Games for moms

[Tijn]

#254

There are a bunch of DOS games my mom used to play. I played most of them only for a bit, but my mom used to play these for hundreds of hours. So there must be something good about them, right? 😀

SUPAPLEX
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The first game I want to mention is Supaplex, from 1991. My mom played this furiously and I must say, I played this quite a bit too 😀 It’s supposedly a clone of Boulder Dash, but I’ve never played Boulder Dash, so I wouldn’t know really. To me, Supaplex was just a fun puzzle game with cool mechanics and graphics.

It’s basically an indie-game, as it was developed by 2 students, who wanted to create a Boulder Dash-clone that could fit onto a single floppy disk. The original authors have since declared the game freeware, so that’s pretty cool. There’s a download (+ speedfix for faster computers) available here: http://www.elmerproductions.com/sp/dlinst.html

SUPER TETRIS
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The second game that comes to mind is Super Tetris, also from 1991, published by Spectrum HoloByte. It’s basically Tetris, but with a few cool additions, such as more shapes (up to 6 blocks I think?) and… bombs! These bombs remove blocks surrounding the point of impact, allowing you to undo mistakes. Very handy indeed!

The game also featured these surreal Russia/circus-themed photographs. Pretty weird if you ask me, but my mom didn’t seem to mind, haha.

BOLO BALL
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The last game I want to bring up is Bolo Ball, by Soleau Software, from 1992. In this game you try to score points by throwing balls down a level, which is filled with blocks, tunnels and bonuses. The further down the ball goes, the more points you score. You play against an AI or another human (hotseat), so the goal is to score more points than your opponent.

Soleau made *a lot* of DOS games back in the day. They appear to be still in business, because their website is still online and even offers downloads for all of their games 😀 http://www.soleau.com/dosgame.html I think these are demos, but still, pretty cool!

[wan]

#639

Playing a small game would be a nice way to help us catch up with the schedule!

That Tetris background is terrible so I would be more interested in trying a Boulder Dash-like game like this Supaplex.

[evilcommiedictator]

#1247

Surely something like Carmen Sandiego or Cloxworx could be good too?

[LunarLoony]

#1466

My mum always enjoyed playing Crusher Castle II. It’s another Soleau game – they must be pretty popular amongst mums! I think she got as far as the magic invisible cat, but couldn’t find it.

Great game design, huh?

(Side note: you can still buy all Soleau’s DOS games from their website.)

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[pushblock]

#4368

The only game I remember my mom playing was Sokoban (a CGA game, not sure how many of those were out there for DOS).

That and some times she also helped my brother and I with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade puzzles 🙂

[TigerQuoll]

#4372

My Mum played a text-mode tetris game on our old XT clone computer, and solitaire on later computers. That is it.

BTW Tijn, I’m a little floored by that super tetris. I made a game that was almost exactly that in qbasic when I was 16 or 17! I thought I had come up with the idea myself! (Of course it looked way worse and was super buggy)

[KewlioMZX]

#4379

It looks like Soleau Software is no longer in operation. :/ Kind of sad. I’ve played a bunch of their games. If he’s no longer selling his games, someone should approach William Soleau and see if he’s willing to put them up somewhere for free.

[edit] I decided to look into when this may have happened. Looks like the last snapshot on the Wayback Machine of the site being active was November 12th, 2020. The next snapshot is on January 6th of this year, and the site was closed, so they probably shut down at the end of last year.

[claw]

#4468

My mum likes RPGs. She was all about Eye of the Beholder and the Lands of Lore series. I think the last major game she played was Skyrim and its expansions.

[rnlf]

#4474

Yeah, the name for this thread seems a bit dated.
Maybe it’s better to call it Casual Games or something like that.