7 Shareware Games I Adored as a Kid
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- Опубліковано 24 лип 2024
- SHAREWARE heck yeah! If you had a PC in 80s, 90s and early 2000s you probably played your share....of shareware. Today I will show off 7 strange shareware games I played when I was a child. Why did I play some of these? I'm not sure...I guess I was bored.
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:39 - Zombie Castle(1994)
3:01 - Skunny: Back To The Forest(1993)
4:18 - Exile: Escape From the Pit(1996)
5:56 - SPEEDY FRICKIN' EGGBERT(1998)
8:19 - Comet Busters!(1994)
9:33 - Bad Toys 3D(1994)
11:00 - Skyroads(1993)
12:34 - Ending
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Legend has it comet busters contributed to any anger issues your little brother developed.
It builds character! ;)
Ooh. Skyroads. That one is so addicting and rage creating game. Loved it as kid. Man those later levels are absolutely insanely difficult.
You should check out a game called Boson X, it's extremely similar
I guess I played it too much. At the start of every track in this video I immediately recognized the level and next jumps. Ant it’s been at least 20 years since I played it…
We used to call shareware "Gas Station Games" in the Netherlands because if you walked into a gas station, you would often find a plastic basket full of mystery floppy disks often with generic titles like "games collection #763". You paid one or two bucks and then went home to see if you had the "jackpot" or had wasted your money. Most of the times the latter was the case.
I can vagely remember that bookstores had those too.
WOW, I have been racking my brain for YEARS trying to remember a top-down view game I played back in the late 90's. Exile is what its called!! Now I know! Thanks for making this video!!!
Glad I could help you find it again!
I had Exile 2 on a CD and played it a lot but never got far... l remember walking into a city of spiders, but when I talked to one I realized they weren't hostile and I even did a task for them. Good times.
Exile 1&2 were awesome but hard as a kid!
Blades of Exile, I think the 4th in the series, remains in my top 10 games of all time. Massively recommend playing it :)
For its time those games were incredible
There's such a specific aesthetic about these games that is simultaneously nostalgic and unsettling.
Agreed! It makes them super appealing to me.
I introduced my 8 year old daughter to Skyroads last year. We played it a lot on my old Pentium 2 system (running MS-DOS and Win 98). She enjoyed it and I love how she will ask to play modern stuff (mostly Minecraft and some Nintendo Switch stuff) and retro games (many of those on PC). She also enjoys Worms and some classic Win 3.1 stuff (Skifree, Hangman, Rodent's Revenge, and so on). Thanks for the cool video! I enjoyed seeing some stuff that was new for me.
That is so wholesome thanks for sharing! Its neat to see these old games being enjoyed and creating memories for the new generation as well.
Bumpy's revenge, Commander Keen 2, and Warcraft 1 & 2 are all greatly appreciated by my kids
One of the best hidden gems of the shareware era was Traffic Department 2192, from Epic Megagames. Still love the story, wish they would remake or re-release it.
That one was awesome. I actually got the full version at some point and it did not disappoint
This is some of the easiest listening of all the UA-cam channels. Great enunciation, demeanor and editing work! Instant sub!
Such a nice thing to say, thank you!
Same. I subbed within 15 seconds. The voice is velvet, and the video is excellent. On youtube this is at the top, this channel will have a million subs.
@@eskonanu I dunno about that, but thank you for the kind words!
Exile: Escape from the pit is such a good game! It's one of the few shareware games I had that I actually managed to convince my parents to buy the full version of. If I remember right, Spiderweb software sent us the registration unlock code to enter and it turned the shareware version into the full version so the shareware version does actually contain the full game, it's just blocked out. I still have my registered version backed up and on my 486. I'm sure I probably also have a print out of the registration floating around somewhere as well.
Thanks for the nostalgia trip!
Yeah I actually didn't play the full version until much later, but I remember all you needed was a code and it unlocked the full game. Unlike many of the shareware games back then I feel like you really got a bang for your buck with Exile. That game could EASILY be played for many hours.
