games to play!
*****************************LINKS*****************************
Here is everything you could ever want for playing these wonderful games. Please check out these links, and maybe even start your own setup of this killer program. You can always add what I will be posting later without messing up anything you do beforehand.
If you think you know of a link that should be added, please let me know.
Abandonia - This is where the best games can be found. Free of viruses, the files are all good, and there are reviews and screen shots for each game. Simply put, the best abandonware site there is.
www.abandonia.com/
Game controls – This site has tons of info on games of all sorts. I use it whenever I have a game that I need to look controls up for.
www.allgame.com
Example Controls (Allgame.com) – This is an example of why it helps to have this site. The game listed is Archimedean Dynasty, an awesome game, which works in dosbox Turbo, but you won’t be getting it here. Its too large, and not free.
www.allgame.com/game.php?id=5264&tab=controls
Replacement docs – If this site doesn’t have the documents for a game, then you are not likely to find them anywhere outside of buying the physical game, still factory sealed. This is an immensely valuable site for older games because it has not just the instruction manuals, but also hintbooks, maps, reference sheets for controls and just about everything that came with the game.
www.replacementdocs.com
Mobygames – This is a good site for game information. If you have a question about a game, then this is the site to check out.
www.mobygames.com
Gamefaqs – If you don’t visit this site on a weekly basis, then you probably aren’t reading this, because you don’t play games. Seriously, if you have never been here, then you must have been living under a rock. On another planet. In another solar system…. In a parallel universe. This site has walkthrough’s, guides, FAQs, boards, Wikis, screenshots, and full release info on every game, EVER.
www.gamefaqs.com
Dosbox – This is the original Dosbox website, home of the team that has made DOS games playable on nearly every computer setup, console and handheld device known to man. Gamers everywhere owe them a debt of gratitude.
www.dosbox.com
Dosbox TURBO market link – This is the Google market link for Dosbox TURBO, and the reason for this entire post. Even though I will provide a version for you to download, you really should purchase this app. Not only will you be helping with the development of further improvement, but without buying it, you will miss out on all the updates and new features that come out very often.
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fishstix.dosbox&hl=en
Dosbox TURBO home page –This is the homepage of the team whose work in making Dosbox TURBO have made this entire post possible. You may want to check this site out to read about just what you can do with this amazing little app.
sites.google.com/site/dosboxturbo/
That should do it. Everything you need to enjoy hundreds of free games is in these links. I will be busy getting many of the best games working and setup to run on an android device. As soon as I get them working, I will upload a zip file containing everything you need, and post a link for download here. For those of you who don't think you can handle setting this up yourselves, then wait for my download link. I will get it done as quickly as possible. Please note, that with Holy Wars coming up again, I might be delayed, but I assure you that it WILL get done!
Until then, check these sites out, see if you feel like giving it a shot, and most importantly, HAVE FUN!
If you don’t feel like reading the entire post, here is a summary. I will give you info on a program to put on your android devices, which will allow you to play hundreds of full, free, classic games using the touchscreen on your phone. Its 100% legal, free, and I will soon have a download available so that you don’t even have to set up anything on your phone. Just download, open, and you are ready to play until your fingers hurt.
This is going to be all about the MS-DOS emulator, Dosbox TURBO which runs on all android devices, from phones to tablets. So many games now are just little minigames hooked up to facebook which try to trick you into paying lots of money over and over. Most of these games are barely playable unless you pay for in game items, and even then you have to KEEP paying indefinitely in order to get anywhere.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting very, very sick of these games. That’s why I am excited to offer you a platform which will allow you to play some of the best games ever made. Sure they might be older games, but in a lot of cases, the graphics are just as good, if not better, than the games you download to your phone from the market. Many of these games have been the inspiration for the games that they try to handicap and force-feed you today, in order to raid your wallet.
Well, NO MORE!!!!
These games are all 100% free, 100% legal, and 100% FUN! These are full, commercial games. Expect hours and hours of play from each of them. There are no ads, no spyware, no bull. Each and every game I will be putting here for your playing pleasure is tested, configured, and ready to go as soon as you load them onto your SD card.
These old games are still popular because they are made to be fun. They don't try to weasel money out of you, and while some have nice graphics, the most important thing about ALL of these games is the GAMEPLAY.
Keep I mind, that these are games that came out in the early 90's for the most part. The vast majority of them were stored on those 3.4 hard "floppy" disks. (The good ol' A:/ drive.....)
