In 1982 Greg Kuperberg and Orion Software put out Paratrooper, an EGA action shooter game on the brand new IBM-PC that put you in a gunner’s turret as helicopters and parachuting soldiers invaded. Before that, in 1981, Mark Allen released Sabotage for the Apple II. They were early examples if a twist on a convention concept: shoot everything to get points, but shooting costs points.

Ten years later, Night Raid was released with a shareware version by Argo Games and Software Creations in 1992 to little fanfare.

In Night Raid, commonly confused as Nite Raid for its DOS 8-character folder abbreviation, which I acquired in the 90s on a plain white 3.5″ floppy put out by Software for Everyone, a company that made their living by repackaging shareware, charging the legally allowed “copying and disk fee.”

The game has good graphics and sound for its time. It’s an addictive style too — you can shoot as many shells as you want, but the real object of the game is to rack up a high score. You get you get two points for shooting paratroopers, five for large, slow airplanes, 10 for smaller, faster planes, and 10 points for shooting down deadly smart bombs. It costs one point for each shell costs you a point, and you will get down to zero quite fast if you’re not quiet.

Of course, if you just want to blow off some steam, go ahead and blast the bejesus out of everything and keep firing those shells … boom, boom, boom, boom.

If one criticism is to be levied against Night Raid, it’s that the shareware is so short, only a handful of levels that takes up about 10 minutes of your gaming day to finish.

The registered version gets progressively harder, with more troopers, planes, and bombs engaging your hapless little bunker.

There is something to be said for the graphics, too. If you shoot the troopers parachute, he waves his arms as he plummets to the ground. During level intermissions, you get entertained by asides like pizza deliveries. For a game that three guys put together, it’s pretty detailed.

This game boasted over a megabyte of 256 color graphics, music, AND two-channel audio.

Ye Olde System Requirements:

• VGA Graphics Card
• 286 or better
• AdLib/SB/SS support
• 386 recommended

Download the readme file

Ahh, 1993. The first person shooter was bursting forth in popularity with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. We sped through command prompts and wrote our own config.sys and autoexec.bat files to make sure we had the free memory to run our new games. The biggest challenge: was it worth the memory sacrifice to enable the mouse?

One week before id Software took over the world with the shareware release of Doom, Apogee followed the monumental success of Wolf 3D with their next action shooter, Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. Doom squashed it; Blake Stone sold poorly despite positive reviews. id even had a stake in Blake Stone, it build the texture mapping engine for the game. But Doom was destined for icon status.

“We had decent pre-orders and the first couple of months were pretty good but sales dropped pretty quickly,” said Mike Maynard, in a 1996 interview. His company, Jam Productions, put out Blake Stone. “Had we gotten more input from Apogee earlier on in the development process I think we could’ve released the game 3-4 months earlier than we did.”

The game set in the year 2140. Robert Wills Stone III — Blake — is an agent of the British Intelligence, recruited after a highly successful career in the Royal Navy. He was sent out to investigate Dr. Phrus Goldfire, a mad geneticist whose criminal organization, STAR, is set out to conquer the world. Stone has to fight through six campaigns, representing six different STAR facilities, to destroy Goldfire’s mutant and human army before it can invade.

This was a big game, built on an engine that was based on the original Wolfenstein 3D engine. The six campaigns provided many hours of gameplay.

The game has a lot of features including food tokens to increase health, friendly “informant” scientists who give you items, and the previews of the main boss, Dr. Goldfire, appearing throughout the campaigns to fight you, only to retreat once you hit him enough times.

This was another game I found on the old, red Aztech’s Super Shareware Games CD that came with my first CD-ROM drive. It’s a permanent fixture in The Old Shoebox.

The full version is available from Apogee/3D Realms for $10. Apogee and Jam would follow with a sequel in 1994.

Download Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold shareware FREE from Blast Magazine.

Very simple. Very basic. Download the Shareware Doom1.wad free from Blast Magazine.

From id: “Doom 95 continues the hyperviolent exploits that propelled the original Doom to infamy. Face the onslaught of demons and specters that populate this terror-filled underworld. Slip a few shells into your shotgun and get ready to kick some demon butt.”

Doom 95 was Doom’s first foray into the native Windows world. It let you run Doom, Doom 2 and PWAD’s in 640×480 resolution — twice the image quality of the original Dos version.

While it suffers some compatibility issues on modern systems, Doom 95 remains a decent, quick, portable and easy option for running Doom and user-created levels. Doom 95 includes the shareware Doom1.wad first episode.

Download Doom 95 free from Blast Magazine

In December 2005, Apogee/3D Realms released the classic side-scrolling action game Bio Menace as a freeware “Christmas present” for its customers and loyal fans.