Loved the whole Exile series back then. They're all freeware now on Spiderweb's site, but you'll need some emulation to get them running now. Vogel has created remakes of them all, and is even re-remaking them again lately.
yep Exile: Escape from the pit is the only game i played from the list. (the shareware version was actually the full game) i found out (using the internet at the local libry back then) you could use a windows hex edit tool by changing 4 bytes it would function as the full version...
Bad Toys's backstory sounds a bit like the plot to "Small Soldiers"
Notable Shareware games I played for ages:
-Cyberdogs and the sequel, C-Dogs. The latter has a modern Windows port and mission editors.
-Krypton Egg, the best Arkanoid clone ever.
-Mystic Towers, a great euro-style isometric adventure title.
-Commander Keen, in particular Episode IV.
-Skunny Kart. Yes, really.
-Heartlight. It's a Boulderdash clone, but a good one.
-ZZT. With the editor and ability to download other peoples' levels, you never had to buy the full version. Honestly you could do a full video series on just ZZT and its spiritual sequel, Megazeux.
Mystic Towers is an Apogee game barely anyone ever talks about but I loved that game.
@@DOSStorm I could tell from my first viewing that you were a fellow of bespoke taste. High five, right through the internet.
Cyberdogs was awesome. I don't know how many hours me and my little brother played playing co-op in that game. Insanely addictive and fast paced.
@@IAMDonk It was just FUN, y'know?
Jones, Ice, or Warbaby?
@@ienjoypaste Ice I think. I was the eldest brother so I always had first choice.
Nice. I also played lots of shareware games. One of them was Alien Carnage (aka Halloween Harry). The first episode was free so I kept playing it over and over again for some reason.
I loved that game! We had the shareware version too. "doo-doo-DUN do DUN!" I always thought it was funny that the ladies you rescued did the knock-kneed googoo eyed look, while the men just waved their arms and smiled.
That is human nature. When a new experience gives us satisfaction, we try to repeat it. That is why we must be disciplined with our imagination. It is easily trapped and deceived.
I wish that you would've mentioned my personal favorite shareware game - Escape Velocity by Ambrosia Software (if I remember correctly). It's a space trading/exploration/RPG kind of game. The shareware aspect was the best, in my opinion, since you had access to the entire game, but you only had 30 days of use before "Captain Hector", who flew around the galaxy at random, would target you and attack you. This game also introduced me to the idea of player mods for the game (or "plugins" as the game called them). They ended up making two sequels - Escape Velocity: Override and Escape Velocity: Nova.
Today, there's an amazing freeware game based on it called Endless Sky, complete with an active online community of people making "plugins" for the game.
I adore finding channels like this. This is the content I love, its done right, with care and great quality. I instantly sub'd.
My dad bought us an IBM PS/2 running Windows 3.1. This definitely scratched the nostalgia itch. Played the hell out of Skyroads and Comet Busters
In no specific order, and not having seen your other videos:
Zone 66
Xargon
Jill of the Jungle
Wacky Wheels
Commander Keen
Jazz Jackrabbit
Nightmare 3D
Fun video, I played a lot of shareware in the day ago but I didn't know any of these games! Also it's cool how your house has a vaporwave aesthetic even to this day and that you still have a land line
I lied. I rember comet game
Skyroads is the only one I've heard of, and also happens to be the only one I played. Really fun game.
Seeing and hearing Skunny gave me the strangest PTSD flashback.
As a child in early-to-mid 90-s Hungary, most software we could get our hands on were either shareware or pirate copies. To this day "free software for free people" is a pretty widespread and accepted mantra here.
Back in those days, Apogee and Epic Megagames reigned supreme. There were a lot of classics that I still remember fondly:
- various Commander Keen titles, Jazz Jackrabbit, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventures and Duke Nukum/Nukem for standard platformers
- Jill to the Jungle (epic sound effects), Crystal Caves and Secret Agent for a more puzzle-slanted platformer experience
- Wacky Wheels for a zoo animal themed Mario Kart clone, whose claim to fame were the hedgehog pickups you could use in lieu of Koopa shells. The best part was that they all just lived their lives until you picked them up. Some were exercising, some were reading a paper, others were sitting on a toilet.
