RetroBot

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.

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.

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.

In the futuristic year of 2015, Los Angeles is fully under Skynet's control. Extermination camps have been set up to wipe humanity off the face of the earth. You must escape one such camp and get in touch with John Connor, Kyle Rees and the rest of the resistance. This is the premise of Terminator: Future Shock, an ambitious first-person shooter from Bethesda SoftWorks, released in 1995. Where most mid-90s shooters were all about arcade action, Bethesda decided to have more of a narrative focus than was common at the time. Not that there's a lack of action though: not only do you get to kill T-800s on foot, you also can do so while driving vehicles and even flying aircrafts. Does all this result in an exciting game? Let's find out!

Hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") are joined by two DGC veterans for this episode. First of all we have Bjorn ("TigerQuoll") who has been on many an episode before and who, despite being new to the game, managed to play it all the way to the end. Last but not least we're finally joined by Watchful, who has sent us many voice messages over the years, but never joined the podcast in person until now! Not only does he have many fond memories of Future Shock to share with us, but he's also here to announce the launch of our new "sister podcast": Windows Game Club! That's right, it's no joke, you can check it out at windowsgameclub.com.

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2026/05/ep117.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (102 mins, 116 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:

• Windows Game Club, our new "sister podcast", hosted by Watchful.

• The Legacy 5 on archive.org, this is the warez disc Tijn had as a kid that gave him his copy of Future Shock. It never worked.

• 1996 interview with Future Shock producer Todd Howard on Reddit.

• The Terminator: Future Shock review by Mike Finkelstein on AsteroidG.com.

• YouTube video reviewing all the 1990s Terminator PC games by user GmanLives.

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 * 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 games: David X Newton (David Newton, merc) and Chris Kohler. * 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. * MegaZeux is a related game creation system with a similarly active community. * We talked more about Tim Sweeney on episode 046, back in September 2020.

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

In 1996, at a time when Realtime Strategy Games were more popular than ever, one game series decided to take a different approach to the genre and remove direct control over units and production. Like an actual Roman commander, in Blue Byte's Settlers II you don't tell each of your soldiers directly what to do, or what to produce. Rather, you give orders like "conquer that fortress", "attack those barracks", or "allocate more iron to the forge". And then your friend comes over with a second mouse so you can fight it out in split screen.

Join us as we discover what the word "Wuselfaktor" means and whether an indirectly controlled strategy game makes any sense at all.

Our hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") are joined by DGC members Wes ("Wesbat") and Benedikt ("Eulisker"), as well as Christopher ("Spike") from the "Return to the Roots" project.

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2026/03/ep114.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (160 mins, 184 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:

• Return to the Roots is a faithful reimplementation of the game

• Our guest Christopher (Spike) made a video tutorial about training soldiers efficiently

• Settlers II review on GoodOldDays.net by DGC member Mr. Creosote

• The Settlers II.net is an online encyclopedia on "The Settlers II Gold Edition" and "Return to the Roots"

• A large collection of custom maps on Isch und Ivans Settler II page

• Siedler 2-MissionCD is an unofficial game extension by Jürgen Nagel

• Christoph Kamon's bachelor's thesis.

• Widelands is a free, open-source real-time strategy game inspired by Settlers II.

• Official Amiga-version of Settlers II released in 2025