I'm pretty sure Doom will be the most popular (and my pick too), but I'll throw a shout-out to Epic Pinball; that Android table was the best one in the game anyway.
Who want-a some Wang?!
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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I think this question just fried my brain. I don’t even know where to start.
Most played shareware of all time though was probably Transport Tycoon.
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"Stars!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars!
A 4X game for Win 3.11 that was set up for multi-player by email and ftp turbo.
Fantastically ergonomic use of early GUI features.
You could design your own alien race and ships, the default races were well balanced, but all played very differently.
ZZT, the game that launched Epic. Say, there's gotta be a ZZT community somewhere on lemmy, right?
I was so addicted to ZZT back then! The player-made worlds were such a delight, and my slow-ass computer which choked on so many then-current games ran them without trouble.
Now I want to try it out again.
People are still making games using it! When I get a bit more free time I want to polish up and republish the ones I made.
I always wanted to play with the editor and make a game with it back then, but never got around to it. Perhaps it's still not too late!
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We had to be memory experts back then. QEMM FTW!
Might be pushing the limits of shareware, but the demo of Quake 1 on cd for a buck. A simple console command unlocked the full version.
Tyrian
I can't tell you how many times I played the shareware version of Gazillionaire.
Great deal.
Want a fun piece of trivia? Epic Pinball launched Digital Extremes, the developer behind Warframe.
And is named Epic because of Epic (Mega)Games
brave dwarves 1
The graphic design looks so much like Spelunky. Cool!
I spent a lot of time playing Raptor: Call of the Shadows, a vertically-scrolling shooter with an upgrade system.
There was also Rise of the Triad, a pretty decent Doom-clone
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Realmz
My first FPS and an excellent one. Sooo many hidden rooms and insane enemies.
Apogee was on fire during that whole era
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Wolfenstein 3d, and commander Keen
I spent so many hours as a kid on my dad's Thinkpad playing Gravity Well. It came on one of those "50 Great Games" CDs or something like that. The goal is to claim all the planets in the system, which you do by simply landing on them, then building defenses against your opponents. It's so much fun because your ship has pretty realistic inertia and the planets have actual gravity wells. The AI opponents can be quite difficult and aggressive. Challenging and fun, with great sound effects for the time!
This screenshot is from an Internet Archive page for the game, but I'm pretty sure it's only the shareware version. I gotta check again when I get off work!
Edit: I'm 99% certain it's from this exact CD for anyone interested. I've never been able to find a full version unfortunately...
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Mordor 1 The Depths of Dejenol
still available from Decklins Demise
Its the game that got me into dungeon crawlers particularly Demise: Rise of the Ku'Tan, and the epxansions Ascension and Revenge of the Tavern Keeper