- Death Race, a Micromachines clone where you could ram, shoot and explode not just your enemies, but also some unlucky spectators. You could also sabotage one of your enemies, buy a flame-spewing jet engine and/or a landmine-layer for a single race.
Not death rally? Remedys first game
@@lassikinnunen Ah, right. Got the name wrong.
My sister and I played Hugo’s House of Horror and Hugo’s Mansion constantly after getting shareware disks at the dollar store.
I’ve been looking for the name of the game I played in my middle school computer class for many many years. Skyroads! Thank you!
Glad I could help you find it again!
I used to love this old game called Megatron, which was a very simplistic maze game. You pilot one of two mechs, which were based on the Vulture and Mad Cat from Battletech (surprised they didn't get sued actually) but you really only have two attacks, both of which do the same damage. The real draw was that you could dial in to a friend's modem and play against each other, which in the early 90's was HUGE. The only other way to play multiplayer back then was to sit in front of the same TV. But with this, you had your OWN view. You couldn't cheat by looking at your friend's view to see where he was on the map.
I admit im old but not too old, lol, most games i played were from the 2000s in a Windows XP, but still I could LITERALLY write a book on this subject. Most of them i remember i had obtained it in myplaycity from the wayback machine and other ones from old CDs that i had stored in cardboard boxes full of dust, lol, and other ones... you really had to search it if you want to obtain it. I hope someone finds the game they were searching for or reminds its old good times :)
This are the ones that right now come to my head:
-Need For Extreme 3d and its sequel Arcade Race Crash (or also know as Mad Race)
-Agent Chewer and Funny Chewer
-Ace Speeder!
-Action Ball 2
-Tiny Cars 2
-Power Rangers Ninja Storm (surprisingly this was made by THQ but no one seems to remember it). After playing it recently it really feels like it was a shareware game.
-Cake Shop
-Jewel Island (the one released in 2008 or so, not the modern android game).
-Mexican Motor Mafia (this is really a hidden gem, almost a masterpiece i would say).
-Air Strike 3d (also know as Air Assault 3d, though i think they were multiple entries, i dont know).
-Escape Rosecliff Island
-Treasures Of The Ancient Cavern
-I know this may dont count but... im forced to mention it to finish this nostalgic trip: Stunts.
I could mention some others like Farm Frenzy, Diner Dash, Fishdom or Treasures of Montezuma, but those are relatively well know for the ones who lived that era, or the most obscure Popcap games like Water Bugs or Pizza Frenzy. And im sorry if i cant explain or give my thoughs in every game but i would be here forever. Some few ones like Power Rangers Ninja Storm were pretty bad, but still i have fun playing them and give me good memories despite all, but other ones like Action Ball 2 or Mexican Motor Mafia are still genuinely great games, some of the best casual/shareware games i played and they genuinely reach Popcap levels of quality imo.
Thanks for making the video btw!!!
There was one game alongside the Exile series that I loved so much that I actually bought the physical disk. And that was Operation: Inner Space by Software Dynamics. Basically the idea is that your computer is being taken over and you have to go in and save it in a little ship. All the levels are built out of your computer's file structure too. I remember it being loads of fun.
And the weirdly sultry AI voice that would spout semi-helpful things and make suggestive comments when docking! Never thought that about it when I was younger of course, but it clearly has stuck in there.
Woah, seeing that rock man game in the beginning unlocked a hidden memory. I remember playing all these random crappy games when I was a kid. One I remember playing for a bit; you were this 3D purple ball man going around solving the room puzzle where you have to get a laser beam from one side to the other.
man this takes me back. i played half of these and not all were good but they kept me busy.
I was a teenager by the time the 90s rolled in, and got my first dos computer in 1993. I remember playing tons of crap that I deleted quickly(hard drive space was expensive then), where ID and Agogee/3d Realms were the main ones putting out decent shareware in the early to mid 90s. I did run across Skyroads on some random bbs in 1994, and searched for years to find it again. I finally saw it on an Ancient Dos Games episode probably a decade ago now and had some good memories of satying up until 3am playing it on weekends. It seems far easier now than it did back in 94 though.
