I don't know why the hell I never downloaded this earlier -- playing Master of Orion 1 and Master of Magic and all in all happier than a pig in shit.

I use this to play Buzz Aldrins Race into Space. Man I have not played Master of Orion for years... what a great game.

I use to it play the original X-Com

I break out MOO1 and Colonization every now and again. Yay dosbox.

I use VMWare... works great.

When MOO first came out, I knew nothing about computers and couldn't get the sound to work.

I downloaded DOSbox about 2 years ago to play X-Com and found MOO as well. It was like a brand new game with sound. Great stuff.

I don't know why the hell I never downloaded this earlier -- playing Master of Orion 1 and Master of Magic and all in all happier than a pig in shit.

In the unlikely event I ever escape from sports simulation games expect me to wind up remaking Master of Magic ... loved that game :D

In the unlikely event I ever escape from sports simulation games expect me to wind up remaking Master of Magic ... loved that game :D

Remake it anyway, dammit.

Magic Manager 1157AD? :)

In the unlikely event I ever escape from sports simulation games expect me to wind up remaking Master of Magic ... loved that game :D

Word is that Stardock is working on a remake for late next year sometime -- not sure if they have the actual licence or not though.

Is it free?

Is it free?

GFE

Master of Magic was one of the most awesome games ever.

GFE

T

Word is that Stardock is working on a remake for late next year sometime -- not sure if they have the actual licence or not though.

They were very close to doing a licensed remake:



GS: That's one of the things I wanted to ask you about. I wanted to ask about the Master of Magic license. You guys looked into that didn't you?

BW: Yeah, we did. We pursued it. Actually, Atari came to us a while ago. I thought they had a pretty good idea. That is, over the years, Atari has collected a lot of good IP (Intellectual Property) like X-Com, Star Control, Master of Orion, Master of Magic and a lot of others that a lot of people didn't realize that they held. So they came to us and said "We're not really interested in publishing these things ourselves, but what we'd like to do is license out the trademarks to third parties like you guys and we'll make a royalty off of them." So, we sat down and decided that Master of Magic would be our first, since it's close to something we'd done and Master of Orion 3 had already come out. We were able to agree on the money, so we thought everything was set, then their legal guys got involved, and that's where it stalled. They wanted the right to approve any marketing we did with a mutli-day stipulation. Say, for instance, me talking to you right now would be considered marketing and I would have to have approval first. That sort of thing. Then there was the weird thing, like if the game was manufactured overseas, someone from the company would have to be onsite to make sure there was no child labor.

GS: That's pretty odd. Do you mean from you guys or from Atari?

BW: Oh, from Stardock. So if we were doing a Korean or Russian version, someone from here would have to be there. There were all sorts of things in there that made it difficult to do. Then Atari ran into financial difficulties and we just decided to do our own fantasy strategy game. At that point, no one was really doing a Master of Magic. I think that there's a strong market for a fantasy strategy game that has some of the elements of Master of Magic like random maps and building your own cities. It's not really a competitor to an Age of Wonders or Heroes of Might and Magic, they're completely different game mechanics.

GS: Right, Master of Magic was random maps. Will there be multiplayer?

BW: Yeah, multiplayer will be in there.

GS: Ok, I just remember that in Master of Magic you had to do all sorts of crazy things to get multiplayer going, and then it was only hot seat.

BW: (Laughs) No, no, what we have now is Society which is our massive multiplayer game. That's going to be many years from now, five or six, but the building blocks from that are going into our other games. We've been using the multiplayer libraries in Galactic Civilizations and integrating them into the fantasy strategy game and other games.

GS: Makes sense to use as much as you can.

BW: Exactly.

GS: I guess that the Master of Magic game is out of the question now with Atari's problems.

BW: I'm not even sure what's happening there. We went to them and offered to buy the rights for six figures and they turned us down. They wanted all or nothing. This game is over ten years old. I mean, it's just the name. I could come out with Lords of Magic; we wouldn't do that because it's cheesy.

GS: Yeah, that's pretty close.

