Podcast — 25 Minutes
Episode 37: MS-DOS Games
Podcast — 25 Minutes
Episode 37: MS-DOS Games
Kaede hosts this episode on classic gaming and Patrick (Zephyr Blaze) and Dr. Gwynette join in for a throwback to the era of command prompts, sound cards, and VGA graphics.
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We had some audio issues and Patrick (aka Zephyr Blaze) had looked up the wrong thing for Powerslave. Powerslave (game) was actually released in 1996. MS-DOS was released in 1981. We did go off topic for the Atari briefly. Here’s the links to D-Fend Reloaded and where to get MS-DOS games:
http://dfendreloaded.
https://www.myabandonware.com/
For my Tutorial:
Kaede: I’m Kaede, and I’m here with Patrick (Zephyr Blaze).
Dr. Gwynette Howdy.
Kaede: And I’m here with Dr. Gwynette, and we’re going to talk about MS-DOS games. They’re old retro computer games that people played before modern gaming, MS-DOS. They need emulators nowadays, and I recommend D-Fend Reloaded. It’s spelled D dash F-E-N-D Reloaded.
Dr. Gwynette And what do emulators exactly do?
Kaede: They let people play nostalgic games. Even if they kill the authentic experience, it’s still worth getting emulators for nostalgic reasons.
Dr. Gwynette So you’ve got a new PC, and if you have an emulator, you can run really old software?
Kaede: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Gwynette Cool. So did the game-
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah, from the SNES to a Game Boy to even old phones.
Kaede: Really?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah.
Kaede: Interesting.
Dr. Gwynette So you can run a Motorola Razor or something like that?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah, pretty much. There’s an emulator for everything.
Kaede: Yeah, just about, and D-Fend Reloaded, it’s very convenient for playing MS-DOS games. You wouldn’t have to type in the annoying commands. It gets so tedious and annoying and confusing.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, boy.
Kaede: You have to do it on command prompt or something like that. I mean, it’s just so hard to remember everything, but D-Fend Reloaded changed that.
Zephyr Blaze: It did?
Kaede: Yeah. Whenever you opened D-Fend Reloaded, you can click the game and play it no problem.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, wow.
Kaede: Certain games that really work, like Powerslave, and Powerslave is my favorite MS-DOS game.
Dr. Gwynette What is Powerslave?
Kaede: Well, Powerslave is a first-person shooter. It takes place in Egypt, and you have to save King Ramses the second. It’s a really awesome first-person shooter. The original DOS game, well, you don’t have to find his treasures, exactly, but in the PSX version, you find his treasures.
Dr. Gwynette Cool.
Kaede: Anyway, back to MS-DOS. Powerslave was the game I fell in love with. When I first played the demo, it was love at first sight. I downloaded it from a game disc called 1000 Plus Games, and when I started playing, it was like, “Oh, wow, this game is superb.”
Dr. Gwynette Now when did that game originally come out?
Kaede: I’m not really sure, probably in 1991 or so. I don’t remember.
Zephyr Blaze: Powerslave.
Dr. Gwynette Is it safe to say that as-
Zephyr Blaze: ’84.
Kaede: 1984?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah.
Dr. Gwynette Wow, so way before-
Zephyr Blaze: I just looked it up.
Kaede: Oh, wow. Powerslave is very detailed towards time, and also, there’s a game more detailed than Powerslave called Blood. It’s another first-person shooter, but it takes place in a graveyard setting.
Zephyr Blaze: Interesting name.
Kaede: You play this badass guy named Caleb, and he really is a badass, a legitimate one.
Dr. Gwynette So back in MS-DOS, you mentioned the command prompt. So are you saying that there wasn’t really a big video aspect, that it was mostly typing?
Kaede: Well, originally, there was text-based adventures for DOS, but I’m not into text-based adventures.
Dr. Gwynette Right.
Kaede: I’m for video games with graphics.
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah, me too.
Dr. Gwynette So Powerslave had graphics on MS-DOS?
Kaede: Yeah, really good ones, and Blood had even better ones.
Dr. Gwynette Okay. And back then, would you use your arrow keys and the space bar?
Kaede: Oh, yes, we would.
Dr. Gwynette Okay. For those who don’t know, what’s the difference between an MS-DOS system and Windows?
Kaede: Well, it’s hard to explain. The sound cards are kind of different from Windows. There’s Gravis UltraSound, Sound Blaster, et cetera. It’s hard to explain.
Dr. Gwynette So the graphics cards are different?
Kaede: I meant sound cards.
Dr. Gwynette Oh, the sound cards.
Kaede: That, and of course, they’re old systems. I mean, they’re old games that can’t be run on any computer without an emulator. I use D-Fend Reloaded for all my DOS games now.
Dr. Gwynette How do you get a copy of D-Fend Reloaded?
Kaede: I’ll have to place a link in the description.
Dr. Gwynette Okay, and you pay for it?
Kaede: No, you don’t. It’s free. I think you get it off [inaudible 00:04:12] or something. I don’t remember exactly, but it’s worth getting if you want to play MS-DOS games.
Dr. Gwynette You mentioned the text-based games, and right before we came on, you and I were talking about Zork, and there’s Zork one, two, and three, which was a text-based game that began in 1977. And I remember playing this in 1984, and so you would start off, you put your little floppy disk in, and it would spin. And you’d start to hear [inaudible 00:04:40]. It would say something like, “You are on a road,” and you’d type in “walk forward,” and then the disk would go [inaudible 00:04:46]. It’d say, “You come to a man.” And you’d say, “Attack man,” or, “Speak to man.” You’d type it in.
Kaede: Text-based adventures are not my thing.
Dr. Gwynette It was so slow. You’d be waiting and waiting for a reply.
Kaede: I remember floppy disks.
Dr. Gwynette At the time, you’d-
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, Lord.
Dr. Gwynette It was amazing, because to us, we could type in “slap man” or “talk to man,” whatever it was, and the computer would kind of know. It would have an answer ready, and so all that programming on the back end had to be ready for whatever the user would type in.
Kaede: And my mom also played King’s Quest before.
Dr. Gwynette Now what is that?
Kaede: I’m not entirely sure. I never played it before, but mom’s talked about it.
Dr. Gwynette And so are you a fan of retro games as well?
Zephyr Blaze: More modern games, but I have played older games as well and a very few internet DOS games when I was growing up. Let’s see. One I vividly remember playing is a game called Spit Wad Willy. In that game, you would shoot spit wides at these bouncing balls.
Dr. Gwynette Wow, that sounds nasty.
Kaede: Good thing I haven’t played that game though.