Back when I was growing up, I was playing games on an Apple IIe and then eventually a Mac. My friends and I had boatloads of games, although I think most of them were pirated copies vs. actual shareware. We didn't know any better. Although, I think my favorite game was on the Mac, and it was Scarab of Ra. A sort of maze/first person game that was somewhat challenging on later levels.
Thanks to finding this video, I think I have finally found one of the shareware games I had on a compilation CD of shareware games in the late 90s! I had been searching for the game for years with no luck finding it. I think the game I played and liked playing at the time was Exile: Escape from the Pit looking at the footage of it. What I vaguely remembered was a game with a medieval/fantasy setting, controlling multiple characters, getting food like bread and hearing a crunch sound when it was eaten, outdoor grassy area with trees, fighting monsters like Goblins, a town or village and a dungeon/castle like area.
I liked Speedy Eggbert and played it a lot as a kid, especially when I got the full version and I liked making my own levels. A few of my favourite shareware games I had on the compilation CD that I remember were:
1. Demonstar (eGames)
2. 3-D Frog Man
3. DX-Ball 2. Basically an Arkanoid clone with tracker music and you could create your own levels.
4. Nonsense Madness Trilogy - A very weird game
5. Jumping Toon! (I think that what it was called as I can't find it) It was a French game that was top down. You controlled a character that could jump. You had to jump between rock platforms in order to progress forward. If you missed, you fell into the blackness and lost a life. Some rocks rotated or moved side to side and some were spaced further apart. I could never get that far in it.
6. Rats! A game were rats run around a maze and multiply and you have to place poisons and bombs on the maze to kill all the rats as fast as possible.
I didn't mention this in the video, but the version of Exile I first played was on the "Galaxy of Games Blue" CD. It was an early version with vastly different sprites and colors to the point I thought it was a different game for the longest time.
@@DOSStorm Maybe that is the version of Exile I played. I thought the graphics I thought I remembered, looked a little different from what I have seen from looking at videos of Exile playthroughs.
Pinball fantasies was one of my favorites (it had surprisingly decent sound from the PC speaker). Action Supercross was also fun to play in turns. Slicks'n'slide was one of those games that had a simultaneous multiplayer mode. There were so many good new games every year, and so much innovation.
Woah! Speedy Eggbert.. I remember installing it from an old pc-gamer cd and having a blast.
Jetpak, Lode Runner 95 and Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris kept me coming back for more.
Great video, subscribed! I'd love to listen to more videos where you wax nostalgic about whatever Shareware games interest you.
Wow, Zombie Castle clearly lifts a bunch of graphics from Microsoft's Windows 3.1 port of Chip's Challenge. Even the score at the top has the same LED display. I wonder if it's using a hacked version of Chip's Challenge's engine?
Thank you so much for the sub. This was a fun video to make and I'm glad it did so well! I will definitely be doing more stuff like this in the future.
Avernum is still being talked about on YT! I only vaguely remember that name from way back! It is so neat that the dev is still doing his thing and people still talk about the games!! That literally could have been me this whole time...what a mindblow!!
Excelsior and Castle of the winds were two of my fave shareware games, played them endlessly.
awesome content dude!
I loved Exile. I don't know which one I had, but I was obsessed with a feature where you could get bios for every creature you encountered. I would try to gather them all. I loved reading about the monsters.
This brings me back . I got 100+ kids games on a cd , it had a launcher but had tons of other games on it in folders , that didn't work in windows properly. I think the game that I played the most was star hammer . I put a fair amount of time into sky roads .
When I was 13 my middle school upgraded from Apple IIgs systems to Windows 3.1, and the computer lab had a big book filled with disks full of shareware, including the very light roguelite Castle of the Winds, which I liked so much I copied to another disk and took home to install on my own computer. To this day I come back to it every few years and see how far I can get before I get bored of it.
Damn, Chip's Challenge got EDGY. Yeesh, I definitely remember this era of shareware gaming and it was *rough*. Thank god emulation came along to dredge budget PC gaming out of this sludge in the mid 90s.
Chip's Challenge ROCKED! There hasn't been anything like it before or after.
Aside from Skyroads, shareware games I liked as a kid was Monster Bash, Halloween Harry, Duke Nukem, Doom (oddly I didn't enjoy it as much as most), and Rise of the Triad (although I played the full game not the shareware).