At that time, the game had floundered around incompatibility issues and relative obscurity — DOSBox wasn’t a big deal yet.

The game is built on the Commander Keen 2D engine and designed as a one-man show by Jim Norwood.

This is another game I first encountered on the Aztech’s Super Shareware Games CD.

Bio Menace is just an awesome game. You play CIA operative, Snake Logan, on recon duty in Metro City, which has been taken over by the evil Dr. Mangle and a horde of vicious mutants. (The mutants look kindly cuddly in the game, but whatever.) This is a game that combines elements of action, cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic and adventure in one floppy disc-sized install.

In the game, you get to maximize Snake’s killing power with machine guns, super bullets, plasma bolts, two different kinds of grenades and even land mines. Bio Menace consists of three episodes with secret levels and hidden easter egg in the second episode.

The game is non-stop and very challenging. Snake has very limited health, and medkits are in short supply.

Bio Menace has wonderful VGA graphics, Ad Lib music and Sound Blaster compatibility.

I’ll never fully understand why this game didn’t take off in modern gaming with sequels and console remakes, but you can enjoy the original, as intended, for free.

Download Bio Menace free from Blast Magazine

Ye Olde System Requirements:

• IBM PC and compatibles
• 286 Computer (386 or higher recommended)
• 575k of conventional memory
• 5 meg of Hard Drive Space (10 meg for registered)
• Supports Sound Blaster, Ad Lib and Joystick

Released quickly after Doom, using a modified version of the same game engine, Heretic is a fantasy first person shooter designed by Raven Software, published by id Software, and distributed, along with everything else in those days, by GT Interactive in 1994.

Heretic introduced ambient noise — evil laughter and such — that was random, as opposed to Doom’s enemy-spawned noises.

Like the Doom story, Heretic has hellish elements, demons and tons of different weapons at your disposal. There were also plenty of cheat codes.

There has always been a ton of literature and source documentation on the Doom/Heretic/Hexen/Quake games, and I was able to dig up the original FAQ for Heretic, which is a fun, long read and will tell you just about everything you’d ever want to know about this ultra-classic title.

Heretic is a supernatural blast-fest that is the most realistic, action-packed fantasy combat computer game for the PC. Created by the graphic masters at Raven Software in concert with the technical gurus of id Software, Heretic adds new levels of play and graphic wonder to the tried and true DOOM gaming environment.

In the old days, PC games came in large boxes, twice the size of the puny ones they come in now. Even my original Heretic shareware CD came in a large box and cost money at Toys”R”Us way back when.

One of the best things about these games in the present is that their source code has been released, and modern, high-resolution, Direct3D versions of the game are being made available to breathe new life into games like Heretic. This is a fine example of “they don’t make them like they used to.”

Ye Olde System Requirements:

• IBM PC and compatibles/MS DOS (works on DOSBox)
• 486-33
• 4 MB RAM
• 10 MB hard disk space

Download Heretic shareware from Blast Magazine

Long before Takara developed their 2002 mixed-reviews tank sim, Epic Megagames was distributing Seek and Destroy, a PC action game that combined tank and chopper elements.

I first encountered Seek and Destroy in the July, 1996 issue of Interactive Entertainment (IE), the CD portion of Computer Games Strategy Plus magazine (previously called Strategy Plus, then called Computer Games, now sorta out of business, but it’s coming back.).

This CD was stacked — also including playable demos and shareware of Duke Nukem 3D, Zork Nemesis, Afterlife, Normality, Decathlon and Battle Arena Toshinden as well as video reviews of several games and textual archives of all 24 previous issues of the CD magazine. (It was based, fittingly enough, a CDMag.com)

The guys at IE gave Seek and Destroy a favorable review, and I wholeheartedly agreed.

From the publisher: Seek & Destroy combines elements of Choplifter, Desert Strike, and Return Fire. Pilot a chopper or a tank against hordes of enemies. Not too deep, but lots and lots of fun! This is the SHAREWARE version of the game, not a demo!

From the start, Safari Software — which Epic bought out entirely in 1997 — admits that Seek and Destroy combines elements of other fun, pick-up-and-go games. They weren’t really trying to do much different; you fly around in a chopper or drive around in a tank and shoot the hell out of everything. Sometimes they mix it up by incorporating a demolition expert you have to drop of and pick up or some other subplots, but in the end, Search and Destroy is the kind of game you can just play, and play and play again. The controls are easy, the weapons are massive and there’s plenty to shoot at. There’s no getting lost in a 36-hour developing plot. Start the game, shoot stuff.

