IBM-PC GAMING GUIDE
This document was created on 3/11/03, and last updated on 10/3/22, by James Jacobs of Amigan Software. It deals with 25 selected CGA games for the original IBM-PC. Please email us with any corrections to this document.
| 
Alley Cat
IBM 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA CMWK & GRYK |
|
Bouncing Babies
Dave Baskin 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA CMWK |
|
Bricks
Vincent Bly 198? DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 99% Graphics mode: 16-colour CGA |
|
Bushido: The Way of the Warrior
Ebenel 1983 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA CMWK |
|
Castle Adventure
Kevin Bales 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: MDA text |
|
Chomp
? 198? DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA text |
|
Congo Bongo
Sega 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA GRYK |
|
Decathlon
IBM 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: Composite CGA |
|
Dig Dug
Atari 1983 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA GRYK |
|
Floppy Frenzy
Windmill Software 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA GRYK |
|
Frogger
Sierra 1983 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA GRYK |
|
Hard Hat Mack
Electronic Arts 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA CMWK |
|
Monopoly
Don Gibson 1985 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA CMWK & CGA text |
|
Montzeuma's Revenge
Parker Brothers 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA GRYK |
|
Moonbugs
Windmill Software 1983 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: 16-colour CGA |
|
Novatron
Veri-Soft Works 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA CMWK |
|
Pango
Sheng-Chung Liu 1983 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA GRYK & CMWK |
|
Paratrooper
Orion Software 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA CMWK |
|
Pitstop ][
Epyx 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: Composite CGA |
|
Round 42
Elven Software 1986 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: 16-colour CGA |
|
Shamus
Atari 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA GRYK |
|
Space Strike
Michael Abrash 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA CMWK |
|
Spacewar
Bill Seiler 1985 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: MDA bitmapped |
|
Zaxxon
Sega 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100% Graphics mode: CGA CMWK |
Game Help
| Alley Cat
| To get the joystick to work, you should edit your DOSBOX.CONF to have cycles=520 and timed=TRUE. If you still have problems, delete mapper.txt. | |||||||||
| Bushido: The Way of the
Warrior
|
The numeric keypad is used, as follows:
Tu: Turn around Top row: jump/high punch/high kick F1/F3: walk mode | |||||||||
| Floppy
Frenzy
| Traps are always laid in the direction you are currently facing, left
or right (you cannot lay them at intersections), and are impassable.
A weakened enemy which hits a trap is healed. All controls are press-and-release. They are buffered, and fetched at intersections, similar to Pango. However, unlike Pango, there are no key repeat problems and therefore you could hold down the keys if desired. You cannot stop moving, except by leaning against something. | |||||||||
| Frogger
| The default keys are A, Z, ' and ` (backtick/grave) for up, down, left and right, respectively. All controls are press-and-release. | |||||||||
| Hard Hat Mack
| The Alt key will bring up the key redefinition screen. The spacebar will start the game. F2 to quit to DOS. F9 to calibrate joystick. All controls are press-and-release. | |||||||||
| Novatron
| It is easiest to use the Ins and Del keys on the numeric keypad (ie. numeric zero and numeric dot) to turn. If instead you want to use the dedicated Ins and Del keys, you will need to rotate the keyboard 90° anticlockwise (for most keyboards). | |||||||||
| Pango
| All controls are press-and-release. You cannot stop moving, except by
leaning against something or using the stop key.
To get the joystick to work, you should edit your DOSBOX.CONF to have cycles=520 and timed=TRUE. If you still have problems, delete mapper.txt. If you still have problems, try cycles=540. The game maintains a buffer (ie. a queue) of keyboard input. Whenever you are not "between" tiles (ie. moving from one tile to another), the game fetches a keystroke from the keyboard queue and acts on it. If the keystroke results in no movement (eg. stop, or turn only), another keystroke will be fetched very quickly after; otherwise, you have to wait until you have moved a distance of one tile before another keystroke is fetched. It is thus not possible to turn (even backwards), nor stop, while "between" tiles. You can press the appropriate key at any time but it will be queued and not acted on until you are no longer "between" tiles. The game should have turned off key repeat but neglects to do this. (Indeed, there is no BIOS call to do this on a PC/XT; the game should probably have used direct keyboard hardware access to get its input. Or, when fetching keys from the queue, the game could just discard any "keystroke" that is the same as the previously pressed key, and fetch the next key in the queue instead.) Therefore, if you hold down a key for too long, the game will put many copies of the key into the buffer, and you will have to wait until these are "used up" (at the rate of one per tile). So you must use the "press and release" technique rather than holding down keys. There doesn't seem any way to configure the typematic rate via the DOSBox GUI nor configuration file. What you need to do is to run SLOW (within DOSBox) before running Pango. After you quit the game, you will probably want to run NORMAL (or indeed FAST). These files are here. Or just use a joystick. | |||||||||
| Shamus
| Cursor keys to move. Cursor key and Alt to fire. There are keyboard problems when holding movement keys for long periods. Running SLOW first (or using a joystick instead) might help. | |||||||||
| Space
Strike
| The default keys are Z for left, C for right, X to stop, and spacebar
to fire. All controls are press-and-release. You cannot stop moving,
except by leaning against the level edges or using the stop key.
Space Strike is an .IMG file; therefore it is run like this: BOOT SPACESTR.IMG |
Emulator Usage
Edit the following entries in DOSBOX.CONF:
machine=cga
cycles=520
And add the following lines to DOSBOX.CONF, in the [autoexec] section (assuming that your games are in C:\GAMES):
MOUNT C C:\
C:
CD GAMES
DIR
An example configuration is here.
Emulator Compatibility Issues
The numeric keypad does not work correctly: the NumLock status is always off.
Bricks:
(1) The Caps Lock key is not handled correctly. The fix for
this is to issue the command SET SDL_DISABLE_LOCK_KEYS=1 before running
DOSBox. You also need to overwrite the included SDL.DLL with the newer
V1.2.14, available from
http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.14-win32.zip
.
(2) The screen adjustment feature in the main menu does not work
(unimportant).
(3) The numeric keypad 0/Ins cannot be used to move the bat right; the
dedicated Ins key must be used instead.
(4) Using the Home key when instructed to "press a key" causes the
game to quit to DOS soon afterwards, for some reason.