Zephyr Blaze: It had some old graphics, so it wasn’t really detailed.
Dr. Gwynette Do you guys remember the very first game you ever played in your life?
Kaede: With MS-DOS, you mean?
Dr. Gwynette Or any.
Zephyr Blaze: I think he means in general.
Kaede: I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I played so many games. I do remember Living Books.
Zephyr Blaze: Living what?
Kaede: Living Books. They’re interactive stories. There’s Sheila Rae, the Brave.
Dr. Gwynette How do those work?
Kaede: Well, you interact with a story. You click on the characters, and they do something.
Dr. Gwynette And is it on a computer screen?
Kaede: Yeah, but they weren’t necessarily MS-DOS. We should get back to the MS-DOS subject.
Dr. Gwynette Okay. What are some of the other MS-DOS games that you like?
Kaede: I know there’s Doom, which is very familiar to other people, and there’s Duke Nukem.
Zephyr Blaze: I still need to play those.
Kaede: So do I, and then there’s Clyde’s Revenge, which is a platform or game where you collect stones.
Zephyr Blaze: I never heard of that one.
Kaede: Clyde’s Revenge is pretty kid-friendly, but it’s not just for children, but people are familiar with Earthworm Jim.
Zephyr Blaze: Wait. Wait, that was an MS-DOS game?
Kaede: I think so, yeah.
Zephyr Blaze: I know he was on NES or SNES.
Dr. Gwynette So Earthworm Jim, what was the plot to that one?
Kaede: Well, you play as this worm in a spacesuit, and you shoot enemies and stuff. It’s a platformer game too. It’s really weird.
Dr. Gwynette Kaede, did you ever hear of a game called Dig Dug?
Kaede: Oh, yes, I’ve heard of that.
Dr. Gwynette That’s pretty fun too, where you can-
Kaede: But it gets frustrating.
Dr. Gwynette Because it speeds up I think, doesn’t it?
Kaede: And sometimes you crush yourself with the boulders, and sometimes the enemies get you. It can cause a rage quit.
Dr. Gwynette Definitely. So MS-DOS games, I guess that means that it’s predated Windows. Is that what it means?
Kaede: Probably. I don’t know.
Dr. Gwynette I guess Windows came out in 1995.
Kaede: MS stands for Microsoft. I’m not sure what DOS stands for, but MS-DOS games, they’re pretty nostalgic.
Dr. Gwynette So a lot of the games that you’re talking about, they came out before you were born, right?
Kaede: Some of them. I was born in 1994.
Dr. Gwynette That’s awesome. So are MS-DOS games kind of like old movies where some people really just love old movies?
Kaede: Yeah, kind of.
Zephyr Blaze: I guess you can compare them to old movies.
Kaede: And sometimes the graphics aren’t the best in DOS games. Sometimes it could be pretty glitchy, and I do remember doing some play-throughs on some DOS games on my computer, and I did a D-Fend Reloaded tutorial on my YouTube channel.
Dr. Gwynette Cool. Was that something that people enjoyed watching?
Kaede: I hope so. I hope that people enjoyed my [inaudible 00:08:43] or teaching people how to use MS-DOS games.
Dr. Gwynette Okay, so you have a tutorial showing people how to use an emulator?
Kaede: Yeah, on D-Fend Reloaded. I used my [inaudible 00:08:53] avatar, although I may have to edit the video and make the music quieter. I used the Powerslave demo to demonstrate.
Dr. Gwynette So Powerslave is popular. What are some other really popular MS-DOS games out there?
Kaede: I’m not sure.
Dr. Gwynette Did either of you guys play a lot of Doom?
Zephyr Blaze: I have never played a single Doom game. That crap scares the heck out of me due to how graphic it gets.
Kaede: Well, I play Doom. It can get pretty hard too, but it’s a very popular DOS game, and they actually made a movie based off of it, but it’s kind of different from the game.
Zephyr Blaze: They did?
Kaede: Yeah.
Zephyr Blaze: How different?
Kaede: In the Doom movie, there’s this injection that either turns the man into a hero or a monster. They turned the main character into a hero, and they turned the bad guy into a monster.
Dr. Gwynette Either of you ever play Half-Life?
Kaede: Half-Life?
Zephyr Blaze: I think I know what that is.
Dr. Gwynette That used to be really popular. It was a PC game. I think it was on Windows. It was one of the big, popular ones. You ever heard of Counter-Strike?
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, [inaudible 00:09:55] Half-Life is.
Kaede: I don’t think I’ve heard of that either.
Dr. Gwynette So it’s just a lot of boards where you can basically jump in a board and try to just shoot as many people as you can, but it’s all live players, multiplayer.
Kaede: Oh, like a battle royale?
Dr. Gwynette Yeah. Yeah, and then Counter-Strike where you have eight or 10 people versus eight to 10 other people. It’s terrorists versus counter terrorists. That was very popular too because you have your own little unit, and you run through-
Kaede: I never heard of that either. I’m not into battle royale games.
Zephyr Blaze: Wait, what’s the name of this game?
Dr. Gwynette Counter-Strike. That was really popular in the late nineties, early two thousands. I actually got a little bit hooked on Counter-Strike and Half-Life especially, because you jump in, and it’d take a while for you to get your first kill, but then after you got your first kill, you wanted that next one.
Kaede: And also, MS-DOS music is pretty unique.
Dr. Gwynette What’s unique about it?
Kaede: Well, the sound cards from Sound Blast or Gravis UltraSound, et cetera, cetera. I was trying to find some sort of sound card to convert some music, but I’m not very good with music now. I do remember Ken’s Labyrinth, which is a first-person shooter that issued [inaudible 00:11:07]. That had really good music. I think you’d like Ken’s Labyrinth, Patrick.
Zephyr Blaze: Tim’s Labyrinth?
Kaede: Ken, Ken’s Labyrinth.
Zephyr Blaze: Ken’s Labyrinth?
Kaede: Yeah, Ken.
Zephyr Blaze: What the heck?
Dr. Gwynette Are you looking it up now?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah, I just image searched it. What the heck am I looking at?
Kaede: It’s an old DOS game.
Dr. Gwynette When you guys play MS-DOS games, is there a community that plays them?
Kaede: Nope, not that I know of. MS-DOS games are basically extinct.
Dr. Gwynette Now in Ken’s Labyrinth, do you have a weapon?
Kaede: Yeah, a jelly shooter. It doesn’t show the weapon, but you can shoot. I loved playing Ken’s Labyrinth.
Dr. Gwynette And so these games are not online. You play them on your computer?
Kaede: Yeah, you can download them online. Myabandonware.com is a good example.