I really loved Rise of the Triad. It pioneered so many mechanics into FPS/games for the first time (jumping, 3 Dimensional navigation, aiming up and down, fake dead enemies, dynamic lighting, multiplayer voice, popular multiplayer game modes such as capture the flag, rocket jumping, dynamic lighting, traps, active hazards, breaking glass, gibs as separate objects, and more.
I never liked Rott that much. It had some nice things, like killer soundtrack and some fun weapons. But I couldn't stand the horrible level design and those jumping plates and only 90 degree angles.
I have a shareware CD that I got from my late uncle many years ago. It had some real stinkers like Skunny games, but it also had some fantastic gems like Catacomb 3D Abyss, Ken's Labyrinth, Skyroads, and Dungeons of the Unforgiven. I bought the Catacomb 3D Trilogy on floppy disk.
Bad Toys 3D was a classic. I also played a lot of Dirt Bike 3D from that "300 Arcade Games" shovelware disc. It was the only 3D motocross game my PC could handle. Also, it was unintentionally hilarious.
My favorite shareware game was Tank Blaster (by Axel Lauer AFAIR).
It was also a popular choice for turn based multiplayer on one PC for us.
Holy crap, now that was a nostalgia trip! I remember playing the crap out of shareware versions of Exile 3, Skyroads and Planet Blupi (the strategy/puzzle one rather than the platformer), and absolutely loving it.
Fun fact, I actually managed to fully finish Skyroads in 2020. The game that mercilessly kicked my ass for almost 25 years was finally completed... (although the last two Druidia roads were plain torture to beat)
Congrats! One of these days I need to play through it 100%, and I was thinking of live streaming it at some point to force myself to do so. Did you ever try the Xmas version? The difficulty on that version is absolutely insane.
@@DOSStorm Oh I only played the first few roads - I definitely don't have the patience to torture myself with even more difficult Skyroads in the next few years hahah
I started on a Tandy 1000HX until I was about 6, then Windows 95 was more affordable and the Internet came to my rural community in the mid 90's. Today I custom watercool modern hardware and overclock, but have a windows 98 rig at the ready to dive back into DOS to play a wide range of DOS and early 2000's games and programs. I remember a few of these very well. Thanks for the nostalgia:)
I'm glad you talked about Jeff Vogel. His games are best on ipad i find.
I looked through the chapters and assumed you wouldn't have anything I recognized. But I remember Skunny! I don't think I ever got it back in the day, but my grandpa's computer had it.
And I'm seeing some vaguely familiar stuff in Bad Toys 3D--particularly the smiley enemy and the story. I never got into FPSes, so maybe I just launched it. The art style seems so neat to me today that it seems weird I'd forget about it, so I'm not 100% sure.
Never heard of Skyroads, BTW.
I played Skunny and Skyroads back in the day! Still have great memorys of skyroads
Loved me some Solar Winds. You flew a space ship around the system doing missions, then went to an alien system next door to spy. Both were enclosed in an energy field to have the humans fight hostile aliens. That's the just of the story. Problem was a glitch would activate and destroy your ship randomly while maneuvering sometimes.
For a classic shareware game, check out Scorched Earth. It's an artillery game, it's modern equivalent would be Worms. You are a tank trying to destroy all the other tanks. Select your ammo and shoot. The best was selecting Nuke, firing and have it take a full minute to render the explosion that keeps getting larger and larger until it takes up 3/4 of the screen. Also terrain destruction. Each pixel would be affected by gravity. Eventually.
I remember Comet Busters from one of those $2.99 compilation CD's in a big bin at the Microcenter checkout line around 1997 or so.
I grew up on Commander Keen, and a whole slew of Apogee titles like Crystal Caves and Secret Agent on PC along with the 2D Duke Nukem games
You played Skunny too? So did I!