Most of these games are just as good, if not better than the games available on the phone.
They take up very little space (I'm not putting any .iso/cd-rom games in the pack) and if you were to go buy a cheap calculator today, it has enough processor power to run half of these games. Put 4 of those calculators together and you could easily run 90% of em.
DosBox CAN run games like Fallout (the 1st and 2nd, and the off-shoot, Fallout: Tactics) and many more higher end games, but that’s where the phone can cause problems, due to space, processing power and can cause lockups and crashes.
I stick to the good old classics, like Ultima, Eye of the Beholder, Tyrian(an awesome R-Type-esque game/RPG), Dungeon Master, all of the gold box AD&D games (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons)
And despite its slightly larger size (still not as big as some of those games from Glu.) you can run the very first and second Elder Scrolls games! (Daggerfall, and Arena) I’m not sure about Hammerfell though.
And of course, there are the REAL classics, like Oregon Trail and Odell Lake ( Not the bullcrap Oregon Trail from the market where it's all mini-games and "buy coins" )
I’m shooting to keep the file below 200 MB. That should be enough space for at least 50 games, give or take, and I can post updates so that you can add games if you choose.
The real drawback with dosbox is the same drawback that everyone had with the REAL ms-dos. It’s hit or miss on getting your games to run. I don’t know if you remember a comp with dos on it, but my first one had Windows 95, and a lot of really cool games had to be installed and ran in MS-DOS mode.
And every single time I popped in the disks or the CD, as the case sometimes was, I was left to figure out what archaic commands I needed to type in to get the damned game installed, nevermind running. Too many times I ran into "not enough external memory" or "invalid command".
There was internal memory, external memory, virtual memory , and god knows what else. you had to find the setup utility which often didn’t even install the game, and figure out what video card you had, and what audio card you had, and then enter in all the data on them, VESA mode, VGA, Non-VGA mode, SoundBlaster, gravis ultrasound, internal speaker, MIDI device, which port #, 1-9999, Hard drive set to master or slave, IRQ#, number of sound channels, the list goes on and on.....
Some games you had to balance on your head while juggling rabid badgers and simultaneously drinking water and reciting pi to the thousandth decimal.
And other games, you didn’t even have to install or setup, you just typed in the name of the game, and there you were, playing an awesome game.
And don’t get me started on trying to get a mouse to run in a dos game if it didn’t work automatically.
Basically, when you bought a DOS based game, you only had about a 40% chance to actually play it, no matter what your system specs were.
Once you add dos-box, which is emulating the dos environment, you have a whole new slew of problems. Folders containing games have to be mounted as entire hard drives. if you are running a CD game, you will have to mount the CD as a CD-ROM drive and get it all to work together while still dealing with all the archaic crap that regular dos deals out to you.
Some games I still cannot get to work, despite trying different files, reading tons of message boards suggesting ways to fix it, and hunting down and reading the original installation guide which came with the game (now in PDF form)
That is why I wanted to post this up. The games will be already set up and tested to ensure that they work.
You can use the hackers keyboard (you need it, because DOS does not recognize some keys on your keyboard, and hackers keyboard is DOS compatible) to control the games, and when a mouse is required you have several options. You can actually use a USB or Bluetooth mouse, or emulate it with the touch screen. There is a relative mouse control, where you gently move your finger to make the mouse move all over the screen, or you can try the admittedly experimental absolute mouse movement, where you can simply touch the screen and have the mouse "appear" there so that you can use it just like every other touch screen game. They are working on that feature with every update. I have found that it works great for some games, but others don’t seem to register it very well.
Also, there are setup options so that you can use any Bluetooth controller, like a zeemote, and there's even a free program you can use to control games with a Wii remote, including the classic SNES gamepad.
If you have a phone with a slide out keyboard, you can get one of the best products for phones I have ever seen. Its called a Game Gripper and its essentially a rubber pad that slides over your slide-out keyboard and has a D-pad and 10 buttons (maybe less, depending on your phone model) which, when pressed, hit keys on your keyboard, essentially turning your keyboard into a game controller. (Keys can be programmed in dosbox and every other emulator. The game gripper has the same setup, more of less as a SNES controller, and is perfect for Super Nintendo emulators.)