Zephyr Blaze: I might check this one out.
Kaede: What, Ken’s Labyrinth?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah.
Kaede: It’s pretty good, but unfortunately some of the games on myabandonware.com, they require money, but you can get them for free on other sites.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, that’s good.
Dr. Gwynette So if somebody wants to play an MS-DOS game, they first should order D-Fend?
Kaede: They should download D-Fend Reloaded.
Dr. Gwynette D-Fend Reloaded, okay. And then how do you get a copy of an MS-DOS game now that they’re almost extinct?
Kaede: You have to download it from the website and open D-Fend Reloaded and import the game into D-Fend Reloaded the program.
Dr. Gwynette And so for instance, Doom. Does Doom still have a website that you can buy from, or is it just out there?
Kaede: I think it’s just out there. I’m not sure.
Dr. Gwynette Okay. How did you pick up Powerslave?
Kaede: How I just got it?
Dr. Gwynette Yeah.
Kaede: Well, I think I downloaded a while back, and I was looking hard for the demo, and I eventually found it.
Dr. Gwynette Okay, so a demo. What’s the difference between a demo and the actual game?
Kaede: Well, the demo version, well, the first level is somewhat different from the final version, and it has DOS-style music, unlike the final version, kind strange to know they did that.
Dr. Gwynette So is the demo version easier to find than the full version?
Kaede: No, I think the full version is easier to find.
Dr. Gwynette But you prefer the demo version of Powerslave?
Kaede: Yeah. I think I have something in my Google Drive, a bunch of DOS games I shared with Patrick, right?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah, you did share a bunch.
Kaede: I’m going to share my Google Drive thing with everyone, whoever listens to this.
Zephyr Blaze: Our messenger history, you were telling me about it.
Kaede: And I think there are some mods for MS-DOS games. I’m not entirely sure. There’s Barneystein.
Zephyr Blaze: Barneystein?
Kaede: Yeah.
Zephyr Blaze: Like Barney the dinosaur?
Kaede: Yeah. You play Wolfenstein, and the enemies are Barney instead of Nazis. Wolfenstein, it’s basically an anti-Nazi game. If anybody remembers Wolfenstein, it’s a first-person shooter.
Dr. Gwynette And was that MS-DOS?
Kaede: Yes, it was.
Dr. Gwynette How was it an anti-Nazi game?
Kaede: The enemies were Nazis, and you’d shoot them down.
Dr. Gwynette And that was pretty popular?
Kaede: Yeah, I think it was, and there was also tons of other MS-DOS games, even some point and click ones. One of my favorites is Plague of the Moon, where you play as this witch. And there’s also Time Paradox where you stop Morgana le Faye as a time traveler woman named Kay. Time Paradox is kind of strange to me, but it’s still fun because you time travel to the age of dinosaurs and meet caveman.
Dr. Gwynette Wow.
Kaede: You even go to the Middle Ages to stop Morgana le Faye and waken Merlin the wizard.
Dr. Gwynette Wow, that sounds really imaginative, very creative. Time Paradox?
Kaede: Yeah, it’s a little strange to me, but I still like it, and the characters have English accents. “If I do that, that will stir up a hornet’s nest.” They have British accents.
Dr. Gwynette So Zephyr Blades, tell us about when you were first born as a gamer. What were you playing?
Zephyr Blaze: The first game I played was the Super Mario All-Stars on SNES, and it was on my sister’s SNES. That was my formal introduction to games.
Dr. Gwynette Okay, so that’s on Super Nintendo?
Zephyr Blaze: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gwynette Was that late nineties?
Zephyr Blaze: I think so, early nineties, ’93.
Dr. Gwynette ’93, okay. Did either of you guys ever play the Atari 2600?
Kaede: Nope.
Zephyr Blaze: That was before my time.
Dr. Gwynette Have you heard a lot about it?
Kaede: I heard about this game called ET, and it was considered the worst game in the world.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, God.
Dr. Gwynette Oh, sorry?
Kaede: Yeah.
Zephyr Blaze: I think I know what you’re talking about.
Dr. Gwynette I never played that game, but that set, the 2600, it kind of ruled for five or six years there. It was insanely popular, and it was popular because of the games. Really, it was just a joystick, pretty much. They had so many great games, and when Pac-Man came out for Atari, it was like uniting the clans where you had these arcade games that would only be in the arcade-
Kaede: Oh, I remember Pac-Man.
Dr. Gwynette They could migrate over to the Atari 2600. Asteroids is one of the first, and Frogger, and then when Pac-Man came over-
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, I just remembered. I had Asteroids on MS-DOS too.
Dr. Gwynette Did you really?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah.
Dr. Gwynette Oh, tell us about how that experience was. Was the music like this? (singing.)
Zephyr Blaze: That sounds more like Jaws.
Dr. Gwynette It’d just be like (singing.)
Zephyr Blaze: It’s been a long time, but I think it sounded like that.
Dr. Gwynette And then it’d be like [inaudible 00:16:25].
Zephyr Blaze: And you were in a triangular spaceship shooting asteroids.
Dr. Gwynette And don’t start moving the ship, because if you start moving, it was so hard to stop. It would go this way, and then it’d come back on the screen this way, so it’d go [inaudible 00:16:41]. You were headed [inaudible 00:16:43].
Kaede: That’s annoying.
Dr. Gwynette Yeah, but that’s how it was.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh my goodness, yes.
Dr. Gwynette You remember?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah. That killed me a lot.
Kaede: I don’t think I’ve played Asteroids before.
Zephyr Blaze: And the ship looked more like a paper airplane than a spaceship.
Dr. Gwynette So on the Atari, the score on Asteroids only went to 99,999. Maybe it was a hundred-thousand, or maybe it went to a million. So there used to be this thing called flipping, meaning you flip the game from 999,999 to zero, and then you start over. [inaudible 00:17:17]. So if someone was about to flip the game, let’s say I was playing, a couple of my friends were there, and they’d be like, “Hey, go out in the neighborhood and go tell everyone that I’m about to flip Asteroids,” because it was a major news event. So I’d be playing, because I’m on my-
Kaede: I didn’t know that.
Dr. Gwynette You’re on your last life. You’re trying to flip it, and then five or six other guys are coming in. Now they’re watching, and you’re trying to flip it. You’re like, “Oh my gosh.” And then if you flipped it, you’re just like, “Yes.” It was really, really rare because you only get three lives. Maybe, I can’t remember-
Kaede: How do you flip asteroids?
Dr. Gwynette Well, it just means the score goes from 999,000 to a million, and then once it hits a million, instead of going to one zero zero zero zero, it would go to zero, and then you’d start counting again.