I remember loads of these games on a disk called "Game Empire" that I found at Walmart years ago. My faves were Jill of the Jungle, Hugo's House of Horrors, and Ken's Labyrinth. There was also a game called VGMiner where you are mining for gold in a western town - that's what it seemed like on the surface. However, as I got into the game, I found out that my character was to woo the madam of a brothel - you even used some of your earnings to buy condoms to do her. The actual goal of the game was to marry the madam - you had to get $20,000 and a diamond ring. I didn't know that at first - imagine my surprise when I did.
I remember playing Tunnels of Underworld, and Vantage Master as a kid.
There was also a game where you had to eradicate rats with various weapons in a top down action strategy game before they overran your garden. It had some... interesting freeware sounds for when the rats were reproducing with eachother...
I had a shareware game demo, called "M&M's - The Lost Formulas". The player drives a car with one of the M&M's characters, there's math problems beside the road and the player can drive trough the wooden box which has the correct answer on it, the incorrect one has steel in it what crashes the car which means -1 life and restart from the last checkpoint. I don't remember the game fully, because it got abandoned and it got lost/buried on our computer.
There's a DOS game I used to play alongside Skyroads but nobody will be able to tell what it is and it's probably lost to time. It was a puzzle game on a grid, you moved your character to push blocks around and: balloons would fly upwards, rocks would fall down, and bombs would explode. Your path could get blocked or you could blow up if you took the wrong moves. I downloaded it from a BBS or possibly got it from a shareware disk. Sometimes I wonder how many DOS-era shareware games are lost forever. I know a couple more like this!
r/tipofmyjoystick is a good place to go if you're trying to rediscover an old game
This video and these comments are making me SOOOOO nostalgic, I used to get shovelware compilations from Kmart all the time during
my early teen years. I remember eGames CD's made my computer act weird as well (and it was a Packard Bell to begin with, oof)
I remember finding bad toys on a pc at school and we all used to have Skyroads on floppy disk at school too. That, dangerous Dave, the PC version of Mario too
I remember playing Skyroads. It was the only game installed on the class computer and during end of day play time we would all see how far we could get.
I played Comet Busters! The graphics were indeed really good and the game impressed me as a kid with how smooth it was.
The Hugo adventure game series was my shareware gem. I also played a lot of God of Thunder.
I played this strange shareware fantasy game that I don’t remember the name of. I remember that most of the game the player was a floating computer monitor and the companion, maybe a princess, would chide the player occasionally saying something like how you’ll remain a monitor because you don’t believe
Love playin the ol games on DOSBox
I loved Shareware and Demo Discs back then, and I also liked those large compilation discs full of obscure games.
Speaking of Spyware, I remember one of the discs included the first chapter from Blake Stone, and a computer virus too, yay! lol.
Wild!
i was just playing Avernum 2 and Avernum 6 last week
Such good games even in 2024
I was on the mac side in the 90's, and we had very little in the way of games released (no Doom yet, even) so I got a ton of free and shareware from AOL's games tab, and I even made a few of my own. Of course in those days all you needed was RegEdit and a paint program and you could sprite swap without writing or editing a single line of code, That gauntlet style game, we had a version of that too that many people made versions or fan edits of, though ours was limited to one screen at a time. Mine features the X Men, and the game I edited had three methods of attack, a ranged blast, a 3 square arc, and teleportation, so Cyclops Wolverine and Nightcrawler fit perfectly. Other games I actually made were all in Hypercard, a simple visual scripting language for Mac that allowed basic animation and click navigation, so I hand drew a version of Doom that was basically a point and click pop up book, but for 12 I think it was pretty cool. The games I played the most were Space Junkie, which was Galaga but with aliens who looked like the Toy Story ones, and Zone Raiders, a driving game set in the post apocalypse (playable on abandonware!), and thank god we did at least have Wolf 3D. I bought a bunch of games people made though, mostly 2D platformers that resemble pixel art metroidvanias now, but were simpler level based games, but it felt great to mail five or ten bucks to someone, knowing they made the game, and then to get a floppy disc back with the full version. My favorite was a 2D version of Doom someone made (everyone wanted it, it was a huge gap til it was ported and so we made do.)
Sky roads freaking rocked. I played the crap out of that game.
SKY ROADS! I can't believe i totally forgot about Sky Roads! I used to LOVE that game.
