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Spotlight: 10 excellent but obscure free DOS games
Blog article by MrFlibble
Today DOS Games Archive brings you a list of 10 excellent high-quality free DOS games that you might have never heard about.
1. 'Ghini Run
'Ghini Run is a sprite-based old-school racing game that pays homage to the Sega classic title OutRun. It was written in QuickBasic and is completely free. There are four game modes, six tracks and nine cars, some of them unlockable by beating the game in a certain mode.
Download 'Ghini Run or play it in the browser
2. Desperabis
A first-person action-adventure in full 3D made by German developer Florian Born. You'll never say it's a freeware indie game when you look at it, because it could just as well have been a commercial title! The story tells of a wizard apprentice who inadvertently unleashes a demon on his world and needs to set things back right. There are two chapters in the game, one focussed on puzzles and exploration and another on combat. Everything is in German, so you'll miss a bit of background story when playing if you do not know it, but gameplay itself should be self-explanatory. Must check!
Download Desperabis or play it in the browser
3. Jaguar GR1: Strike Force Delta Zulu
If you're a fan of old school combat flight sims, you're in for a treat. Jaguar GR1 is a commercial-quality game created by UK flight sim enthusiast Ron Walker using Simis and Domark's Flight Sim Toolkit. As a British Jaguar fighter pilot, you will take part in fictional joint military exercises in a remote area of the former Soviet Union. The game has ten scenarios that can be played in any order.
Download Jaguar GR1: Strike Force Delta Zulu or play it in the browser
4. Robot Redemption
A free first-person shooter game based on the source code of id Software's classic Hovertank 3D, and very similar in game play. Native Windows and Linux versions are available too.
Download Robot Redemption or play it in the browser
5. Gene Splicing
A sci-fi party-based first-person RPG in the style of 80s PC titles such as Mines of Titan. As a newly recruited operative of the Space Security Agency, uncover a conspiracy on the Moon that involves genetic experiments.
Download Gene Splicing or play it in the browser
6. Bert the Barbarian
An incredibly charming side-scrolling platform game with claymation sprites (that is, all characters and environments were modelled from clay and then digitized). The author never completed the game, so it's only a few levels and difficulty is pretty unbalanced, but it's still worth checking out. Made with DIV Games Studio. A Windows version is also available.
7. Greedy
A top-notch (and pretty hard!) Pac-Man variant created by a French demoscene group, and it tells! Excellent graphics and music, excellent quality overall, and challenging gameplay -- you might want to tone down the speed from "Crazy" to "Normal". Make sure to download the unofficial fix if you're intending to run this in DOSBox.
Download Greedy or play it in the browser
8. Firecrow
This is a pretty obscure vertical-scrolling shooter similar to Raptor: Call of the Shadows, except without the equipment shop. It plays fairly smoothly and will throw waves of enemies your way. Pre-rendered graphics are nice, and the game uses Unreal 2 by Purple Motion as its main music track.
Download Firecrow or play it in the browser
9. Mega Breakout
An excellent Breakout variant in high resolution with very smooth gameplay. This game was created with DIV Games Studio.
Download Mega Breakout or play it in the browser
10. PANGG!!
A nice clone of Pang/Buster Bros. from Spain. There's no music and only PC speaker sounds, but gameplay-wise it appears to be a faithful recreation of the source material.