Zephyr Blaze: It does that automatically?
Dr. Gwynette Yeah, we’d take three or four hours to flip it. It was a really big deal because I can’t remember if you would get an extra life.
Kaede: I never heard of somebody flipping a game.
Dr. Gwynette And usually, there’d be a spaceship that would go by in Asteroids, so you’re trying to fend off the asteroids, but then also you’re trying to hit this thing for bonuses. It was pretty hectic. Did you guys ever play Donkey Kong?
Kaede: I remember Donkey Kong, but we’re on MS-DOS.
Dr. Gwynette Oh, okay.
Kaede: We got off topic there.
Dr. Gwynette Sorry.
Kaede: And another MS-DOS game? Well, there are some Mario games for MS-DOS like Mario’s Time Machine, and Mario teaches typing.
Zephyr Blaze: Is that the one with the big Mario head?
Kaede: Yeah.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh my gosh.
Kaede: And Mario teaches typing. It’s been a popular YouTube poop source.
Dr. Gwynette What’s YouTube poop?
Kaede: Well, it’s a genre that’s unique on YouTube where the videos are so messed up, it’s funny. It gets so random and screwy. Oh, I made some of my own.
Zephyr Blaze: Basically, you [inaudible 00:19:01] and add some funny audio.
Dr. Gwynette Okay.
Zephyr Blaze: That sound about right?
Kaede: Something like that, yeah, and you mix up the sources and stuff. Back to MS-DOS, well, MS-DOS games had so many games, and some of them were kind of crappy, not just the text-based ones.
Zephyr Blaze: Well, they were old games. You can’t expect something too spectacular from back then.
Kaede: I know, but Blood was ahead of its time. For an old DOS game, it’s so detailed, but some of the details are really wrong. You can actually get yourself killed by shutting a door on yourself and squishing yourself to death.
Dr. Gwynette Somebody wrote the code for that. If somebody comes too close, they’ll squish themselves.
Kaede: No, no, no, no. It’s for the door, and they squish themselves to death with the door. It’s just so weird.
Dr. Gwynette It is weird.
Zephyr Blaze: My Lord.
Kaede: People don’t actually do that in real life, as funny as it sounds, but it’s actually only in Blood, which is just screwed up. And also, there are some educational MS-DOS games, like 3D Dinosaur Adventure. That, I really remember. It’s pretty educational, and it had good music too. And also, Knowledge Adventure not only created 3D Dinosaur Adventure; they made 3D Body Adventure. They made Speed Adventure, Space Adventure, et cetera. Knowledge Adventure had some good music, even though the games were specifically for kids. I wish I could compose music MS-DOS style, but I suck at doing music.
Dr. Gwynette So music’s not your thing in terms of programming and recording?
Kaede: Right. I suck at writing music. I have no musical talent.
Dr. Gwynette But you are a visual artist.
Kaede: Yes, I am. I haven’t drawn in a while, but I need to get back into drawing, and I also love playing video games, even MS-DOS games.
Dr. Gwynette How many hours a day do you play video games?
Kaede: I don’t know, most of my day. I know it’s not healthy, but it’s better than nothing, better than moping around in depression. If you’re going to play MS-DOS games, get D-Fend Reloaded. It’s worth it, and watch my video on how to use D-Fend Reloaded so you can learn how to use it.
Dr. Gwynette You want to tell the people what your YouTube handle is?
Kaede: My YouTube is K-E-D-E, space, E-N-N-E-A-D.
Dr. Gwynette K-A-E-D-E, right?
Kaede: Yeah. E-N-N-E-A-D.
Dr. Gwynette Were there certain big companies that were cranking out MS-DOS games?
Kaede: Well, I know there was Knowledge Adventure, and then that’s all I could think of. Knowledge Adventure did 3D Dinosaur Adventure, and then they did 3D Body Adventure, Undersea Adventure for MS-DOS. That’s all I can think of in terms of MS-DOS companies.
Dr. Gwynette Kaede, earlier you mentioned Duke Nukem.
Kaede: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Gwynette You played that a little?
Kaede: I just played Duke Nukem a tiny bit. I played the platform version, and I briefly played the first-person shooter version.
Dr. Gwynette What’d you think?
Kaede: Well, I don’t know. It’s Still good. I haven’t played enough of it yet.
Dr. Gwynette It’s a pretty fun game.
Kaede: Powerslave is closest to my heart.
Dr. Gwynette That’s your favorite.
Kaede: Yeah.
Dr. Gwynette What is it about older games, especially MS-DOS games, that makes you prefer them?
Kaede: Well, the music. It’s beautiful. It can be pretty, and the graphics make me feel nostalgic. And that’s what I was playing when I was younger.
Zephyr Blaze: So nostalgia is a big factor here?
Kaede: Yes, it is.
Zephyr Blaze: I can see that.
Kaede: Emulators are great for nostalgic people like me.
Dr. Gwynette Do you guys like other old stuff, like old clothes or old movies?
Kaede: Well, sometimes, but we still have to stay on MS-DOS. One of my favorite old movies was Matilda.
Zephyr Blaze: I’ve never heard of Matilda.
Kaede: It’s an old movie, but it’s a good movie. It’s an oldie but a goodie, like I Love Lucy is.
Zephyr Blaze: I know I Love Lucy.
Kaede: I Love Lucy can be really funny, especially the chocolate factory episode where the wives and the husbands switch jobs. That one was hilarious. Anyway, back to MS-DOS games. Get D-Fend Reloaded. Check out some MS-DOS games. Check them out on My Abandonware and other sites where you can download MS-DOS games, and enjoy them if you want to.
Dr. Gwynette Are they available for Mac as well?
Kaede: I think so, but look up D-Fend Reloaded and check it out. It’s worth getting if you want to play MS-DOS games. You just drag the applications over to D-Fend Reloaded, and then-
Zephyr Blaze: Defend is not on Mac, but alternatives.
Kaede: That’s understandable, but if you have a Windows computer, get D-Fend Reloaded if you want to play MS-DOS games. You can just drag the applications onto D-Fend Reloaded, and they’ll install it.
Zephyr Blaze: It’s saying the best Mac alternative is RetroArch, which is both free and open source.
Kaede: I haven’t tried much of RetroArch on my phone. I mainly used RetroArch for Game Boy games and DS games, but it didn’t work out for me.
Zephyr Blaze: What do you mean?
Kaede: It was giving me a hard time on my phone.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, was it like the lagging or something?
