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Best games for IBM XT ?

V

VintageVic

Experienced Member
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I'm having a blast with Cosmic Crusader !
What a great arcade, that I completely missed back in the day when I had 286.

Paratroopers bring back memories from long time ago. Heh, it seems that the
skills acquired have not vanished anywhere! In fact, I'm doing better than back
then, easily exceeded 1000 points just with a few attemps (what's your record?).

Having fun with XT and some games here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfgXrqIfxIE&t=2s

What game recommendations I should not miss with the XT ?
 
You are probably looking for "small games from the early PC years", because an XT is able to play much more sophisticated games.

It depends on your personal taste, but Flightmare for example is a unique classic that most of us like.

On the other hand, Alley Cat is another classic that many like (so do I), but some hate it...

A few more recommendations:

PC-Man
Digger
PC Pool (I love its sound on the beeper!)
Xonix and Antix

VintageVic said:
Having fun with XT and some games here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfgXrqIfxIE&t=2s
Click to expand...

You should use a CGA or EGA monitor and card instead of VGA, so Pitstop 2 would have its correct Colors, and probably Bouncing Babies wouldn't be broken. Most games run fine on VGA, but some have issues.
 
RobertK said:
You are probably looking for "small games from the early PC years", because an XT is able to play much more sophisticated games.

It depends on your personal taste, but Flightmare for example is a unique classic that most of us like.

On the other hand, Alley Cat is another classic that many like (so do I), but some hate it...

A few more recommendations:

PC-Man
Digger
PC Pool (I love its sound on the beeper!)
Xonix and Antix


You should use a CGA or EGA monitor and card instead of VGA, so Pitstop 2 would have its correct Colors, and probably Bouncing Babies wouldn't be broken. Most games run fine on VGA, but some have issues.
Click to expand...

Ah, Flightmare! I have a very faint memory, when I look at the screen capture
of flightmare that I must have tried it very long ago. Must have been around -91, when
I had my fist pc, 286. Yes, I must add that to the XT.

CAT brings back memories and I do have it already! I will add PC Pool, Xonix and Antix to the list
of games to try, thank you for suggestin :cool:.

I do not have cga/ega monitors, but considering to find one on ebay.
My first VGA adapter was faulty, that's why the bouncing babies looked bad.
Now, after changing to properly working vga adapter, it looks good (see attached pics).

And yes, you got my point. I was just hoping to find small early games for early pc.
Many are probably new to me, like Cosmic Crusader was. Also, at least for the moment, I have
just the original 10Mb HD on the XT, it would not fit many 'bigger' games, if one would consider
1-2 Mb sized games big :).

12.jpg 13.jpg
 
Towmater said:
CGA, or VGA? I'd go with Railroad Tycoon.
Click to expand...

Currently, VGA is all I have.
Thank you for suggesting this! Railroad tycoon is a great classic, that I used to spent hours and hours with!
I wonder, it it will run with 512kb ram? Currently I do not have mouse also, or com port at the xt. I will probably
build a 386 computer, which might suit a bit better for Railroad Tycoon.
 
Stone said:
How about SimCity Classic?
Click to expand...

Ah, yes Simcity! I do remember spending hours with it as well long time ago.
However, it might need a mouse - and if not exactly required, it is at least much more
pleasant to play with a mouse. Currently, I'm not able to hook a mouse to the XT.
 
VintageVic said:
I do not have cga/ega monitors, but considering to find one on ebay.
Click to expand...
Getting a CGA or EGA card should not be too difficult for you.
Finding a CGA monitor will be hard.
Finding an EGA monitor at a reasonable price will be very difficult (at least in Europe), and shipping is expensive and dangerous for such a delicate monster. I'm still looking for one since mine broke down a few years ago.

You could build a CGA to SCART-Adaptor that would allow you to connect your XT to a CRT TV, this dramatically improves the retro feeling. :) It even works with EGA in 320x200 and 640x200 modes.
 
RobertK said:
Getting a CGA or EGA card should not be too difficult for you.
Finding a CGA monitor will be hard.
Finding an EGA monitor at a reasonable price will be very difficult (at least in Europe), and shipping is expensive and dangerous for such a delicate monster. I'm still looking for one since mine broke down a few years ago.

You could build a CGA to SCART-Adaptor that would allow you to connect your XT to a CRT TV, this dramatically improves the retro feeling. :) It even works with EGA in 320x200 and 640x200 modes.
Click to expand...

Interesting.

Are there any other reason to use EGA, instead of VGA besides retro feeling ?
I might get the retro feeling, if I can find my crt VGA display. Isn't VGA capable of
showing all colours of EGA - or are there some actual limitations in using VGA with retro games ?
 
VintageVic said:
Interesting.

Are there any other reason to use EGA, instead of VGA besides retro feeling ?
I might get the retro feeling, if I can find my crt VGA display. Isn't VGA capable of
showing all colours of EGA - or are there some actual limitations in using VGA with retro games ?
Click to expand...

VGA is 100% backwards compatible with EGA, but - when you use CGA/EGA modes on a VGA display they are double scanned (line doubled) by the VGA card itself

so using original EGA/CGA displays and their respective cards gives a somewhat more authentic image with natural "scanlines"
 
The very first game that I bought in 1983 for my IBM PC 5150 was BurgerTime.

Jim did a demo video for that:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW0QJqBsszQ

The version I had was a full retail version, which was a copy protected bootloader version. I might have spent more time using debug to trace through the code to learn how the bootloader copy protection scheme worked than I spent playing the game. Some non-512 byte sectors, some non-standard numbered sectors, some sectors with CRC errors. Eventually I was able to create a working copy of the disk using debug to manually create all of the non-standard sectors and even sectors with CRC errors. Never tried to figure out how to create a version of the program that would load and run from a standard DOS formatted floppy.

Too bad I don't still have that original IBM PC 5150 and that original BurgerTime floppy.

If I remember right the second game that I bought retail for my IBM PC 5150 was a version of Ultima, maybe it was Ultima IV?
 
Last edited:
10.jpg

Thanks for the video link!
I tried burger time earlier, but it seemed too difficult. Now, after watching the video
of its gameplay, it just became much more playable. It's a matter of playing it clever.

But is that really CGA ? CGA composite in the video and CGA rgb in my screenshot here.
What a huge difference in colors ? I was recommended to build CGA - SCART cable
earlier. It just became much more interesting, if it can improve colors that much!

Edit:
I have two versions of Burger time.
The one has some more sound effects, other than that, I did not notice any difference.
They are most likely cracked, if the original came with copy protection.
 
CGA can display 16 colors over composite, and that's what I chose when making the video. The creators of the game specifically designed two sets of graphics for the game, and the composite graphics are much more colorful as a result. It's an excellent conversion to the PC, but you really need to take the composite signal out of the CGA card and put it directly into a monitor that can handle NTSC signals to see it.

I don't know what the CGA to SCART connector does -- if it's an RGB solution, it won't work with composite output graphics.
 
Trixter said:
CGA can display 16 colors over composite, and that's what I chose when making the video. The creators of the game specifically designed two sets of graphics for the game, and the composite graphics are much more colorful as a result. It's an excellent conversion to the PC, but you really need to take the composite signal out of the CGA card and put it directly into a monitor that can handle NTSC signals to see it.
Click to expand...

Wow, I thought 16 colors were only possible in cga text mode.

hmm. I guess composite comes from a round composite out connector from the CGA adapter.
I have only Hercules graphic adapter, that had D9 connector. I maybe out of luck to have
that many colors with my current equipment. Also, we have PAL, not NTSC here in Finland.

Are there many known games that are optimised for CGA Composite ?
 
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