Abuse. Not the most fortunate name for a video game, but hey, it was 1995 and nineties edginess was in full swing. According to developer Crack dot Com (another very nineties name!), it's the player who's being abused here, knowing full well that pressing the buttons in all those levels is going to bring down hordes of howlers on you, and doing it anyway. It also went well with Crack, they said. Okay...

What you get is a dark and grimy run and gun platformer with something that was almost unheard of on DOS at the time: you move with the keyboard and aim freely with the mouse. Throw in gorgeous lighting effects, a whole arsenal of weapons, a jetpack, a built-in level editor and hordes of very alien-looking mutants dropping from the ceiling, and you've got a game that was made in just six months on a dare.

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we have no less than four guests. Lukasz ("Red Hexapus") is back on the show, after previously joining us for Earthworm Jim. On for the first time are Zack ("Zacktorial"), who hosts the official OverClocked ReMix podcast, and Åke ("forslund"), who found us through our Mastodon. We're also joined by Metin ("metinc"), who is working on his own fork of Abuse and brought plenty of fun findings from the original source code.

We also received a voice message from Watchful, who is still going strong with the Windows Game Club. Thanks Watchful! If you also want to send in a voice message for a future episode, please e-mail it to club@dosgameclub.com

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2026/11/ep122.mp3

( download mp3 ) (117 mins, 134 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast and for digging up the old magazine reviews, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

RELEVANT LINKS:

• Metin's fork of Abuse for modern platforms, which removes the 15 FPS limit, supports WASD and adds online co-op, among many other improvements.

• OverClocked ReMix is a community for video game music arrangements, with thousands of remixes from games of all eras and platforms, including over 50 DOS games.

• Crack dot Com's old About page from 1997 explains why "Crack" and "Abuse" go well together.

• Abuse's plot changed during development. The original, much darker story had you infiltrating an alien hive instead of a prison. Both plots are archived, along with some notes on the traces of the original plot that can still be found in level 14.

• An interview with Dave Taylor and Jonathan Clark in which they talk about how they made Abuse on a dare and set out to sell 50,000 copies.

• When Crack Dot Com closed down in 1998 they open sourced Abuse. A copy of the original source release is on GitHub.

• Dave Taylor's blog post about a possible Abuse 2 and the unauthorized iPhone port that ended up on the App Store in 2009.

• It's not quite clear who composed the music for Abuse, as sources disagree on this. Either way, the entire soundtrack can be found on YouTube.

• Abuse is one of the games on the Worthwhile DOS Games poster.

The first video is here: https://youtu.be/9bgFpss0YFE

Ah, Sid Meier's Civilization... It's hard to overstate just how epic and ambitious this game was when it first came out in 1991. The intro starts with the very formation of planet Earth itself. The seas split, the continents are formed, life evolves and eventually after billions of years it all culminates in you choosing one of 15 civilizations to lead into a glorious future. The year is 4,000 BC. The map is entirely shrouded in darkness. You have little more than a settler at your disposal. But what you have, is time. 6,000 years to bring greatness to your people, one turn at a time, by founding cities, inventing technologies, conquering your enemies and building great wonders. Whatever happens next is up to you. If that's not an epic premise, we don't know what is!

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we have three guests on the show who are each on for the very first time. From the club we have Mark ("slamo") and Mike ("circletheory"). Martijn also invited his cousin Mar onto the show, who first taught him the game back when they were both kids.

We also received two voice messages, one from Gergely and one from Bemoir. And Rusty sent us an email. Thanks to all, it's greatly appreciated! If you want to contribute something for the show, please e-mail us at club@dosgameclub.com

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2026/10/ep121.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (147 mins, 168 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

RELEVANT LINKS:

• Rusty's photo of the roadside Big Jumbuk in Australia

• There are some great videos out there featuring Sid Meier: a 1994 "interactive interview", which judging by the way it's cut was probably segmented so viewers could pick questions at the time, a 2020 Ars Technica interview all about Civilization, and a 2017 GDC post mortem he gave together with Bruce Shelley.

• If you want more Sid, these two GDC talks he did are also well worth your time: "The Psychology of Game Design" from 2010 and "Interesting Decisions" from 2012.

• The Hall of Fame page on the Civilization wiki collects all the rankings Civ 1 could hand out at the end of a game, from Solomon the Wise at the top down to a certain Dan Quayle at the very bottom.

• We talked about Empire, the game that heavily inspired Civilization's development, back in episode 092.

• And of course we had to bring up Nuclear Gandhi, the most persistent Civilization myth there is.

This is a DOS game from Interplay I never heard of before. Tenka is a friend of mine that used to speedrun The 7th Guest

Download from the Releases page https://github.com/neuromancer/wc2-re/releases

After having run this club for almost 10 years now, sometimes we worry we might run out of good games to feature. Not that we only want to cover the best or most famous games, but we wouldn't want to feel like we're scraping the barrel either. Anyway, this fear is entirely unwarranted, because even after all this time an absolute gem such as 1994's Star Wars: TIE Fighter is available for us to talk about. This game offers a very enticing premise over Star Wars: X-Wing, its predecessor from a year earlier: instead of the hero, now you're the bad guy! Or are you? Maybe the Empire just wants peace and stability for all and Darth Vader isn't such a bad guy after all. That's certainly what they tell a lowly TIE Fighter pilot such as yourselves anyway...

