Essentail Apps/Games for 5x86?

eric

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Sep 2, 2021
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Hi!

I have a 7" PC Card with a 5x86 w/ 32mb of RAM in my PowerMac 9600 - and besides a few of the DOS games like scorched earth I played with my friends, what else should I look at that runs well on this erra of PC? It can run Win95 a bit slowly.

If you had this vintage of PC - what would you run on it?
 

Mu0n

Active Tinkerer
Oct 29, 2021
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Hi!

I have a 7" PC Card with a 5x86 w/ 32mb of RAM in my PowerMac 9600 - and besides a few of the DOS games like scorched earth I played with my friends, what else should I look at that runs well on this erra of PC? It can run Win95 a bit slowly.

If you had this vintage of PC - what would you run on it?
Let's fire the first salvo with dos games. Until 1995, Windows didn't get many top-of-the-heap games and game companies were slow to divert development away from their advanced dos game projects to Windows until win98 was on the scene. There are exceptions to this rule but my friends and I were rocking dos games well into 1996-97 (prime example: Quake 1!)

Some suggestions are also available on Mac but I don't know these overlaps myself, I didn't use a Mac in the late dos and win95 days.

***** Dune (from Virgin /cryo)
**** Dune 2
***** Master of Magic
***** Master of Orion
**** Master of Orion 2 (win)
**** DOOM 1 and 2
*** Jazz Jackrabbit
**** Xcom-UFO defense (or Enemy Unknown)
**** X-Wing
**** TIE Fighter
*** Zeliard
Sierra games (King's Quest 1 to 6, Space quest 1-6, gold rush!, manhunter NY and SF)
*** Civilization 1
*** Civilization 2 (win)
*** Duke Nukem 3D
*** Commander Keen 1-5
**** Ultima VII (you can test others but I think this one is a gentle entry)
*** Ultima Underworld 1 and 2
**** Death Rally (win)
**** Full Throttle (win)
**** Alone in the Dark
***** Another World
*** Warcraft 1
**** Warcraft 2 (win)
*** Black Thorne
 

Drake

TinkerDifferent Board Vice-President 2023
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Sep 23, 2021
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I second Descent and Tie Fighter and will add my absolute favorite... Daggerfall!
"Halt, Halt, Halt, Halt!"
maxresdefault.jpg
 

Mu0n

Active Tinkerer
Oct 29, 2021
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**** One Must Fall 2097: surprisingly engaging upgradeable giant fighting robots (think street Fighter /mortal kombat) with enthralling pumpin' music and a thin story layer that's just enough to make you want to see it though the end.
 

alxlab

Active Tinkerer
Sep 23, 2021
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Played quite a bit of Sim City and Sim City 2000. Really liked Epic Pinball as well.

Played Fountain of Dreams quite a bit as well. It's the unofficial sequel to Wasteland.

Played Castles a lot too.

Out of this World is really great game too.

Wolfenstein and Spear of Destiny of course.

Command and Conquer.

Sure there's others I'm missing but time for 😴
 
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arnold.exe

New Tinkerer
Oct 27, 2021
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I'll always say "Doom" for systems of this era, but I have a special place in my heart for playing Doom on the PC compat cards of the era because I'd bring my Doom II CD with the school and play in the computer labs. The keystroke to switch back to MacOS made for a good boss key.
 
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DeChief

Tinkerer
Oct 17, 2021
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A 5x86 should be able to run most of my favourite DOS games, almost all of which have already been mentioned. Here are a few others:
  • Star Wars Dark Forces
  • Rise of the Triad
  • Blood
  • Hexen
  • Street Figther II Turbo (honestly a fantastic port)
  • The Secret of Monkey Island
 

Patrick

Tinkerer
Oct 26, 2021
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I was going to add Star trek birth of the federation. But it requires windows 98. so that might not work.

System requirements:

  • CPU: Pentium 200 MHz
  • RAM (memory): 32 MB RAM
  • HDD: 180 MB

Its kinda like a reskin of moo2. but uses falcon 4.0 engine ? its kinda weird. They only had the rights to TNG. So even though its about taking the federation from the beginning all through the TNG era. they really could only use ships that show up in the TNG tv show and movies.