DOS Defender is a DOS arcade space shooter. It's intended to run on DOSBox with a gamepad/joystick for control. Mouse input is supported but discouraged. It should work on any 386 running DOS, in case you wanted to play it that way, too. It should work fine with DOSBox's defaults, but bumping up the emulation speed will eliminate the occsional graphical artifacts.
The entire game is just a single binary with all assets (sound, music, graphics) embedded: DOSDEF.COM. There's no ending, it just goes on, increasing in difficulty, until you die. The only long term goal is to maximize your score.
More about this game: http://nullprogram.com/blog/2014/12/09/
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 57% |
| #51 | Fun | 3.83 |
| #97 | Overall | 3.76 |
| #145 | Mood | 3.48 |
| #154 | Audio | 3.44 |
| #219 | Theme | 3.90 |
| #293 | Graphics | 3.52 |
| #318 | Humor | 2.87 |
| #468 | Innovation | 3.24 |
Comments
How to run it? Have Windows 8.1 and it says that this is not for my computer.
Great for a DOS game. I actually got DOSBox a while back so I could play ZZT but this is way better xD
@frondeus Run it in DOSBox just like you would play an old DOS game. While Windows will sort of pretend like it might be able to run it -- because at one time it could still run these old DOS games directly -- it won't work that way on any modern system.
Whoa, a DOS game! Damn, this is fantastic! It took me a few tries to understand what the heck was going on, and the mouse controls is not exactly great. Sadly I didn't had a gamepad to test it with...
Man, if this was a thing back in the DOS age it would be so damn popular. Well done! My record was 6350 :D
DOSBox - neat idea. Didnt quite feel like I was getting hit/dying from the enemy bullets, but that DOSBox. Back in the days when there were no Windows, and all you had was one screen. Who woulda thunk it.
Awesome, love it! Great you are developed this in DOS! I've taken a look into the sourcecode, nicely done.
Haha, I've been tinkering around with DOS code (in Turbo-C) lately and also considered doing a DOS game for the LD. The theme is a good fit for that. Nice little game, and always a feat when you don't have a modern easy-to-use engine to work with :)
This is a very great game! I had a lot of fun playing this and I loved the retro graphics and audio (which I attempted to reproduce in my game with less success). The hardest part about the game was that if you're aiming at an enemy, that also means you're moving toward them... That led to some interesting strategies though!
Super fun. I've never played a dos game and that was really cool.
Argh! I didn't rate this because I'm not OK with installing stuff on my machine for the purposes of rating LD entries. I can't be the only person who feels this way. Maybe you could bundle it with the DOS Box emulator and distribute it as a zip? This article seems to indicate that's possible to do? http://polishlinux.org/apps/dosbox-part-ii-autonomous-dos-programs-for-windows-or-mac/
It says mouse input is supported, but if I run the game (using DOSBox) I get 'Move joystick around its full range, then center joystick and press button A'?
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Loved it. Picking up the old dos is always so nostalgic.