Shareware games that aren’t “cursed”
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We all know the Shareware curse – the shareware episode of a game is absolutely awesome and you can’t wait to play the rest of it. Eventually you save up your pocket money and actually buy the full game only to find the rest of it is… meh. At best.
There’s few or no new assets, the levels feel slapped together in 5 minutes, and playing it just feels like a chore.
That seems to be the default for shareware. But I want to know about the rare few that aren’t cursed!
The one that springs to my mind is “Monster Bash” by Apogee (also a good contender for an October game here, wink wink!)
Right up to the very last level this game keeps throwing new enemies and even entirely new tilesets at you. The second or third last(?) level even has completely new mechanics not seen before in the rest of the game.
The levels also stay consistently well designed and iconic. The only place they seemed to have dropped the ball was not giving you any new weapons or items. But it’s definitely one I did not feel ripped off by back in the day!
So what uncursed Shareware games have you played?
It’s so much easier to list some examples of ‘cursed’ ones..
One Must Fall 2097 definitely had a lot of good stuff in the full version. 7 more robots to play as (though the Jaguar is the best bot), and was it 75% more of the tournament mode to play. I finished and enjoyed the whole campaign, so it must have been good enough.
In addition to the Apogee’s episode model, I also associate shareware with my native Finnish bedroom coder style shareware games. These were often versus-type games, and you would get more levels, weapons etc when you registered. I was certainly happy to pay a bit of pocket money for these, every now and then. Stuff money in an envelope, send it off and receive a floppy back later. Good times.
Yes, there are definitely more cursed ones than non-cursed. (Don’t tell anyone, but I think even Doom is a bit cursed!)
I would agree with your example of OMF though.
The only shareware game I ever tried to register was Invasion of the Mutant Space Bats of Doom. The author was accepting registration fees well into the 2000’s…but seemingly never fulfilled those orders. That goes beyond curse into flat-out ripoff territory.
Also common is where the shareware version itself is “cursed” in some way. The later titles in the Tommy’s Toys series (a bunch of ASCII games) have a 60-second countdown timer that has to tick down to zero before you can actually play. That doesn’t make me want to register – it just makes me mad.
Gog and Steam sell several full versions of former shareware titles, and I’d have to say Epic Pinball is one that I would have been delighted with, if I had registered it back in the day. Even the shareware version (with only the first table) always kept me coming back for more, and there are many other tables that are a joy to play, including a Jill of the Jungle-themed one. And the soundtracks are awesome.
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