I remember the Asteroids clone I had as a kid was called "Hemorrhoids", and I did not understand how strange that was at the time. I also remember playing a demo of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (the first Warcraft game) on one of those shareware discs. That was followed by convincing our parents to buy the full game, and the much more playable sequel, and then Starcraft which was advertised as "coming soon" on the back of the Warcraft 2 CD case.
That's a joke out of national lampoons vacation! Rusty asks his cousin if he has asteroids, and said cousin replies he doesn't but his dad does and sometimes can't even sit down because of them
Good video idea. I like how unusual the gameplay is compared to today's sensibilities
From your list, I remember only Skyroads. I think that the very last time I played it was around 1998. From the demo and shareware scene, I am certeain that I played everything from the beginning, up to some 2003 or something. Notable mentions are Jill of the Jungle, Jaz Jackrabbit, Shadow Warrior, Doom, Duke 3D, etc. Also, I remember lots of shareware tools.
The ones that spring to mind for me were Solar Winds: The Escape and Raptor: Call of the Shadows. I could not tell you the hours that my friend and I put into Raptor.
Never played these but I did play my fair share of demos and shareware back in the day. I remember Escape Velocity especially and it was also beloved by many others, so much so someone made an open source spiritual successor called Endless Sky. Very much recommend it😊
I first got online in the late 90's, and we were lucky enough to have cable internet. I downloaded demos and freeware, abandonware and, yes, shareware aplenty. Skyroads I never got far in, but I definitely still have fond memories of it, including the X-mas edition. Played a lot of the first episode of the first three Duke Nukem games.
Huge surprise for me.. the zombie castle ghost Sprite is one I used in a game i made in 2003, didn't know where it came from.
I really loved Jetpack Christmas Edition as a kid. Me and a friend used to play it a lot. And it had a level editor! Great times.
Ah, I had forgotten about Skyroads. What an amazing game!
I remember getting some shareware games off my AUNT of all people.
Haxxagon, Squarez, and X-Quest were notable faves.
I found Squarez mixed in with the game Jetpack a long time ago. Quite a good puzzle game!
For me, Jill of the Jungle Series, Clyde's Adventure, and Clyde's Revenge are some fun shareware titles I enjoyed. Also, the Champ Arcade series!
I definitely remember playing Comet Buster with all of its funky astroid types.
I remember Skunny, no idea where I encountered it but sure takes me back
that marble match game at the end unlocked a core memory...
I had the exact same 300 Arcade Games Shareware CD back around the year 2000 when I was around 5-6 years old.
Definally played Bad Toys 3D alot alongside late shareware games like Uz, 3D Space Mob, and a bunch more on my 233MMX Gateway 2000 PC back then
Also had Speedy Eggbert as part of the Galaxy of Arcade Classics CD from eGames. Even gotten the full version a few years later through the Entertainment Suite 2 bundle
I have a soft spot for simple adventure games, like the Hugo series and such.
I had and played the heck out of the shareware version of skunny kart - had no idea there were other skunny games
Skyroads is a part of my childhood too. Also an interesting fact about it is that the developers are the guys who later on created kazaa and skype.
I remember my dad bringing home an old Apple computer that he wanted to tinker with and it had Exile on it, I couldn’t understand it as a kid, but I may need to give it a swing again now. Sky Roads was also really fun, I had forgotten all about it until I saw the thumbnail!
I can’t remember all the names of the shareware games I played, but I do remember Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure and Duke Nukem back when he was a side scroller.
Zulu - a top down shooter in which you could switch vehicles and even run around without one. Don't remember much, but it was great!
Pretty much the only shareware I had in the 90's was from Magazine coverdisks, "PC Format" and such, usually in editions such as "Gold" or "Summer Special" etc. Don't know anyone(including myself) that bought an actual Shareware CD in the 90's (other than attached as a coverdisk to a magazine).
Games I remember/liked were Strife, Terminal Velocity, Duke Nukem 3D, Fatal Racing, Warcraft 1+2 (I think the shareware/demo of 2 had a level editor that worked in Windows 3.11fw, even though the main game ran in MS-DOS), Doom, Beneath a Steel Sky(Which I bought the full version of, I wanted to buy the 2-pack of BASS and Cannon Fodder, but couldn't find it, so got BASS on it's own) Abuse, Slipstream 5000, Need for Speed, NBA Live 95, Fuzzy's Space Minigolf(which I could never finish the demo), Flight of the Amazon Queen, Freddy Pharkas.
