What are the odds

[monroeski]

I've been meaning to get back to my parent's house to root through their store room and see if I could find this old PC game I've been wanting to replay. Can't remember what it's called, just that it was a top down shmup style thing with a bunch of levels, each one having 5-10 enemies. Today I decided to see if I could just find it on the internet.

How likely do you think it would be that I find a specific game with nothing but shooter, space, dos, and shareware to go on? I figured practically impossible. There were a billion Galaga/Galaxian clones back then.

Took less than 5 minutes. Searched for "old dos shareware shooter." First link obviously wasn't it (was about fps type shooters), and the second and third links went to the same site (dosgames.com, the second link being the homepage and the third link being the "space shooters" section), so I went to the third one and bam, there it was.

Game was Galactix on this page. Already played through the entire game.

[Timman_24]

Let's hear about your play through with screen shots.

[Kamakazie]

Nice! Was it as good as you remembered?

[monroeski]

Nice! Was it as good as you remembered?

Yes it was.

Meaning it wasn't all that good. Quite repetitive, playing again was just one of those nostalgia things. Had to answer some questions for myself about how it played that I couldn't quite remember. Fun enough for a playthrough, glad I didn't have to end up paying for it on ebay, though.

[monroeski]

Let's here about your play through with screen shots.

PIC EXPLOSION



Here you can see some basic enemies, with my ship at the bottom. You can also see a missile I fired; in addition to regular bullets, there are missiles and bombs, missiles being just more powerful shots (1 hit kill on base enemies, 2 or so for midbosses), bombs being screen clearers. Kill those 5 guys, move to the next wave.



Enemies periodically drop missiles, bombs, or health (health bar being the lines between the red, yellow, and green lines on the right side). You have a claw that extends out and immediately retracts when it hits an item. If it doesn't hit one, it goes to the top of the screen and then retracts, giving you a second shot at them. Items slowly creep to the top of the screen and disappear, and once you send out the claw you can't retract it until it hits an item or the top of the screen. This makes it fairly intense when you're trying to grab an item but there are still enemies shooting at you.



The spiny blue thing there is a bomb; moves from your ship to the middle of the screen, and when it gets there...



Boom.



1st wave, weak enemies. 2nd, medium. 3rd, hard. 4th, mix. 5th, mix + mid boss, as seen above. Repeat this pattern for 49 levels, have HUGE boss, then 49 more levels, then second HUGE boss, game over. Mid boss drops a powerup, and if you grab it you get an extra gun, more powerful than your base two combined -



More powerful bullets, fires more of them, and they travel faster. The gun can be shot off your ship; if you make it to the next mid boss with it, though, the powerup he drops gives you two more of the awesome gun -



Make it to the midboss a third time, and you get two more on the outside, but I didn't feel like going to the effort. Interesting note: you can see the floating cylinder behind the ship in all the pics? When you move (I had mouse control, there is also keyboard or joystick but I don't know if my joystick would work since this is in DosBox) you actually move that cylinder instantly and the ship trails it. In all the other shots I was stationary (except the first, slight movement), in this one you can see that I was going clear across the screen. Ship moves faster the further away it is, so here it's moving real fast but it will slow to a stop on the right side.

::edit::
Noticed I could just bomb my way to the next powerup and get it pretty easily, so here you go -



Also notice the asteroid (that I've always thought looks like a right facing head); there are maybe 10 or 15 levels in the 100 that have those coming from the top of the screen. Normal speed or so, but they're invincible and do a lot of damage. This pic somehow only has one, but there are often 5-10 at a time so it can get a bit hectic. A bit after I took that screenshot a single asteroid hit me and I lost ALL the extra weapons.

Also forgot to mention earlier, but starting at level 50, after the first big boss, at the start of each wave you automatically get that first powerup with the middle cannon if you don't have it or better already. Enemy ships change a little, color scheme of enemy ships changes, power goes up a little, that kind of thing.

[richardginn]

Go for this game as well from the same page...

Tyrian

[Kamakazie]

Tyrian is a classic! Also check out the game "Raptor" which is also on that page.
Tyrian is freeware, but the full version of Raptor can be found on GoG.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/tyrian_2000
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/rapto...s_2010_edition

[MrDigital]

Hey I played all those games back in the early 90s, crazy.

[Timman_24]

I was a little boy playing NES back in the early 90's. I don't think we got a PC until 1995. The first game I remember absolutely falling in love with was Lego Island when I was around 11-12.

I missed out on most of the 2D PC goodness. I do remember playing Oregon Trail on old Macs in 1st/2nd grade.

[ImaNihilist]

Tyrian is a classic! Also check out the game "Raptor" which is also on that page.
Tyrian is freeware, but the full version of Raptor can be found on GoG.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/tyrian_2000
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/rapto...s_2010_edition

OMG RAPTOR!!!!

I played the crap out of that game.

[kpxgq]

Looks a lot like raptor, another great game from my childhood