Kaede: Something like that, and I didn’t know how to put cheats on. Anyway, well, this has been the podcast. Thank you for listening, everyone. If anybody wants to play MS-DOS games, check out D-Fend Reloaded. Download some games for MS-DOS, and enjoy the nostalgia.
Dr. Gwynette Thanks, Kaede. Thanks, Zephyr Blaze.
Kaede: So this is the podcast.
Dr. Gwynette Howdy.
Kaede: And I’m here with Dr. Gwynette, and we’re going to talk about MS-DOS games. They’re old retro computer games that people played before modern gaming, MS-DOS. They need emulators nowadays, and I recommend D-Fend Reloaded. It’s spelled D dash F-E-N-D Reloaded.
Dr. Gwynette And what do emulators exactly do?
Kaede: They let people play nostalgic games. Even if they kill the authentic experience, it’s still worth getting emulators for nostalgic reasons.
Dr. Gwynette So you’ve got a new PC, and if you have an emulator, you can run really old software?
Kaede: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Gwynette Cool. So did the game-
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah, from the SNES to a Game Boy to even old phones.
Kaede: Really?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah.
Kaede: Interesting.
Dr. Gwynette So you can run a Motorola Razor or something like that?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah, pretty much. There’s an emulator for everything.
Kaede: Yeah, just about, and D-Fend Reloaded, it’s very convenient for playing MS-DOS games. You wouldn’t have to type in the annoying commands. It gets so tedious and annoying and confusing.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, boy.
Kaede: You have to do it on command prompt or something like that. I mean, it’s just so hard to remember everything, but D-Fend Reloaded changed that.
Zephyr Blaze: It did?
Kaede: Yeah. Whenever you opened D-Fend Reloaded, you can click the game and play it no problem.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, wow.
Kaede: Certain games that really work, like Powerslave, and Powerslave is my favorite MS-DOS game.
Dr. Gwynette What is Powerslave?
Kaede: Well, Powerslave is a first-person shooter. It takes place in Egypt, and you have to save King Ramses the second. It’s a really awesome first-person shooter. The original DOS game, well, you don’t have to find his treasures, exactly, but in the PSX version, you find his treasures.
Dr. Gwynette Cool.
Kaede: Anyway, back to MS-DOS. Powerslave was the game I fell in love with. When I first played the demo, it was love at first sight. I downloaded it from a game disc called 1000 Plus Games, and when I started playing, it was like, “Oh, wow, this game is superb.”
Dr. Gwynette Now when did that game originally come out?
Kaede: I’m not really sure, probably in 1991 or so. I don’t remember.
Zephyr Blaze: Powerslave.
Dr. Gwynette Is it safe to say that as-
Zephyr Blaze: ’84.
Kaede: 1984?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah.
Dr. Gwynette Wow, so way before-
Zephyr Blaze: I just looked it up.
Kaede: Oh, wow. Powerslave is very detailed towards time, and also, there’s a game more detailed than Powerslave called Blood. It’s another first-person shooter, but it takes place in a graveyard setting.
Zephyr Blaze: Interesting name.
Kaede: You play this badass guy named Caleb, and he really is a badass, a legitimate one.
Dr. Gwynette So back in MS-DOS, you mentioned the command prompt. So are you saying that there wasn’t really a big video aspect, that it was mostly typing?
Kaede: Well, originally, there was text-based adventures for DOS, but I’m not into text-based adventures.
Dr. Gwynette Right.
Kaede: I’m for video games with graphics.
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah, me too.
Dr. Gwynette So Powerslave had graphics on MS-DOS?
Kaede: Yeah, really good ones, and Blood had even better ones.
Dr. Gwynette Okay. And back then, would you use your arrow keys and the space bar?
Kaede: Oh, yes, we would.
Dr. Gwynette Okay. For those who don’t know, what’s the difference between an MS-DOS system and Windows?
Kaede: Well, it’s hard to explain. The sound cards are kind of different from Windows. There’s Gravis UltraSound, Sound Blaster, et cetera. It’s hard to explain.
Dr. Gwynette So the graphics cards are different?
Kaede: I meant sound cards.
Dr. Gwynette Oh, the sound cards.
Kaede: That, and of course, they’re old systems. I mean, they’re old games that can’t be run on any computer without an emulator. I use D-Fend Reloaded for all my DOS games now.
Dr. Gwynette How do you get a copy of D-Fend Reloaded?
Kaede: I’ll have to place a link in the description.
Dr. Gwynette Okay, and you pay for it?
Kaede: No, you don’t. It’s free. I think you get it off [inaudible 00:04:12] or something. I don’t remember exactly, but it’s worth getting if you want to play MS-DOS games.
Dr. Gwynette You mentioned the text-based games, and right before we came on, you and I were talking about Zork, and there’s Zork one, two, and three, which was a text-based game that began in 1977. And I remember playing this in 1984, and so you would start off, you put your little floppy disk in, and it would spin. And you’d start to hear [inaudible 00:04:40]. It would say something like, “You are on a road,” and you’d type in “walk forward,” and then the disk would go [inaudible 00:04:46]. It’d say, “You come to a man.” And you’d say, “Attack man,” or, “Speak to man.” You’d type it in.
Kaede: Text-based adventures are not my thing.
Dr. Gwynette It was so slow. You’d be waiting and waiting for a reply.
Kaede: I remember floppy disks.
Dr. Gwynette At the time, you’d-
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, Lord.
Dr. Gwynette It was amazing, because to us, we could type in “slap man” or “talk to man,” whatever it was, and the computer would kind of know. It would have an answer ready, and so all that programming on the back end had to be ready for whatever the user would type in.
Kaede: And my mom also played King’s Quest before.
Dr. Gwynette Now what is that?
Kaede: I’m not entirely sure. I never played it before, but mom’s talked about it.
Dr. Gwynette And so are you a fan of retro games as well?
Zephyr Blaze: More modern games, but I have played older games as well and a very few internet DOS games when I was growing up. Let’s see. One I vividly remember playing is a game called Spit Wad Willy. In that game, you would shoot spit wides at these bouncing balls.
Dr. Gwynette Wow, that sounds nasty.
Kaede: Good thing I haven’t played that game though.
Zephyr Blaze: It had some old graphics, so it wasn’t really detailed.
Dr. Gwynette Do you guys remember the very first game you ever played in your life?
Kaede: With MS-DOS, you mean?
Dr. Gwynette Or any.
Zephyr Blaze: I think he means in general.
Kaede: I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I played so many games. I do remember Living Books.
Zephyr Blaze: Living what?
Kaede: Living Books. They’re interactive stories. There’s Sheila Rae, the Brave.