Heck yeah, Exile! Exile 3 was the first shareware game I actually got to register. I had to beg my parents to send off the form and money for it.
Every so often, I tell myself I'm going to go through the whole series. I have it, after all, and Geneforge as well. I start up the first game, get part-way into it, get distracted by life and forget to boot it up again... Come back a couple years later, telling myself I'm gonna go through the series, but I have no idea what I'm doing with my save or where I left off, so I have to start over again. Aaaaand the cycle repeats... ~_~
I never played Comet Busters, but I did play an Asteroids clone called WinRoids, which came with a couple midi files that were pretty good. I don't think it had options for appearance, but it did have a shield, and ripped voice clips of Sam Kinison screaming (He was a comedian known for screaming, one of his more famous roles was the movie "Back to School (1986)" with Rodney Dangerfield, where he played a history professor.) when you lost a life, and the Aliens "Game over, man! GAME OVER!" at the end of the game.
Zombie Castle kind of reminds me of "Castle of the Winds", which had a similar appearance but was a turn-based roguelike that I played the heck out of. Probably the first roguelike I ever played, so I was surprised by the layouts changing each time I died and started over.
My favorite shareware game was definitely Innerspace. Something about defending your own computer really vibed
I played that one too and it was a very interesting concept! I just looked it up and they are still trying to sell that game for like $25 or $35 for the version with the ship editor. Shame they don't just release it for free after all this time.
I played a heck of a lot of Doom back in the day, with a lot of custom .wads eating up time. Custom maps with just the Energizer bunny and Barney add-ons were favorites. Actually split the cost of registering the shareware of Doom with my brother and still have the floppies of it today, which I got a USB Floppy drive and DOSBox running to play the new SIGIL episode that Romero released.
The Duke Nukem 1 and 2 shareware, as well as Commander Keen, Jill of the Jungle, Scorched Earth, Raptor, One Must Fall 2097 and Xargon were in there too, to name a few. I had to dig thru lists of shareware to be reminded of some of those titles.
Epic and Apogee were killing it in the 90s. I never actually had the chance to play Doom as a kid but I did have Blake Stone and Duke Nukem!
The only one I recognized was that matching game at the very end and I do miss playing that! There was one we had that let you play for like 5 minutes then had a pop up suggesting that you owe them another .25 or something per step you took. Some kind of adventure or strategy game, I think. It kept a handy tally to let you kbow how much it tjought you owed the developer. I ran it up to thousands in teenage rebellion years. I never did find the fun part of the game.
I had that 300 games disc. The one with the clown eyes at the top. I'd completely forgotten that image until now.
I loved the Exile games so much as a kid, particularly Exile III. The overworld felt breathtakingly huge back then.
Honestly the exile III overworld… overworlds, really, are both still huge even by modern standards
Honestly the exile III overworld… overworlds, really, are both still huge even by modern standards
Comet Busters! I remember that game. It said right in the help file that it was based on "A*teroids", which was a confusing reference to baby me as I had not, at that time, ever actually seen or played Asteroids 😅
Skyroads is amazing. I was obsessed trying to finish those harder levels.
I still am to this day.
I vaguely remember Zombie Castle, we had the shareware on my first primary school computer system.
For my part I remember a Duke Nukem in Shareware with no effects, a Bomberman named DSTroy playable with 4 players simultaneously and a Dynamite Joe similar to the game in the intro.
Shareware game i spent countless hours playing past my bedtime was Tyrian. It was a top down flight game like 1942 but set in space.
Tyrian is an awesome game! If you have an Android phone there is actually a great free port for it on the play store.
Man, speedy eggbert that just awakened memories in me of battle painter, Little Fighters 2, Charlie the duck.
My favorite thing about Shareware were all of the passionate lectures that my loser teachers gave me about piracy when I was caught passing out shareware copies of Jazz Jackrabbit.