Sadly our co-host Florian ("rnlf") had to skip this episode due to an injury that left him unable to play this game. Get well soon, Florian! Host Martijn is here with a big group of guests who are all excited to talk about TIE Fighter. First of all we have Brian ("SpaceGameJunkie") back on the show. We also have Eric ("Shnoogie"), who's joining the podcast for the first time. Then we have Jason ("Angel"), who's in charge of the Tie Fighter Total Conversion project (see links below). And last but not least we have Rik, adaptive music composer and a good friend of Martijn for many years who hasn't played a ton of old PC games, but TIE Fighter being the rare exception!

And on top of all this, we've also received no fewer than three voice messages! They are from Firefokker, Evil Taco and Watchful. Thank you very much for sharing your insights with us, we always enjoy hearing your thoughts on the games we're playing. If you want to share a voice message for a future episode, please e-mail them to club@dosgameclub.com

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2026/08/ep120.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (198 mins, 226 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

RELEVANT LINKS:

• Our guest Angel is the project lead on TIE Fighter: Total Conversion (TFTC), an ambitious mod that overhauls the classic game from top to bottom, reworking everything from the graphics to the core gameplay.

• Angel also shared a sneak peek video of the upcoming intro, created by OtaKing Animation who previously made an excellent animated TIE Fighter short film.

• Mission builder David Wessman gave a post mortem talk at GDC on the making of TIE Fighter, available on GDC Vault.

• YouTuber TechJesse did a video interview with Edward Kilham, co-designer of both TIE Fighter and X-Wing.

• We discuss the infamous leak of the game's release, a story that was covered at the time by the LA Times in COLUMN ONE: The Pirates of the Internet.

• DGC member Pix put together a collection of X-Wing Series Magazine Scans, pulled from his personal archive of gaming magazines.

• We discuss the origin of the "Oom on you" easter egg. More hidden messages are collected on the Cutting Room Floor wiki.

A semi-active web forum for DOS users and developers

It's time for another multi-game month! After skiing, pinball, cricket and golf, we sat down for a nice game of computer pool. And snooker. And billiards. Basically anything where you use a cue stick to hit a ball on a table. Turns out there are quite a few of these for MS-DOS, but perhaps not as many as you'd think.

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we have DGC members Richard ("Pix") and DRS ("dr_st") on the show. None of us are pool experts really, but we're trying our best!

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2026/07/ep119.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (114 mins, 131 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

RELEVANT LINKS:

• 1986-1989: PC Pool/PC Pool Challenges, Alex Higgins' World Snooker, Pub Pool, Rack-Em, Billiards Simulator

• 1990-1995: Sharkey's 3D Pool, Jim Kobbe's Pool Game in 3D, Pool Shark, Billiards and Arcade Pool

• Archer Maclean put out two notable games: Jimmy White's “Whirlwind” Snooker and Archer Maclean's Pool. There's also a fun little YouTube video about him.

• One title that stood out was 1994Pool+, which blends billiards with elements from other genres.

• Celeris Inc. released two excellent games: Virtual Pool and Virtual Snooker.

• Honorable mentions go to two well-loved freeware titles: Another Pool by Gerrit Jahn and Biliardo 2 by Marco Chiesi.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/40501552

saw this on SGDQ

In case anyone is wonder why progress on the emulator appears slow or feature requests feel ignored, we are currently still understaffed and have, in addition to new bugs reported every day that have to be fixed, a backlog of items on our internal TODO list such as:

• EISA;
• Turbo Button for XT PCs;
• Emulation of the ESS Solo-1;
• PD (Phase-change Dual) and DVD-RAM support;
• IBM Expanded Memory Adapter (XMA);
• Passthrough of real CD/DVD drives to the emulator on macOS;
• Support for cloneCD and TOC CD-ROM image files;
• Mitsumi CD-ROM emulation (it would also allow eventual emulation of the Tandy VIS).

In addition, we are currently in severe need of developers and/or maintainers for the following:

• New dynamic recompiler;
• macOS support;
• Emulation of the NEC PC-98 family of computers;
• A potential built-in non-GDBSTUB debugger to replace the current GDBSTUB implementation;
• Our SDL backend;
• The ImGui OSD;
• The Qt UI.

We would also appreciate anyone who could help the fixing of issues that get reported to our GitHub or in our Discord server.

Back in April we looked at Sam & Max Hit the Road, the first game featuring Steve Purcell's crime fighting comic strip duo. Tasked with finding an escaped bigfoot from the circus, Sam & Max find themselves on a big road trip adventure all across the USA, featuring many road side attractions of questionable quality. And somehow a country singer from Liverpool, England also fits into this?

