/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8043535]

Windows games that look like applications

[Anonymous No.8043552]

Man I remember that game, some good wasted time at school.

[Anonymous No.8043564]

Stars!

[Anonymous No.8043594]

good thread

[Anonymous No.8043625]

Space Trader, simplified Elite clone originally for Palm OS

[Anonymous No.8043647]

[Anonymous No.8043653]

I fucking love this style

[Anonymous No.8043662]

[Anonymous No.8043676]

Could have been done with system icons, if not for copyrights.

[Anonymous No.8043692]

Speaking of system icons… FLOPPY KILLER:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRqfsDyyvRM

[Anonymous No.8044651]

[Anonymous No.8044660]

>>8043535
There is nothing comfier than games that use the same OS interface. Also, original Steam.

[Anonymous No.8045034]

>>8044651
oh man tech class on the 486's. love TIM

[Anonymous No.8045061]

[Anonymous No.8045067]

>>8044660
I remember that interface. It told me in olive green that I couldn't play HL2 because I had no way to register from my home computer. Lovely.

[Anonymous No.8045073]

[Anonymous No.8045208]

>>8043535
Drug Wars

[Anonymous No.8045253]

Metal Marines had this neat feature where the missiles would launch from one window and fly over to the other window showing the target

[Anonymous No.8045358]

Here's a game that is an application.

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?

[Anonymous No.8045380]

[Anonymous No.8045465]

[Anonymous No.8045474]

[Anonymous No.8045916]

[Anonymous No.8047118]

[Anonymous No.8047130]

>>8043535
I had this on my monochrome Palm organizer

[Anonymous No.8047180]

[Anonymous No.8047238]

>>8043535
Drug Wars 2 was a way better version desu

[Anonymous No.8047285]

>>8045358
>>8043647
I used to work in the military department of a company who made simulators, both high and low fidelity ones. I worked on some software that looked very close to these. Helped setup battle scenarios, was quite fun

[Anonymous No.8047314]

>>8043535
Warpath. We played that over the Uni network.

[Anonymous No.8048361]

>>8045474

Similarly, there's Cliff Bleszinski's first game, Dare to Dream.

[Anonymous No.8048628]

>>8043535
The various ports of Spaceward Ho! also used the individual OS's look for it's windows and menu style (Original game developed for the Mac with DOS, Windows and Amiga Ports).

[Anonymous No.8048652]

>>8048628

[Anonymous No.8048840]

[Anonymous No.8048857]

[Anonymous No.8048875]

God this is kino.

[Anonymous No.8049321]

>>8043535
Frederik Pohl's Gateway

[Anonymous No.8049464]

>>8049321
Also the sequel, Gateway 2.

[Anonymous No.8049474]

>>8045474
If you have Uninvited, you need the other MacVentures.

[Anonymous No.8049481]

>>8049474

[Anonymous No.8049585]

>>8043594
I adore this aesthetic in PCs.

[Anonymous No.8049631]

High quality thread, makes me wonder if one day the next "indie hit" will be games made with this kind of aesthetic and design in mind. Jus like LSD Dream Emulator and Yume Nikki set the staple for the "walk inside a dream and see wacky shit" style.

[Anonymous No.8049689]

>>8049631

There have been a few recent indies that kinda skirt the line. World of Horror kind of has a similar vibe, since it's a bit inspired by old Mac games. Lots of windows within windows.

There's also an upcoming indie game called STONKS-9800, which is a stock market sim inspired by the PC-98. Aside from the occasional retro-styled anime girl, it mostly seems like various windows, charts, etc.


Some of Zachtronics' games also have that
"played through a computer UI" look too.

[Anonymous No.8049720]

>>8043535
tfw they had to con children into playing math games. so they named them
>drug wars
>mafia

[Anonymous No.8049732]

Anybody remember AOL Games. I always played the winged warrior games and the quest creator. The company that made them still exists and still sells the registered copies cheap as shit.

[Anonymous No.8049736]

>>8049689
Gonna look those up, thanks anon.

Also, there was a very weird one, that I played while messing around with Windows 93 ( yes you read the number right ), it was this small game called "quest" something, and you just clicked the start button and a RPG adventure would begin, but it was all automatic with no player input at all. I'm pretty sure it was just a small version, because there is a full site dedicate solely for that "game".