The game gripper is made by one guy, in his garage with a rubber mixing kit. You can find it for around 19 bucks on Amazon and other sites, but if you are interested, I can get his direct URL for you, because that way you know you are supporting the creator, AND his prices are much cheaper, being 14 bucks. And using regular shipping, which is only 2 dollars, I got it 2 days after ordering it. It just comes in a plastic envelope, and there are no instructions or boxes, but really, there doesn't need to be. It’s very flexible, and you can either slide it on, or hook one side, and stretch it across to hook the other side. The buttons are all replaceable if you want a different color (he sells replacement buttons for 2 bucks) and they are very easy to remove in order to modify if you feel the need.
For me, the left and right on the D-PAD worked just fine, but it didn't "feel" right, like they weren't being pressed. I found a perfect solution. I removed the D-PAD and took a small piece of paper, and folded it over a few times, then rolled it into a ball a little smaller than a BB. I then replaced the D-PAD with the little paper ball in the center of it, and that worked great. The D-PAD then felt a little like a see-saw, which makes it feel more like you are pressing it down.
Last but not least, is the software controllers. There is a free gamepad app, whose name currently escapes me, that you can have appear on screen, with transparent, or even invisible buttons, and program them to do whatever you want.
Dosbox is already set up to use the software controller.
If you are interested in seeing some of the games you can play, including screenshots, reviews and the games themselves (its best to DL to the comp, then unzip and send to phone) then check out www.abandonia.com
They only offer abandonware (games that are technically legal to freely distribute.) so there’s no worry about getting in trouble. If a company decides to offer a game for sale, or re-submits a development license for the franchise, then abandonia removes the download links and instead posts links to where you can purchase it.
There are many other sites, some legal and some not so legal, and even more that may have viruses, or fake files up for downloading.
I will only post reputable sites that I know (to the best of my knowledge) to have only legal files free of viruses and malware.
In some cases, there may be several versions of games available, as the media of the time was changing from either floppy-floppy disks, to hard floppy's or from hard floppy's to CD-ROM. Many games with extra cutscenes have had their cutscenes removed to make the downloads smaller. There are also patched and non-patched versions, hacked versions, modded versions, and just plain different versions that you have to take into account. (MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95)
Then there is the small problem of game documentation.
These games were made in a time where games being offered digitally were nearly unheard of. The very first game I remember doing a game download was Wing Commander Prophecy, when they offered a multi campaign download (minus the wonderful live acted cutscenes that Wing Commander is known for) called Wing Commander Prophecy: Secret Ops.
That means that when you bought a game, you either had to muddle through a myriad of papers and booklets to see how to play, or like me (and I assume most of us), you looked forward to opening the game on the ride home, so that you could dive into the instruction manual, and read the story, begin memorizing the controls, and prepare yourself for that wondrous excitement that builds as you insert your game into the system or computer, and turn on the power. The splash screen comes up, and as it fades, and the game's music begins, you prepare to lose yourself in a world you are eager to explore, whether its donning the attire of a plumber and inspecting pipes to find walking mushrooms to jump on, or strapping armor onto your body to ward off the blows of the next monster who you just know is around the next corner of the maze, waiting for you.
We didn't need virtual reality, motion controls, or augmented reality. We barely needed graphics to become immersed in our game worlds, because we had something better.
We had books.
We had maps.
We had Imagination!
And if that wasn’t enough…
We had little plastic decoders, jewels, coins, laminated cards printed to look like aging papyrus with arcane symbols that we could only hope to understand by beating a boss in the game and finding a translation in his horde of loot. We thrilled when the wizard would appear on screen and demand of us, "Before I let you pass, hero, you must prove to me your worth...Hold you not the book of Yendor? Then prithee, chosen one, what symbol graces the fourth line on the ninth page?" We hurriedly searched the jumbled mass of papers around our desks, moved a dirty sock out of the way, flipped through them all, before that slight twang of panic began to seep in. "Am I going to fail in my quest? Have I let everyone down? Why did I not take better care of that book!?" With a resolute sigh, we sink into our seats, defeated and depressed. Staring at the screen, we contemplate searching our fallible memory for the symbol the wizard requires. When we draw only blanks, we shakily put our hands on the keyboard, prepared to put the fate of the kingdom into our unworthy, and shaking hands. Taking a deep breath, we type our answer, and exhale slowly as we resign ourselves to the loss of our game save, or at the least the premature end of our wondrous adventure. Our hand descends ever so slowly as we wince in preparation of the wizards wrath. The enter key waits silently, to determine your fate.