Dr. Gwynette How do those work?
Kaede: Well, you interact with a story. You click on the characters, and they do something.
Dr. Gwynette And is it on a computer screen?
Kaede: Yeah, but they weren’t necessarily MS-DOS. We should get back to the MS-DOS subject.
Dr. Gwynette Okay. What are some of the other MS-DOS games that you like?
Kaede: I know there’s Doom, which is very familiar to other people, and there’s Duke Nukem.
Zephyr Blaze: I still need to play those.
Kaede: So do I, and then there’s Clyde’s Revenge, which is a platform or game where you collect stones.
Zephyr Blaze: I never heard of that one.
Kaede: Clyde’s Revenge is pretty kid-friendly, but it’s not just for children, but people are familiar with Earthworm Jim.
Zephyr Blaze: Wait. Wait, that was an MS-DOS game?
Kaede: I think so, yeah.
Zephyr Blaze: I know he was on NES or SNES.
Dr. Gwynette So Earthworm Jim, what was the plot to that one?
Kaede: Well, you play as this worm in a spacesuit, and you shoot enemies and stuff. It’s a platformer game too. It’s really weird.
Dr. Gwynette Kaede, did you ever hear of a game called Dig Dug?
Kaede: Oh, yes, I’ve heard of that.
Dr. Gwynette That’s pretty fun too, where you can-
Kaede: But it gets frustrating.
Dr. Gwynette Because it speeds up I think, doesn’t it?
Kaede: And sometimes you crush yourself with the boulders, and sometimes the enemies get you. It can cause a rage quit.
Dr. Gwynette Definitely. So MS-DOS games, I guess that means that it’s predated Windows. Is that what it means?
Kaede: Probably. I don’t know.
Dr. Gwynette I guess Windows came out in 1995.
Kaede: MS stands for Microsoft. I’m not sure what DOS stands for, but MS-DOS games, they’re pretty nostalgic.
Dr. Gwynette So a lot of the games that you’re talking about, they came out before you were born, right?
Kaede: Some of them. I was born in 1994.
Dr. Gwynette That’s awesome. So are MS-DOS games kind of like old movies where some people really just love old movies?
Kaede: Yeah, kind of.
Zephyr Blaze: I guess you can compare them to old movies.
Kaede: And sometimes the graphics aren’t the best in DOS games. Sometimes it could be pretty glitchy, and I do remember doing some play-throughs on some DOS games on my computer, and I did a D-Fend Reloaded tutorial on my YouTube channel.
Dr. Gwynette Cool. Was that something that people enjoyed watching?
Kaede: I hope so. I hope that people enjoyed my [inaudible 00:08:43] or teaching people how to use MS-DOS games.
Dr. Gwynette Okay, so you have a tutorial showing people how to use an emulator?
Kaede: Yeah, on D-Fend Reloaded. I used my [inaudible 00:08:53] avatar, although I may have to edit the video and make the music quieter. I used the Powerslave demo to demonstrate.
Dr. Gwynette So Powerslave is popular. What are some other really popular MS-DOS games out there?
Kaede: I’m not sure.
Dr. Gwynette Did either of you guys play a lot of Doom?
Zephyr Blaze: I have never played a single Doom game. That crap scares the heck out of me due to how graphic it gets.
Kaede: Well, I play Doom. It can get pretty hard too, but it’s a very popular DOS game, and they actually made a movie based off of it, but it’s kind of different from the game.
Zephyr Blaze: They did?
Kaede: Yeah.
Zephyr Blaze: How different?
Kaede: In the Doom movie, there’s this injection that either turns the man into a hero or a monster. They turned the main character into a hero, and they turned the bad guy into a monster.
Dr. Gwynette Either of you ever play Half-Life?
Kaede: Half-Life?
Zephyr Blaze: I think I know what that is.
Dr. Gwynette That used to be really popular. It was a PC game. I think it was on Windows. It was one of the big, popular ones. You ever heard of Counter-Strike?
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, [inaudible 00:09:55] Half-Life is.
Kaede: I don’t think I’ve heard of that either.
Dr. Gwynette So it’s just a lot of boards where you can basically jump in a board and try to just shoot as many people as you can, but it’s all live players, multiplayer.
Kaede: Oh, like a battle royale?
Dr. Gwynette Yeah. Yeah, and then Counter-Strike where you have eight or 10 people versus eight to 10 other people. It’s terrorists versus counter terrorists. That was very popular too because you have your own little unit, and you run through-
Kaede: I never heard of that either. I’m not into battle royale games.
Zephyr Blaze: Wait, what’s the name of this game?
Dr. Gwynette Counter-Strike. That was really popular in the late nineties, early two thousands. I actually got a little bit hooked on Counter-Strike and Half-Life especially, because you jump in, and it’d take a while for you to get your first kill, but then after you got your first kill, you wanted that next one.
Kaede: And also, MS-DOS music is pretty unique.
Dr. Gwynette What’s unique about it?
Kaede: Well, the sound cards from Sound Blast or Gravis UltraSound, et cetera, cetera. I was trying to find some sort of sound card to convert some music, but I’m not very good with music now. I do remember Ken’s Labyrinth, which is a first-person shooter that issued [inaudible 00:11:07]. That had really good music. I think you’d like Ken’s Labyrinth, Patrick.
Zephyr Blaze: Tim’s Labyrinth?
Kaede: Ken, Ken’s Labyrinth.
Zephyr Blaze: Ken’s Labyrinth?
Kaede: Yeah, Ken.
Zephyr Blaze: What the heck?
Dr. Gwynette Are you looking it up now?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah, I just image searched it. What the heck am I looking at?
Kaede: It’s an old DOS game.
Dr. Gwynette When you guys play MS-DOS games, is there a community that plays them?
Kaede: Nope, not that I know of. MS-DOS games are basically extinct.
Dr. Gwynette Now in Ken’s Labyrinth, do you have a weapon?
Kaede: Yeah, a jelly shooter. It doesn’t show the weapon, but you can shoot. I loved playing Ken’s Labyrinth.
Dr. Gwynette And so these games are not online. You play them on your computer?
Kaede: Yeah, you can download them online. Myabandonware.com is a good example.
Zephyr Blaze: I might check this one out.
Kaede: What, Ken’s Labyrinth?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah.
Kaede: It’s pretty good, but unfortunately some of the games on myabandonware.com, they require money, but you can get them for free on other sites.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, that’s good.
Dr. Gwynette So if somebody wants to play an MS-DOS game, they first should order D-Fend?
Kaede: They should download D-Fend Reloaded.