[Anonymous No.8049776]

>>8049732

Huh, it kinda reminds me of Star Wars: Yoda Stories and Indiana Jones & His Desktop Adventure.

[Anonymous No.8049815]

>>8049776
I played this longer than anyone should. Sad.

[Anonymous No.8049854]

>>8049732
Some pretty good games on it. Their Neverwinter Nights game (before Bioware's!) was fondly remembered.

[Anonymous No.8050242]

>>8043535
Another one I thought of was Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, which despite the name has nothing to do with LotR.

[Anonymous No.8050328]

>>8050242
niiiiice

[Anonymous No.8050414]

Good Christ, these games look boring as fuck. So glad I'm not a boomer.

[Anonymous No.8051227]

>>8050242
This looks ludo. Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.8051249]

>>8050242
best game ever

[Anonymous No.8051476]

>>8050414

[Anonymous No.8052368]

>>8048628
I have been trying to remember the name of this game for years. Cheers.

[Anonymous No.8054804]

>>8049736
sounds like you're describing "progress quest", but that's probably more recent than windows 93.

[Anonymous No.8055112]

>>8045073
I still think about my hunter-strangler sometimes
Bandyclef spec OP

[Anonymous No.8055589]

>>8049720
best way to incentivise learning is to give it real world application. Getting good at maths was worth it to be making mad stacks on the street hustlin ludes

[Anonymous No.8055610]

>>8043535
wall street raider was a pretty fun shareware game that looked a lot like this
its continued to get updates over the years, so looks a lot "flashier" nowadays, but its still pretty barebones

[Anonymous No.8055997]

Found this by chance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ClV92vQdhc
Quite good at double speed.

For the sake of completeness, there is also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCgDwtF5oLU

[Anonymous No.8056016]

>>8049631
I might try to make a game like that since for years I have been maintaining a shitty winapi software for living so I have experience

[Anonymous No.8056095]

Can any of you anons, remember an rpg game with an old win 3.1.1 layout, and you could find a gas mask and filters etc, if you were it you couldn't hear. They you had to find a friggin Yale key or some shit.

Wtf was its name

[Anonymous No.8056248]

[Anonymous No.8056267]

>>8049776
Tried this as a kid many times and I don't think I was ever able to complete a game.

[Anonymous No.8057982]

>>8043535
Rodents revenge

[Anonymous No.8059638]

>>8043564
I still remember my friend's stars2 registration code.. nicked it off of him once at a LAN party, and have been using it ever since.

haven't played a game of it since 2015, but always had lots of fun building terrible races and trying to beat the CPU.. for the first 100 turns anyway.

used to have a bunch of different tools to figure out optimal times to build/colonize/etc, and i later applied some of that knowledge to the online game Utopia.

[Anonymous No.8060057]

Anyone remeber a game like that but that could be only played on Windows NT?

[Anonymous No.8060221]

>>8060057
If it really was NT exclusive, and not you trying to copy NT build to a different Windows system and run it instead of installing proper version, then it probably was from the NT 3.x era, when there was no specific graphical APIs in NT. Very likely a hobby project, too, as there was no market for NT exclusives.

You can try your luck with
https://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/windows/tic,10/ti,1373/
https://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/windows/tic,10/ti,1375/
but some of those are obvious data input errors.

[Anonymous No.8060248]

>>8060221
Based® and Redpilled™
https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/picture-sudoku/screenshots/gameShotId,851759/

[Anonymous No.8060386]

>>8049732
Damn, I was looking for that but I couldn't remember any details. I had almost given up on it. I sort of miss freeware trash cd's.

[Anonymous No.8060473]

>>8049321
Jem is best pohl book

[Anonymous No.8060779]

>>8043594
A lot of John Tiller's strategy games and other games developed by HPS used the native Windows interface too.

[Anonymous No.8060869]

>>8060779
HPS even sold a program called Aide de Camp 2 to convert tabletop wargames (or any board game really) to the computer for play-by-email. It was like Tabletop Simulator of the 90s but with more features for wargamers.

[Anonymous No.8060986]

>>8056248
You beat me posting this. Such a gem of a game.

[Anonymous No.8062587]

Does Sweet Home 3D count?