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we have three guests. First of all we have returning DGC members Patrick ("patrick_wd") and Eino ("evil_taco"). Last but not least we are joined by digital artist and game developer Nathalie Lawhead ("alienmelon"), who made a lot of retro-inspired works that are very much worth checking out (see links below).

Enjoy!

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2026/06/ep118.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (216 mins, 248 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping to organise the recording, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

RELEVANT LINKS:

• Nathalie Lawhead'ss is a digital artist and game developer with a large, wonderfully varied catalog at alienmelon.itch.io, as well as their own website at nathalielawhead.com.

• PC Gamer did an interview with Steve Purcell in 2002, where they talk extensively about how Sam & Max Hit the Road came to be.

• Telltale's "History of Sam & Max": Part 1 and Part 2

• Sam & Max were featured in Lucas' quarterly newsletter the Adventurer before they decided to turn them into a game

• Ron Gilbert'ss classic essay on adventure game design, Why adventure games suck

• Yes, the biggest ball of twine is a real roadside attraction in the US.

Way before Unreal Engine, Epic Megagames had already put out a different game creation system. In fact, it was their first product! Back in 1991 ZZT started out as a text editor, but apparently Tim Sweeney got bored and before he knew it, he was making the editor into a game. The editor remained part of ZZT and was even included in the shareware version, so it didn't take long before people were making their own ZZT content. Even now in 2026 people are still making their own ZZT stuff!

Sadly Florian ("rnlf") couldn't make this episode. Host Martijn ("Tijn") is joined by DGC member Simon ("carbontwelve"). We also have two people from the ZZT community to help us make sense of it all: Artee ("RT-55J") who has made many ZZT worlds and has been part of the scene for a long time, and Dr. DOS who has been involved with several ZZT websites over the years and is currently the maintainer of the Museum of ZZT, the largest online collection of ZZT games.

https://www.dosgameclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ep116.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (134 mins, 153 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping to make the podcast happen, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

RELEVANT LINKS:

• Museum of ZZT, a website dedicated to keeping ZZT alive and kicking, maintained by Dr. DOS.

• Games by our guests RT-55J and RT-55J and Dr. DOS

• Anna Anthropy wrote a great book about her personal experience with ZZT.

• z2 used to be for a good decade and a half the definitive ZZT archive.

• A few of our own club members and former guests also released a few ZZT worlds: David X Newton (David Newton / Wong Chung Bang) who has been on many episodes, including Prince of Persia, Transport Tycoon and DOOM, as well as Chris Kohler, who was on the Karateka episode.

• We talked about a few notable games on the show: Code, Yoshi series, Little Square Things, Tales of Adventure: The Treasure of Captain Cutlass, and also Burger Joint which its author later released a modern version called Streets of Rogue on Steam.

• Other notable authors: WiL and Interactive Fantasies.

• More ZZT games that were covered in the episode can be found on our forums

• MegaZeux is a related game creation system with a similarly active community.

• We talked more about Tim Sweeney on episode 046 ("Jill of the Jungle"), back in September 2020.

Comments

Welcome to the WGC Mk. IV Podcasting System for use in hilarious environment conditions. High-enjoyment Windows gaming: Activated. Atmospheric cinematic shooters: Activated. Blue Screen Monitoring: Activated. Protagonist Dialog Suppression System: Engaged. Offensive Opinion Selection System: Activated. Unforeseen Consequences: Activated. Communications Interface: Online. Have a very fun day!

"They are waiting for you Gordon - in the TEST CHAMBERRRR" - if you're old enough to remember when these words were first spoken by a polygonal scientist, you also remember the hype that Half-Life created and how and why we consider this game to be a turning point in the gaming industry. Not only the game itself, but also everything that it enabled. Without Half-Life, the gaming industry would look a lot different nowadays.

Since Half-Life is not a DOS game, but was originally released for Windows, we wouldn't be able to play this game with DGC even though it was suggested on the forums many years ago. Because of that we decided to take the very serious decision to, starting now, 1 April 2026, we pivot our podcast to Windows games.

We're presenting to you Windows Game Club #001.

The DOS podcast just doesn't attract enough listeners and we've also run out of actually worthwhile games. So get ready for a new era in retro gaming discussions. The site layout will be adapted over the next weeks. We'll also delete all old DOS-related podcasts (except for games that were also released for Windows). We're sure this will find your approval.

Our hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") are joined by DGC member erys ("erysdren") and Richter ("The old PC Guy").

Download mp3 (163 mins, 187 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping to make the podcast happen, and thanks to all who make this show possible!

RELEVANT LINKS:

• Valve Archive by Erys
• Richter's YouTube channel: The old pc guy
• Forum thread suggesting for us to play Half-Life
• Half-life segmented speedrun in 20m41s
• Combine Overwiki is celebrating their 20 year anniversary in 2026
• Freeman's mind on YouTube, by Ross Scott
• Old man murray "start to crate" review system that lead to Half-Life 2 having a crate at the start of the game

Over three decades later, this historical curiosity has more than a few rough edges...