Software Nostalgia

Let's hear your old favourites...

[Debbie_King]

I'm sure you must have old software which you just LOVED at the time but which since, sadly, has been cast aside in the wake of upgrades and progress (which are not necessarily the same thing).

Mine are:

Dogz and Catz :-)
Lotus Smartsuite 97 (especially Freehand)

Oh, and does anyone remember the '101 Dalmations' print studio that shipped with HP Inkjet printers?

:-)

[larryhatch]

Don't forget the admonitions to NOT call somebody a 'Turkey'
Just because they hit the wrong key in a BASIC program.
Most of those programs crashed before they could call anybody anything.

A software engineer took my pet program and typed garbage into it.
(It crashed of course.) I said "You can't do that!"
He said "I just did! Now learn a real language."

- Larry

[pmkpmk]

Speaking of Lemmings....

[smartlings.timesonline.co.uk...]

[taps]

Does anyone remember Sidekick. I think it was made by Borland?

[nutsandbolts]

Sniff. I miss Rocket Man [btinternet.com]

[Essex_boy]

There was a game on the Amiga 600 football based(Soccer to you yankees) where you trained a team and gave them intelligence, strength and stamina etc etc.

So you could train a really strong and agressive player with no intelligence who'd wander around the field beating the hell out of the opposite side.

The game had no rules so on occassion a player would die, then these two robots would come on and drag off the body.

Great game, just dont remember the name.

Armaggedon man, try and disarm the worlds nuclear powers with diplomacy and strong arm tactics. Of course id try and make rival countrys go to war as quickly as possible.... Which wasnt how you were meant to play it.

[bcolflesh]

Kick-Off 2?

[classicgaming.com...]

[ARSData]

Ok, A couple of you hit the Zork series. Took me forever to complete.

Also Turbo Pascal I and Turbo Modula, never release publicly.

[The Contractor]

chostermsg #:20
PC Tools (by Central Point Software)

Wow, I still miss that software! It was years ahead of it's time with the custom/multiple desktops, file management, anti-virus, great backup (yes even to Colorado 120 tape drives), custom toolbars, file compression, great disk fix utility, great defrager...on and on

Norton bought it and killed it because they had the money but were so far behind compared to PC-Tools. That sickened me at the time that someone could buy a company and kill it because they couldn't compete with it (course happens all the time now with Norton/Symantec being one of the companies that continue to kill their competition by buying them ). They did later bring out Norton Desktop and a few of the pieces but they were buggy.

I do not miss any of the older programs I used in DOS (WordStar, Harvard Graphics, dBase, Lotus123, etc), but I have yet to find any single piece of software that is/was as useful as PC Tools. I now use PowerDesk Pro for file management, PowerQuest DriveImage (which Norton has recently bought up and killed as it was a much better product than Ghost), PerfectDisk for defrag, and a slew of other tools that was pretty much taken care of with one simple software package.

added I still have the disks and thick manuals for both ver 1 & 2 of CP PC-Tools... now where are my Win3.1 disks....

[Broadway]

I loved using Turbo Basic by Borland. That time period in my life and the projects I was working on back then were great.

What I really miss now days however is not so much any particular software title as opposed to the fact that so much of the software you buy now days comes without a PRINTED manual.

[vabtz]

Hammurabi for the TI-99/4A first game I ever played on a PC

Falcon - the original version where you didn't have to spend 8 weeks reading the manual

Funnily enough I never used any apps until about 5 years ago.

[Chris_D]

The original Leisure suit larry in the land of the lounge lizards on PC.

I've still got those diskettes somewhere..... just need a 5.25 in external drive....

[HughMungus]

Since someone mentioned girls, and since I mentioned Civilization earlier, it was a kick to find out that a girl who "comes over occassionally" plays Civilization. I just bought her Civ2. hehe. You never know!

[penfold25]

xtreegold, it was an awesome program.

[Essex_boy]

wasnt kick off2, it was set in teh future.

Ive jut downloaded Armageddon man for teh Spectrum, Ican remember playing this and loving it.

But why?

[Jack_Hughes]

brief the DOS based text editor. many a happy hour writing DOS C code...those were the days :)

[mole]

Kermit.

I never did know which came first, the frog or the comms. program.

[Jack_Hughes]

I played falcon too. I could take off & do the missions but I could never figure out how to land the darn thing. Years later I worked with a guy training to be a pilot...then I figured out how to do it. Just go do hundreds of hours of flight training :)

[Jack_Hughes]

Oh & anarkey that was cool too!

[Mr_Brutal]

Essex_Boy - Was it Speedball 2? (Sorry can't find a link)

"Ice Cream! Ice Cream!"

[balam]

PETs then Apples is where I began... A version of the arcade game Defender on the PET kept me going for days, while Swashbuckler, Elite & the first couple of Ultimas on the Apple did the same.

If the Infocom fans are feeling truly nostalgic, free versions of Zork 1, 2 & 3 (for both PC & Mac) are available at this fan site [infocom-if.org].

[Essex_boy]

Speedball! Yep boy I loved thatgame.

there was this other on a grpahic adventure on the Amiga by a German firm.

You were a petty crook trying to climb teh ladder of the local mafia by completing various crimes.

however the game varied wildley by your own actions truly original and of the few games that you can say that about.

But what was it called?

[bcolflesh]

Parts of your description remind me of Crime City - but maybe I'm way off again:

[members.chello.at...]

[mack]

Armageddon man

Yea that was awsome.. but I agree.. "no idea why" :)

Always seamed to get recalled to earth due to incomepetance :)

Mack.

[Essex_boy]

No it wasnt crime city.