Dr. Gwynette D-Fend Reloaded, okay. And then how do you get a copy of an MS-DOS game now that they’re almost extinct?
Kaede: You have to download it from the website and open D-Fend Reloaded and import the game into D-Fend Reloaded the program.
Dr. Gwynette And so for instance, Doom. Does Doom still have a website that you can buy from, or is it just out there?
Kaede: I think it’s just out there. I’m not sure.
Dr. Gwynette Okay. How did you pick up Powerslave?
Kaede: How I just got it?
Dr. Gwynette Yeah.
Kaede: Well, I think I downloaded a while back, and I was looking hard for the demo, and I eventually found it.
Dr. Gwynette Okay, so a demo. What’s the difference between a demo and the actual game?
Kaede: Well, the demo version, well, the first level is somewhat different from the final version, and it has DOS-style music, unlike the final version, kind strange to know they did that.
Dr. Gwynette So is the demo version easier to find than the full version?
Kaede: No, I think the full version is easier to find.
Dr. Gwynette But you prefer the demo version of Powerslave?
Kaede: Yeah. I think I have something in my Google Drive, a bunch of DOS games I shared with Patrick, right?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah, you did share a bunch.
Kaede: I’m going to share my Google Drive thing with everyone, whoever listens to this.
Zephyr Blaze: Our messenger history, you were telling me about it.
Kaede: And I think there are some mods for MS-DOS games. I’m not entirely sure. There’s Barneystein.
Zephyr Blaze: Barneystein?
Kaede: Yeah.
Zephyr Blaze: Like Barney the dinosaur?
Kaede: Yeah. You play Wolfenstein, and the enemies are Barney instead of Nazis. Wolfenstein, it’s basically an anti-Nazi game. If anybody remembers Wolfenstein, it’s a first-person shooter.
Dr. Gwynette And was that MS-DOS?
Kaede: Yes, it was.
Dr. Gwynette How was it an anti-Nazi game?
Kaede: The enemies were Nazis, and you’d shoot them down.
Dr. Gwynette And that was pretty popular?
Kaede: Yeah, I think it was, and there was also tons of other MS-DOS games, even some point and click ones. One of my favorites is Plague of the Moon, where you play as this witch. And there’s also Time Paradox where you stop Morgana le Faye as a time traveler woman named Kay. Time Paradox is kind of strange to me, but it’s still fun because you time travel to the age of dinosaurs and meet caveman.
Dr. Gwynette Wow.
Kaede: You even go to the Middle Ages to stop Morgana le Faye and waken Merlin the wizard.
Dr. Gwynette Wow, that sounds really imaginative, very creative. Time Paradox?
Kaede: Yeah, it’s a little strange to me, but I still like it, and the characters have English accents. “If I do that, that will stir up a hornet’s nest.” They have British accents.
Dr. Gwynette So Zephyr Blades, tell us about when you were first born as a gamer. What were you playing?
Zephyr Blaze: The first game I played was the Super Mario All-Stars on SNES, and it was on my sister’s SNES. That was my formal introduction to games.
Dr. Gwynette Okay, so that’s on Super Nintendo?
Zephyr Blaze: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Gwynette Was that late nineties?
Zephyr Blaze: I think so, early nineties, ’93.
Dr. Gwynette ’93, okay. Did either of you guys ever play the Atari 2600?
Kaede: Nope.
Zephyr Blaze: That was before my time.
Dr. Gwynette Have you heard a lot about it?
Kaede: I heard about this game called ET, and it was considered the worst game in the world.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, God.
Dr. Gwynette Oh, sorry?
Kaede: Yeah.
Zephyr Blaze: I think I know what you’re talking about.
Dr. Gwynette I never played that game, but that set, the 2600, it kind of ruled for five or six years there. It was insanely popular, and it was popular because of the games. Really, it was just a joystick, pretty much. They had so many great games, and when Pac-Man came out for Atari, it was like uniting the clans where you had these arcade games that would only be in the arcade-
Kaede: Oh, I remember Pac-Man.
Dr. Gwynette They could migrate over to the Atari 2600. Asteroids is one of the first, and Frogger, and then when Pac-Man came over-
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, I just remembered. I had Asteroids on MS-DOS too.
Dr. Gwynette Did you really?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah.
Dr. Gwynette Oh, tell us about how that experience was. Was the music like this? (singing.)
Zephyr Blaze: That sounds more like Jaws.
Dr. Gwynette It’d just be like (singing.)
Zephyr Blaze: It’s been a long time, but I think it sounded like that.
Dr. Gwynette And then it’d be like [inaudible 00:16:25].
Zephyr Blaze: And you were in a triangular spaceship shooting asteroids.
Dr. Gwynette And don’t start moving the ship, because if you start moving, it was so hard to stop. It would go this way, and then it’d come back on the screen this way, so it’d go [inaudible 00:16:41]. You were headed [inaudible 00:16:43].
Kaede: That’s annoying.
Dr. Gwynette Yeah, but that’s how it was.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh my goodness, yes.
Dr. Gwynette You remember?
Zephyr Blaze: Yeah. That killed me a lot.
Kaede: I don’t think I’ve played Asteroids before.
Zephyr Blaze: And the ship looked more like a paper airplane than a spaceship.
Dr. Gwynette So on the Atari, the score on Asteroids only went to 99,999. Maybe it was a hundred-thousand, or maybe it went to a million. So there used to be this thing called flipping, meaning you flip the game from 999,999 to zero, and then you start over. [inaudible 00:17:17]. So if someone was about to flip the game, let’s say I was playing, a couple of my friends were there, and they’d be like, “Hey, go out in the neighborhood and go tell everyone that I’m about to flip Asteroids,” because it was a major news event. So I’d be playing, because I’m on my-
Kaede: I didn’t know that.
Dr. Gwynette You’re on your last life. You’re trying to flip it, and then five or six other guys are coming in. Now they’re watching, and you’re trying to flip it. You’re like, “Oh my gosh.” And then if you flipped it, you’re just like, “Yes.” It was really, really rare because you only get three lives. Maybe, I can’t remember-
Kaede: How do you flip asteroids?
Dr. Gwynette Well, it just means the score goes from 999,000 to a million, and then once it hits a million, instead of going to one zero zero zero zero, it would go to zero, and then you’d start counting again.
Zephyr Blaze: It does that automatically?
Dr. Gwynette Yeah, we’d take three or four hours to flip it. It was a really big deal because I can’t remember if you would get an extra life.
Kaede: I never heard of somebody flipping a game.
Dr. Gwynette And usually, there’d be a spaceship that would go by in Asteroids, so you’re trying to fend off the asteroids, but then also you’re trying to hit this thing for bonuses. It was pretty hectic. Did you guys ever play Donkey Kong?