At the last moment, a tiny glint of light from something shiny catches our attention, and the enter key sits idle. We turn to look at that reflective bit as our eyes widen in elation and triumph! For sitting in the floor, near our bed, at the corner of our computer desk is that which we have sought. That small, card-sized booklet with the knowledge of the cosmos contained within. (slight exaggeration there....). We flip to page 9 and stare at the solution. Quickly we delete the inappropriate word, which began with F, that we had typed in the wizard's answer box, and replace it with the correct "symbols". Your hands tremble with joy as you triumphantly type the answer to the wizard's query. "T H E".
We double and triple check that this is in fact the correct answer before finally hitting enter, with the satisfaction of knowing that your quest will continue, and the world may yet be saved.
The computer makes a loud "BEEP" sound that comes from within, and not from the speakers, and we quickly turn our attention to the wizard, our stomach's knotted with fear.
"Dear hero, you disappoint me! Mayhap your hand did slip whilst entering the symbols of power? Pray, dear hero, try again! But be forewarned! If you be an impostor, then know this! Incorrectly answering me again will result in your legacy being forever erased from history!"
"I repeat, hero! What symbols dost thou find on page 9?"
Now completely freaking out, we look at page 9. There are words, artwork, and symbols at the bottom of the page. There are two paragraphs detailing how to interact with the in-game menu system, and a few other topics. What word does he want? Does he really want the symbols? More importantly, if that is so, then HOW THE HELL DO I TYPE SYMBOLS!!!!"
Fearing the loss of our saved game, and the hours of work we put into it, we do the only thing we can do.
Yank the power plug out of the wall.
Collapsing back into our chairs, we wipe the sweat from our brow and turn our attention back to the manual. We flip through it in hopes of finding the answers to our distress.
Unable to locate the solution to our problems, we close the book, and toss it onto the desk, along with all the other games we have had to stop playing for one reason or another. As it comes to a stop, the front cover of the booklet catches our eye. "Saviors of Ardennia" it reads.
Wait......
Weren't we playing Tales of Grolag Keep?
The scream we let out is echoed all over the computer game-playing world, in a chorus of frustration were all races and sexes join together, hand in hand to yell our aggravation at the computer and the evil game programmers who made that dreaded game-killing function, which-shall-not-be-named......
COPY PROTECTION!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, yeah. That's a big problem with older games. If you don't have the hintbook, or decoder, or original manual or whatever it is you needed (sometimes it was even a gemstone that you had to set over a paper with what looked like squiggles and static, and would reveal a word or phrase when you turned the gemstone just right.) then you cannot play the game. At the very least you are unable to leave town or progress past a certain point. And forget looking up the answer, because there is no internet (at least not available to the public at the time) and even if you have a friend who has the game, you will never get him to let go of the booklet, because the questions the wizard, or whatever thing in each game uses to ask you, will ask a random question. It will be different every time.
And to make matters worse, there were many examples of the books not lining up with the questions, due to the booklets being made by different companies than the games, and their editors would format them differently.
So when you need to enter the 3rd word on page 4, first paragraph, you better hope that the editor did not change the formatting, because half the time, they did.
Well, I want to state something for the record, right here, and right now!
There is NO copy protection in ANY of the games that I am loading here. The few that DID have copy protection have been modified so that you can type ANYTHING in the field, and the computer will accept it.
However, not all the materials that came with those good old games were so reviled. If anything, they added to the game. There are hintbooks, story books, reference cards showing the controls as they are laid out on the keyboard, even full walkthroughs which came with some games.
And that's why I will be including a link to sites which have the old books and accessories that came with these games, as well as a site which has the controls for just about every game, and one that has just about every manual available (except those requested removed by the game's owners).
I will be posting all these links below.
On a final note, if anyone has any requests for games, or questions about, or need help with a certain game, just let me know and I will do what I can. I cannot give you anything illegal, but if you are looking for something you can't find, I can usually find a site or service you can use (at your own risk) which I can PM you.
I will provide a copy of Dosbox TURBO, which is the absolute best dos emulator for android. Keep in mind that this is not a FREE app. Truthfully I should not give you a copy of Dosbox TURBO, but the original Dosbox is free, and open source, so I don’t feel quite as bad. If you like it, please by all means pay for it. Mainly because if you don’t pay for it, you will miss out on the updates and improvements which are constantly being added.