BW: Yeah, but we're talking about a ten year old game. There isn't a trademark for it; it expired, not that we'd name that. I was very surprised at how high they valued it. It definitely has value, but I was surprised that they were that aggressive about it.

GS: It's really strange because Master of Magic itself, though I'm a big fan and I know quite a few others who are, but it's not that huge of a name.

BW: Exactly. Personally, I'd love to get a hold of all those titles. Master of Orion 4. If someone went back and took Master of Orion 2, updated the graphics to modern standards and extended gameplay in areas that make sense, I think people would like that.

Full interview at http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061115/mcmaster_01.shtml . It's a good read.

this got me motivated to load up ole fb pro just for giggles, see if it would work - jackpot! except gameplay is REALLY slow, gotta figure out a way to speed up the animation...

+1 about DOSBox r0xx0rs.

I echo the earlier post about wishing I had known about this earlier. I wouldn't have kept around my old dos PC. Been playing CNW all weekend (the 2nd best 4x ever, imo), which runs only on DOS under 4GW. DOSBox plays this beautifully.

CNW?

Conquest of the New World (I think...)

I used it for Tie Fighter.

so many of the old games are better then the new games they are coming out with.

this got me motivated to load up ole fb pro just for giggles, see if it would work - jackpot! except gameplay is REALLY slow, gotta figure out a way to speed up the animation...

I heard about this game called Maximum Football. You should really check it out.

:D

so many of the old games are better then the new games they are coming out with.

At some point, someone decided that glitzy graphics were more important than good gameplay. That is when the gaming industry went downhill. Things were fine until you got to the point where the next graphic improvement is not that big of a deal. Now that we've reached that point, many companies do not know how to cope.

I agree. Not only does this extend to 4x games but to adventure games as well (where they had great stories).

sab is correct, it is Conquest of the New World, the 4x game that I would place right after Civ. For those of that don't know, this game out in 1996 (just before Civ2) but was ahead of it's time - it used Civ3-/SimCity2000-like sprites when you zoom into a placed improvement (mill, mine, farm, etc.). Also, it had the best turn-based combat ever devised - no one had ever come close to matching that, I think. It was runner-up to Civ2 (if I recall correctly) for Strategy Game of the Year (but was the Editor's Choice at CGW) but alas, it never really got popular. There a comparison of this to Colonization. As part as you know I love Sid, CNW was far, far superior but nowhere as popular.

Thanks to DOSBox, I am able to play one of my old favorites again. I get much more mileage out of doing that instead of newer games. Shows you where we have come. As a long time PC gamer (since 1988), the only PC that I have bought and played in the past 2 years have been Civ4 and its add-on (plus Gothic 3). That's it. It's worth going back to DOS games like CNW, Shogun, Full Throttle, or any other LucasArts titles, etc. Now if I can only get my Mac versions of King's Quest to play on DOSBox...

At some point, someone decided that glitzy graphics were more important than good gameplay. That is when the gaming industry went downhill. Things were fine until you got to the point where the next graphic improvement is not that big of a deal. Now that we've reached that point, many companies do not know how to cope.
+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1

breath

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+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
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+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
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+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1

I just realized that I still have CNW!

I just realized that I still have CNW!

You mean there is one other person in the world with this game?!?!?!? Cool.

Yeah I bought it as part of a strategy pack way back when.

It came with the original X-Com, original Heroes of Might and Magic, Jagged Alliance, and a few other games.

You mean there is one other person in the world with this game?!?!?!? Cool.

...I still have the game...

Just an image of a battle in CNW

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k251/linszoid/cnwbattle.jpg

I'll have to give that a try, never got around to it originally. However, I picked up Immortal Throne expansion for Titan Quest and it has me quite hooked for the moment.

I used this to play my fav game of all times, UFO enemy unkown. Too bad nobody ever was able to release a game like that, the perfcet mix of tatical combat and resources management.

You guys are not going to believe what I just dug up out of my collection. The first action game I played...Spear of Destiny (the popular enhancement to Castle Wolfenstein 3D). This game brings back so many memories and many, many hours of intense excitement.

Does DOSBOX work with Vista? I used it before, but I heard it doesn't work on Vista, so I never tried. Anyone know?

-- Steve --