Kaede: I remember Donkey Kong, but we’re on MS-DOS.
Dr. Gwynette Oh, okay.
Kaede: We got off topic there.
Dr. Gwynette Sorry.
Kaede: And another MS-DOS game? Well, there are some Mario games for MS-DOS like Mario’s Time Machine, and Mario teaches typing.
Zephyr Blaze: Is that the one with the big Mario head?
Kaede: Yeah.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh my gosh.
Kaede: And Mario teaches typing. It’s been a popular YouTube poop source.
Dr. Gwynette What’s YouTube poop?
Kaede: Well, it’s a genre that’s unique on YouTube where the videos are so messed up, it’s funny. It gets so random and screwy. Oh, I made some of my own.
Zephyr Blaze: Basically, you [inaudible 00:19:01] and add some funny audio.
Dr. Gwynette Okay.
Zephyr Blaze: That sound about right?
Kaede: Something like that, yeah, and you mix up the sources and stuff. Back to MS-DOS, well, MS-DOS games had so many games, and some of them were kind of crappy, not just the text-based ones.
Zephyr Blaze: Well, they were old games. You can’t expect something too spectacular from back then.
Kaede: I know, but Blood was ahead of its time. For an old DOS game, it’s so detailed, but some of the details are really wrong. You can actually get yourself killed by shutting a door on yourself and squishing yourself to death.
Dr. Gwynette Somebody wrote the code for that. If somebody comes too close, they’ll squish themselves.
Kaede: No, no, no, no. It’s for the door, and they squish themselves to death with the door. It’s just so weird.
Dr. Gwynette It is weird.
Zephyr Blaze: My Lord.
Kaede: People don’t actually do that in real life, as funny as it sounds, but it’s actually only in Blood, which is just screwed up. And also, there are some educational MS-DOS games, like 3D Dinosaur Adventure. That, I really remember. It’s pretty educational, and it had good music too. And also, Knowledge Adventure not only created 3D Dinosaur Adventure; they made 3D Body Adventure. They made Speed Adventure, Space Adventure, et cetera. Knowledge Adventure had some good music, even though the games were specifically for kids. I wish I could compose music MS-DOS style, but I suck at doing music.
Dr. Gwynette So music’s not your thing in terms of programming and recording?
Kaede: Right. I suck at writing music. I have no musical talent.
Dr. Gwynette But you are a visual artist.
Kaede: Yes, I am. I haven’t drawn in a while, but I need to get back into drawing, and I also love playing video games, even MS-DOS games.
Dr. Gwynette How many hours a day do you play video games?
Kaede: I don’t know, most of my day. I know it’s not healthy, but it’s better than nothing, better than moping around in depression. If you’re going to play MS-DOS games, get D-Fend Reloaded. It’s worth it, and watch my video on how to use D-Fend Reloaded so you can learn how to use it.
Dr. Gwynette You want to tell the people what your YouTube handle is?
Kaede: My YouTube is K-E-D-E, space, E-N-N-E-A-D.
Dr. Gwynette K-A-E-D-E, right?
Kaede: Yeah. E-N-N-E-A-D.
Dr. Gwynette Were there certain big companies that were cranking out MS-DOS games?
Kaede: Well, I know there was Knowledge Adventure, and then that’s all I could think of. Knowledge Adventure did 3D Dinosaur Adventure, and then they did 3D Body Adventure, Undersea Adventure for MS-DOS. That’s all I can think of in terms of MS-DOS companies.
Dr. Gwynette Kaede, earlier you mentioned Duke Nukem.
Kaede: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Gwynette You played that a little?
Kaede: I just played Duke Nukem a tiny bit. I played the platform version, and I briefly played the first-person shooter version.
Dr. Gwynette What’d you think?
Kaede: Well, I don’t know. It’s Still good. I haven’t played enough of it yet.
Dr. Gwynette It’s a pretty fun game.
Kaede: Powerslave is closest to my heart.
Dr. Gwynette That’s your favorite.
Kaede: Yeah.
Dr. Gwynette What is it about older games, especially MS-DOS games, that makes you prefer them?
Kaede: Well, the music. It’s beautiful. It can be pretty, and the graphics make me feel nostalgic. And that’s what I was playing when I was younger.
Zephyr Blaze: So nostalgia is a big factor here?
Kaede: Yes, it is.
Zephyr Blaze: I can see that.
Kaede: Emulators are great for nostalgic people like me.
Dr. Gwynette Do you guys like other old stuff, like old clothes or old movies?
Kaede: Well, sometimes, but we still have to stay on MS-DOS. One of my favorite old movies was Matilda.
Zephyr Blaze: I’ve never heard of Matilda.
Kaede: It’s an old movie, but it’s a good movie. It’s an oldie but a goodie, like I Love Lucy is.
Zephyr Blaze: I know I Love Lucy.
Kaede: I Love Lucy can be really funny, especially the chocolate factory episode where the wives and the husbands switch jobs. That one was hilarious. Anyway, back to MS-DOS games. Get D-Fend Reloaded. Check out some MS-DOS games. Check them out on My Abandonware and other sites where you can download MS-DOS games, and enjoy them if you want to.
Dr. Gwynette Are they available for Mac as well?
Kaede: I think so, but look up D-Fend Reloaded and check it out. It’s worth getting if you want to play MS-DOS games. You just drag the applications over to D-Fend Reloaded, and then-
Zephyr Blaze: Defend is not on Mac, but alternatives.
Kaede: That’s understandable, but if you have a Windows computer, get D-Fend Reloaded if you want to play MS-DOS games. You can just drag the applications onto D-Fend Reloaded, and they’ll install it.
Zephyr Blaze: It’s saying the best Mac alternative is RetroArch, which is both free and open source.
Kaede: I haven’t tried much of RetroArch on my phone. I mainly used RetroArch for Game Boy games and DS games, but it didn’t work out for me.
Zephyr Blaze: What do you mean?
Kaede: It was giving me a hard time on my phone.
Zephyr Blaze: Oh, was it like the lagging or something?
Kaede: Something like that, and I didn’t know how to put cheats on. Anyway, well, this has been the podcast. Thank you for listening, everyone. If anybody wants to play MS-DOS games, check out D-Fend Reloaded. Download some games for MS-DOS, and enjoy the nostalgia.
Dr. Gwynette Thanks, Kaede. Thanks, Zephyr Blaze.
Kaede: So this is the podcast.
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jsmcgraw2023-05-19T00:42:21-04:00May 18th, 2023|
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