Seek and Destroy is still technically available from Epic Classics, but I’m not so sure about the © 2000 on the site…

Here’s IE’s original video review of Seek and Destroy.

Ye Olde System Requirements:

• IBM PC and compatibles
• Minimum: 486, Recommended: 486/66
• 4 MB RAM
• 19 MB (CD version) or 4 MB (disk version) of hard disk space
• Dos game with Windows Installer

Download Seek and Destroy shareware free from Blast Magazine

Here’s another out of that old Aztech’s Super Games cd:

At the twilight of the Eastern-Han Dynasty of ancient China, under the reign of the frail and incompetent emperor Han-Ling, the country was in disarray when the government was run by a group of corrupted eunuchs-theso-called “Ten Attendants.” Hardship and famine finally threw the country into turmoil. The rebellion quickly spread over the country. The rebels were known as “Yellow Scarfs” because they covered their heads with yellow scarfs. To get the full support of the generals in the military regions, Emperor Han-Ling entrusted them with more military power to put down the uprising. The Yellow Scarfs were finally crushed but at the expense of the central government which saw its authority threatened by the generals turned warlords. One of these warlords, Dong Zhuo, on the pretext of dislodging the Ten Attendants, marched into the capital city Luoyang and then usurped the throne. Although Dong Zhuo was quickly defeated by other allied generals, the turmoil was far from over. As the weakened Eastern-Han Dynasty no longer had authority over the whole country, every warlord was watching for the opportunity to take over the leadership. After ten years of suffering from numerous battles between warlords, the people in northern China finally had some respite when Cao Cao, a Machiavellian strategist, eliminated all his opponents in the North.

Not content with his sucesses in the North, Cao Cao wanted to reign over the whole China by eliminating the rest of the warlords in the South. His first target was Liu Bei who, being a royal prince of the Eastern-Han Dynasty, has a legitimate claim to the throne. Though small in force, Liu Bei was well entrenched in the country of Jing, and he knew how to preserve himself by allying with a neighboring warlord Sun Quan. Together they engineered a serious b;pw to the ambition of Cao Cao when they defeated his great army in the Campaign of Chibi.

Having suffered a great loss, Cao Cao had no alternative but to retreat to the north. Taking advantages of his military success, Liu Bei went further to occupy the region of Sichuan so as to consolidate his position in the country of Jing. With the help of his five intrepid generals — Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Ma Cao and Huang Zhong, he managed to build up an army strong enough to wrestle alone with Cao Cao. With the aim of restoring the Eastern-Han Dynasty, he now sets off to the North to confront Cao Cao. But Cao Cao is by no means a chicken. He also has many experienced generals like Duab Weum Xy Xy abd Xuahou Chn holding out in various fortresses.

Will Liu Bei over come all these obstacles on his way to the North? Will he finally defeat Cao Cao to restore the Eastern-Han Dynasty?

And that’s how 1993′s Sango Fighter is laid out in its original documentation.

Back then, a small Taiwanese company called Panda Entertainment set out to design a historically accurate 2D fighter. The result was Sango Fighter — which was supposed to be marketed as “Violent Vengeance” in the US, but the distributor went with the original name.

Sango Fighter was also a Sega Master title called Sangokushi. Released exclusively in Asia, the Master port was 8MB and one of the largest in size ever released on the console.

This is, of course, a Dos title, but it has amazing graphics, a loud MIDI soundtrack and 12 playable characters based on real 2nd century Chinese warriors. The controls are a little awkward, but Sango Fighter is an enjoyable play and works perfectly in Dosbox. The shareware version is limited to fewer players and the first part of the story mode.

Sango Fighter never took off in the US. Street Fighter was already in arcades by 1987 and Midway put out it’s own 2D fighter — you may have heard of it, Mortal Kombat — in 1992, and Acclaim was quick to put out a home version. Sango Fighter never saw any Super Nintendo or Genesis (Mega Drive) action, which may have helped.

Download 1993′s Sango Fighter shareware free from Blast Magazine.

Today’s Old Shoebox feature is a game that brought me a ton of joy in the mid-90s. The game is Raptor: Call of the Shadows and the CD I originally found it on is called “Aztech’s Super Games,” a red CD-ROM that came bundled with my first 4x CD-ROM drive many years ago. The CD first exposed me to Duke Nukem (which Aztech spelled Nuk’Em) I and II, Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, Biomence and a somewhat successful first-person shooter game called Doom.

Raptor: Call of the Shadows is one of the best Dos-based vertical shooters ever made. The concept was simple and quintessential to a period of gaming where you configured your sound card and never stopped shooting.

It was also fairly advanced for its April 1, 1994 release date. It had stunning graphics, background music and tons of individual sound effects from machine guns to missiles to explosions.