The games I will be adding ARE free, and perfectly legal. I will have them in a zip file that you should transfer directly to your SD card. (after unzipping, of course) There will be a folder titled “DosGames” which should be placed directly in your SD card directory. This will ensure that the folder/directory structure will be correct for all the game configuration files. Doing it this way will ensure that if I have a game working on my phone, then you will also have it working, no matter what kind of phone you have.
It will take a little while to get all the games set up, but I will have them posted for download just as soon as I possibly can. In the meantime, if you feel like searching for the Dosbox TURBO apk file, you can find it fairly easily. Please remember, there are many other Dosbox apps, such as AnDosbox, but these are inferior, half-assed programs that have a hard time running most games, and have almost no options for controls or setup.
You can find plenty of info on the web about how to set it up and get it working. Don’t forget to download the Dosbox TURBO Manager, which gives you a super easy way to play your games. You simply open the manager, which will look like a wooden shelf with games on it. Then you just click the game you want to play, and it reads the configuration files I will provide you, and auto start the games with no need to type in those aggravating DOS commands.
If you DO decide to mess around with the Dosbox TURBO, manager and games, then please put your games in a new folder called “DosGames”. That way, no matter what you do, or what you download, you will still be able to add the file that I will post here, and it will add all the games in the file without messing up anything that you have already done.
Well, that’s about it.
I know, I know. I make long posts that make you groan when you first see them. But I hope that this one at least puts a smile on your face, since in the end, you are going to get some killer games to play!
*****************************LINKS*****************************
Here is everything you could ever want for playing these wonderful games. Please check out these links, and maybe even start your own setup of this killer program. You can always add what I will be posting later without messing up anything you do beforehand.
If you think you know of a link that should be added, please let me know.
Abandonia - This is where the best games can be found. Free of viruses, the files are all good, and there are reviews and screen shots for each game. Simply put, the best abandonware site there is.
www.abandonia.com/
Game controls – This site has tons of info on games of all sorts. I use it whenever I have a game that I need to look controls up for.
www.allgame.com
Example Controls (Allgame.com) – This is an example of why it helps to have this site. The game listed is Archimedean Dynasty, an awesome game, which works in dosbox Turbo, but you won’t be getting it here. Its too large, and not free.
www.allgame.com/game.php?id=5264&tab=controls
Replacement docs – If this site doesn’t have the documents for a game, then you are not likely to find them anywhere outside of buying the physical game, still factory sealed. This is an immensely valuable site for older games because it has not just the instruction manuals, but also hintbooks, maps, reference sheets for controls and just about everything that came with the game.
www.replacementdocs.com
Mobygames – This is a good site for game information. If you have a question about a game, then this is the site to check out.
www.mobygames.com
Gamefaqs – If you don’t visit this site on a weekly basis, then you probably aren’t reading this, because you don’t play games. Seriously, if you have never been here, then you must have been living under a rock. On another planet. In another solar system…. In a parallel universe. This site has walkthrough’s, guides, FAQs, boards, Wikis, screenshots, and full release info on every game, EVER.
www.gamefaqs.com
Dosbox – This is the original Dosbox website, home of the team that has made DOS games playable on nearly every computer setup, console and handheld device known to man. Gamers everywhere owe them a debt of gratitude.
www.dosbox.com
Dosbox TURBO market link – This is the Google market link for Dosbox TURBO, and the reason for this entire post. Even though I will provide a version for you to download, you really should purchase this app. Not only will you be helping with the development of further improvement, but without buying it, you will miss out on all the updates and new features that come out very often.
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fishstix.dosbox&hl=en
Dosbox TURBO home page –This is the homepage of the team whose work in making Dosbox TURBO have made this entire post possible. You may want to check this site out to read about just what you can do with this amazing little app.
sites.google.com/site/dosboxturbo/
That should do it. Everything you need to enjoy hundreds of free games is in these links. I will be busy getting many of the best games working and setup to run on an android device. As soon as I get them working, I will upload a zip file containing everything you need, and post a link for download here. For those of you who don't think you can handle setting this up yourselves, then wait for my download link. I will get it done as quickly as possible. Please note, that with Holy Wars coming up again, I might be delayed, but I assure you that it WILL get done!
Until then, check these sites out, see if you feel like giving it a shot, and most importantly, HAVE FUN!