[Anonymous No.8062776]

>>8049631
>makes me wonder if one day the next "indie hit" will be games made with this kind of aesthetic and design in mind

Space Station 13 is a "modern" game made with this style, mainly because the engine it runs on (BYOND) is really old. I say modern as it was first made in 2003, but any server's codebase started around mid 2010s at the earliest aside from Goonstation.

[Anonymous No.8063669]

>>8045253
This looks adorable, but how good is the gameplay?

[Anonymous No.8065147]

>you will never see newer games or programs use the same consistent, messy, beveled, sexy win32 + gdi look ever again
microsoft is fucking wretched and modern windows and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. -_-

[Anonymous No.8066063]

>>8065147
man that editor was a piece of shit

[Anonymous No.8066703]

Operation: Inner Space looking like an application for a bit. The idea was that you'd fly a little ship around in your computers files and try to destroy a virus corrupting it, so it would actually automatically generate levels based on the directories and files in your computer. Very cute idea.

[Anonymous No.8067385]

>>8049631
Look up Kingsway, it's an RPG with a faux-Win95 interface that plays with the idea really well (your inventory is a folder, you have to dodge attacks by closing pop-ups, etc.)

[Anonymous No.8067410]

>>8066703
Ah yes I remember. It also used image files from your actual disk for some of its textures...which would be pretty disastrous nowadays.

[Anonymous No.8067415]

>>8066063
You are just not very talented.

>>8065147
I wipe my ass on minimalist flat styles. Soulless like its users.

[Anonymous No.8067975]

>>8043535
I've always like the aesthetic of early Microsoft Arcade games. Particularly Chip's Challenge. I remember playing Shareware of a game with the exact art/sprite design with a startup screen of a man with a Sword and Shield and Vampire behind him. It was either a dungeon crawler or RPG shareware game.

Would anyone be able to remember/recognize a game with that vague description?

[Anonymous No.8067978]

>>8067975
BUMMER

[Anonymous No.8068017]

>>8045465
Came in here to post this.

[Anonymous No.8068028]

>>8049474
That sentence is hilarious given the sequel takes place in Vegas.

[Anonymous No.8068075]

Some Indian educational game studio was doing Bitlife 15 years before Bitlife was a thing. It's called Real Lives.

[Anonymous No.8068083]

Some Indian educational game studio was doing Bitlife 15 years before Bitlife was a thing. It's called Real Lives.

[Anonymous No.8068184]

Lunatic Dawn

[Anonymous No.8068194]

Any Japanese games that take this style?

[Anonymous No.8068226]

Vantage Master

[Anonymous No.8068241]

[Anonymous No.8068264]

Lord Monarch

[Anonymous No.8068272]

>>8049321
>rape tom

[Anonymous No.8068293]

>>8068226
Can I ask her to take that cheap unfitting WonderBra off? It would look much better.

[Anonymous No.8068309]

>>8068194
Vantage Master and Lord Monarch are made by Falcom. Lunatic Dawn is made by Artdink

[Anonymous No.8068342]

>>8068226
>>8068309
Thank you

[Anonymous No.8068765]

>>8048361
Anon, do you happen to know where I could find all 3 episodes of Dare 2 Dream? Ive wanted to play through it so bad but have never been able to find it.

[Anonymous No.8068936]

>>8043535
So many of these games look great I don't even know which to ask about, can anyone knowledgeable give a quick rundown of the best ones among them?

>>8068241
Great memories, unironically one of the best roguelites and indie games I've ever played

[Anonymous No.8069030]

>>8068194
Gemfire 2

[Anonymous No.8069035]

>>8068936
They might not play great at all. It's not a genre, just an interface design choice.

[Anonymous No.8071036]

>>8068936
Stars! >>8043564 is a 4x game that lets you design your own race, design your own ships and have AI not cheat(beyond somewhat inflated race points I think). Its pretty good and you can have multiplayer sessions by email or even by posting on 4chan if you get creative.

Decker >>8045465 have you become a hacker4hire, infiltrating corporate networks shadowrun-style.
Each contract is for a separate network and each network is a separate dungeon-crawl, with few minor twists. After completing (or not!) a contract youre back home writing better programs(skills), designing and burning new chips(bonuses to skills/skill limit rise), placing special orders for hardware(and other stuff) or simply resting after networks ICEs tried to fry your brain for breaking into their database.