The plot was simple — you were a mercenary paid to eliminate “MegaCorp’s” competitors. Take it from 3D Realms: “In the future as a mercenary flying the super-tech Raptor, you’ll be sent on interplanetary missions to knock off top competitors of MegaCorp. Battle against hordes of relentless enemies. Spend the bounty you receive from their demise to expand your devastating arsenal, which can be upgraded with 14 hard core weapons!”

Raptor was mostly a keyboard-controller game but it supported mouse movement, joysticks and gamepads.

The came is divided into three sectors, giving you some new enemies and scenery in each: Bravo Sector, Tango Sector, and Outer Regions, with 9 levels in each region.

The first episode, the Bravo Sector, is largely urban/jungle, ending with a large enemy oil rig.

Tango Sector, the second campaign, includes some more variety including a chemical plant, farms, city environments and an airbase. In the final episode, Outer Regions, the player travels through moons, ice worlds and volcanic wastelands. The last two sectors also have a “night wave” where you fight at nighttime, adding to the game’s detail.

The Bravo Sector is the easiest of the three, and it allows players to save up money to weapon and shield upgrades to fight effectively in the other two campaigns later.

Raptor and many other classic titles are kept alive by 3D Realms/Apogee today. Developer Scott Host — whose company, Cygnus, worked on Raptor — now markets a windows version of the shooter.

Ye Olde System Requirements:

• 386DX/40 Computer (486DX2/66 strongly recommended)
• 2 meg of free memory (A 4 meg machine is recommended)
• 7.1 meg of Hard Drive Space (for shareware)
• 15.8 meg of Hard Drive Space (for registered)

Download Raptor: Call of the Shadows Shareware Edition free from Blast Magazine.

Updated: 12/7/07: Here’s a GREAT gameplay video.

This review originally appeared on Reviewcenter.com and Sharewarejunkies.com in 1998 during the Golden Age of independent shareware computer games.

Rock Slide is a Tetris clone puzzle game. The program runs pretty good, except for a slight bug that involves the “Rocks.” If you hold down to get a rock to fall all the way down, then the next group of rocks will automatically fall straight down also.

The graphics that are actually not as good as Tetris’, and there is only one sound effect and no music.

The installation program is just plain bad. You can only install the program to the default directory, which is C:\Rock. This will clutter up your root drive, which will eventually degrade your system performance, slightly.*

The program is pretty user friendly, and there are some cool features like a high scores list. Overall, it’s not worth $10, and if you are satisfied with Microsoft’s version of Tetris, or any other Tetris-style puzzle game, then there is no need to download or buy this software, however, if you really like challenging puzzlers, then you will like to play this game…for a little while.

*Newer versions of this game have corrected the installation problems.

Download the shareware free from Blast!

Publisher: AGCrump Software
Developer: AGCrump Software
Platform: PC
Genre: Puzzle
Players: 1

Playability: 3 out of 5 stars
Learning Curve: 5 out of 5 stars
Sound: 2 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 3 out of 5 stars
Overall: 3 out of 5 stars

This review originally appeared on Reviewcenter.com and Sharewarejunkies.com in 1998 during the Golden Age of shareware gaming. The game (and manufacturer’s website) remain the same today as they were back then. This one stands out as a testament to the way the Internet once was.

By John Guilfoil

Don’t be scared off by the name. Virus the Game is a challenging and very addicting arcade puzzler. This is one of the few games where you get to be the bad guy. In Virus the Game, you ARE the virus.

The object of the game is to move around the screen, exposing parts of a hard drive sector looking for data to “eat.” Beware, the anti virus is on the hunt, and if you get into a fight with him, he’ll tear you apart!

The new version of Virus, 1.5 features faster keyboard response as well as sharper graphics than previous versions. The game runs very well on just about any system.

I definitely recommend downloading the shareware, and you might even want to consider purchasing the full version. The full version features 30 levels, 3 secret levels, lasers that track on to you, a top ten scores list and the newest version of Virus whenever it comes out.

The shareware version of Virus lets you to get a taste of the game — you get to create virtual hard drive rampage in the first two levels.

Download the shareware free from Blast!

Publisher: DynoTech Software
Developer: DynoTech Software
Platform: PC
Genre: Strategy/Puzzle
Players: 1

Technical Requirements:
386 or faster CPU, 4MB RAM, Windows 3x, Windows 9x, or OS/2 Warp, 256 Color VGA, Mouse or Joystick, Sound Card (optional, but recommended).

Playability: 4 out of 5 stars
Learning Curve: 4 out of 5 stars
Sound: 4 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall: 4 out of 5 stars