[Anonymous No.8071254]

Suikoden

[Anonymous No.8071503]

>>8050242
I had this on a yellow 500 games disc

[Anonymous No.8071645]

>>8069030
How does this compare to the original Gemfire?

[Anonymous No.8071654]

>>8068765
Just googled it, found the first game on internet archive, and a download link for the second game all on the first page. Try harder.

[Anonymous No.8071892]

>>8043535
SimCity 2000 Windows 95 Edition

[Anonymous No.8071902]

OpenTTD

[Anonymous No.8071915]

>>8071892
Reticulating Splines

[Anonymous No.8071920]

>>8071915
YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!

[Anonymous No.8071940]

Does this count? Still works on Windows 10, albeit with limitations like the black bars at the top and bottom.

[Anonymous No.8072115]

>>8049736
World of Horror has some amazing art for the style its going for and worth playing but sadly I think the develop did a take the money and run from its early access.

[Anonymous No.8072308]

>>8043625
Wow! I used to play the Palm version on a hand-me-down Palm III that I managed to get my hands on as a kid in the 2000s. I could really sink hours into those spreadsheets.

[Anonymous No.8072335]

>>8057982
Actually a really fun puzzle game, but as a very little kid with access to the Microsoft Entertainment Pack, the way the mouse would sometimes appear to go "splat" really freaked me out.

[Anonymous No.8073696]

[Anonymous No.8073716]

this counts? I don't think any game ever came close to having a interface this perfect.

[Anonymous No.8073719]

>>8068083
I used to 'play' around with this, interesting simulator.

[Anonymous No.8073720]

>>8073716
Non-native windows icons and buttons. Does not count.

[Anonymous No.8073842]

>>8073696
I think I played that on my first Windows 3.1 machine

[Anonymous No.8074557]

>>8071940
Oh damn, that was a fun one! Used to play this with my cousin on my grandmother's Windows 95 when I was bored over her house for family gatherings.

[Anonymous No.8076076]

>>8071920
QUIT HITTING THE TORNADO BUTTON YOU CHUCKLEFUCK

[Anonymous No.8077157]

>>8049732
Winged Warrior was the first shareware game I bought.

[Anonymous No.8077186]

>>8044651
fucking golden memories right here.

[Anonymous No.8077707]

>>8073720
What if it was not a bitmap skin, but an actual extension of all component drawing functions?

[Anonymous No.8077823]

>>8043535
All Windows games are applications dipshit

[Anonymous No.8078056]

>>8077823
> game.bat

> Windows
> game
> not application

[Anonymous No.8078712]

>>8077823
yeah dude, they're totally apps
praise our lord steve jobs

[Anonymous No.8079627]

[Anonymous No.8080790]

>>8043535
Bump

[Anonymous No.8080862]

I miss when owning a mac meant you were a nerd rebelling against the microsoft machine and not some idiot looking for a fashion accessory for their desk

[Anonymous No.8080893]

[Anonymous No.8081030]

>>8045465
>>8071036
You can actually play Decker in your browser here:

https://palparepa.github.io/decker/

[Anonymous No.8081043]

>>8056248
Uplink got a great unofficial UI overhaul mod for HD displays not too long ago

https://www.moddb.com/mods/uplink-os

[Anonymous No.8081723]

God, this entire thread is giving me huge flashbacks to "Galaxy of Games!" Just a bunch of free/shareware games and demos slapped onto a disk. I spent HOURS playing that fucking thing. And almost every game looked like a Windows App. I even see a ton of actual games that were on there in here.

[Anonymous No.8081752]

>>8078712
>>8078056

t. retarded faggot with no technical knowledge of software

[Anonymous No.8081761]

This sumbitch kept me going through middle school

[Anonymous No.8081789]

>>8081761
Looks like someone already posted Mordor, so have Exile instead. Whole trilogy is worth it.

[Anonymous No.8081809]

>>8067975
Castle of the Winds?
Might've been Vampiric Tower, but that was a DOS game

[Anonymous No.8081925]

>>8081752
You can easily make a text mode game using just shell scripting. Not an application, still a game.

Congratulations on coming out of the closet.

[Anonymous No.8082552]

>>8081761
I still can't get Mordor to work

[Anonymous No.8082560]

>>8081789
holy shit, I was just playing exile 3