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Why are games from this era never talked about?
The early 2000s were a gold mine for experimental games.
Now that we have game engines that make developing games 10 times easier, games seem to have stagnated in terms of creativity.

I've made a thread like this before some time ago, in case you're experiencing deja vu.
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Wonderland Adventures
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>>11422032
Made by the same creators, Krabby Quest.
This game seems to be lost in time, though.
It's the only Midnight Synergy game I don't have.
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>>11422032
Spooky Castle
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Snowy: The Bear's Adventures
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Ostrich Runner
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Turtle Odyssey 2

I noticed how games from this era were obsessed with gems.
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Turtle Bay
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Hamster Ball
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Supercow
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Bud Redhead
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Magic Ball 2
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Beetle Bug
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Alien Shooter
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Platypus
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Creatures
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Axy Snake
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Chicken Rush Deluxe
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Ocean Commander
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Superstar Chefs
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Smiles: Fortune Hunters
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Island Wars 2
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Moorhuhn X
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Mage Bros
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Battle Painters
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Hopmon
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(Defense of the) Oasis
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Heavy Weapon Deluxe
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Jets'n'Guns
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Gold Miner Joe
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Feeding Frenzy 2
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Lemonade Tycoon
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PacQuest 3D
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Snail Mail
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Varmintz
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Wik & The Fable Of Souls
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Traffic Jam Extreme
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Diamond Drop
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>>11422192
My 7th grade teacher had a physical version of this. Sliding the cars along the grid was satisfying
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Alien Sky
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Bubble Bobble Rainbow Island
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Orbz
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Marble Blast Gold
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>>11422032
snood and slime volleyball (flash but oh well)
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Ricochet
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Chicken Invaders 2
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Smoke Attack 2
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Snowy Space Trip
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Mummy Maze
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Jazz Jackrabbit 2
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Holy fuck anon all of these defined my childhood
Gem of a thread
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Need for Eat
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Professor Fizzlewizzle
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Dino Island
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pizza frenzy
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Pizza Panic
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Crayz Chicken Jewel of Darkness
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Insanely based thread

>>11422032
I played the original Wonderland and had probably hundreds of custom levels made in Return to Wonderland. Unfortunately all lost now, tears in the rain and such.

>>11422063
Loved this one.
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Pekka Kana 2
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Dink Smallwood
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Best Friends (aka Best Friends Forever) by Retro64
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Flash (I believe?), but, Aqua Energizer
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Game that only I played, HopeJump: The Game for All
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Anyone remember Graal Online?

IIRC the game used to be called Zelda Online but... copyrights. I remember there was a few areas that would not load for me because they were made for Zelda Online and not converted properly.
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>>11422453
Ventrue sucks
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Coin World
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Bookworm Adventures
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Surprisingly nobody said Little Fighter 2 yet. I'll mention The Rage, an obscure 3D beat em up made by two brothers in Italy. It's just as jank as you would expect but also kind of fun. It also supports 4 player online play that is downright bizarrely functional.
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XP and early/mid OS X-era shareware games were such a cozy, simpler time. They bring me right back.
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>>11422112
>>11422153
>>11422160
Oh man I remember those

>>11422237
They're still releasing Chicken Invaders games. Don't know how good are they though/

>>11422410
Looks like a Bumpy clone.
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>>11422043
fuck yeah lunatic supreme with cheese
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>>11422336
Great game. Action adventure rpg. Free on GOG! https://www.gog.com/en/game/dink_smallwood_hd

I think the game had some decent free dev tools too. Pretty sizeable community of mods and additional quests. https://www.dinknetwork.com/files/category_dmod/
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Thanks OP, cool thread
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Hanehane Paradise
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>>11422336
>>11423545
As a child I had the patience to grind Alk Tree nuts to get a decent sword but after recently replaying it I realised how much this game would suck if you didn't know all the secret locations for power up bottles.

Maybe a bit embarrassing to admit but most of my favourite classical music and eurodance pieces are due to the base game and various D-mods. Mendelssohn's Violin concerto in E minor or Coco Jambo, I took it all in like a sponge, lol.
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Rad thread, thank you, OP. I need to play some of these, especially >>11422219
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>>11422192
>>11422195
Is there a full version anywhere? Can only find a trial
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>>11422219
>>11424623
I didn't grow up with it, but I really like that you can bhop to gain speed.
Tis very fun.
More Marble-like games need that
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>>11422032
>>11422329
>>11422036
If anyone wants to play Wonderland, I've bought the Midnight Synergy collection a few years ago.
The CD never arrived, but it came with a digital download.
pixel[REMOVE THIS]drain.com/u/rj1CFJPL
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anyone got an unlock key for dungeon scroll by RT soft? I'm not spending 14 dollars on this again
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Bejeweled
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>>11425552
Where did you originally see the physical listing of this being sold at? I kinda want it.
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>>11422043
I had the eGames Kid Mystic version I got at a dollar store.
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Insaniquarium
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>>11426230
Midnight Synergy's website
The DVD never arrived (I live in Germany), so be warned.
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Iggle pop
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Tennis Titans
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I'm looking for 3 games from this era

1. 3d board game that could have 2-4 players and many cool animated pawns to play as. Generic things like clown, witch, and knight (I only know the knight for sure)

2. two-player 2d cartoony platformer where you play as a blonde and brown-haired vikings (or miners)?

3. first person adventure game that takes place in an empty snowy area. Realistic 3d graphics, had an ice lake, and a segment where you have to run from an avalanche. high white walls of snow on both sides making narrow pathways
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>>11426641
2nd could be Lost Vikings
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>>11422162
Damn, I've been looking for this game. No one seemed to even know it in a few threads I made. Cool thread, OP.
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>>11426736
It even got a Steam release.
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>>11422032
My guess is that it's a massive mess, loads of so-so (but memorable, fun and creative) games, no real central way to get all of them and good luck unlocking a lot of these by now
There's just a ridiculous amount of stuff, to such a level that compared to console, it would be even less likely to find someone that found and played something you did, so a lot of these were just quickly simply forgotten
I wish a lot of these would just get on Steam
Anyways, here's my contribution:
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/fitznik-gx8
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/fitznik-2-gx9
IIRC it's a Lolo clone, or close
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>>11422249
Really good Popcap game. They stopped selling it for whatever reason, it didn't play nice on newer OS IIRC? And it never saw a re-release
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>>11422032
Solar Winds is my #1 game I was really interested in as a kid that seemed incredibly shitty and boring when I tried to play it again.
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>>11422032
I mean, we had flash back then. Everyone and their cousin were making garbo flash games, so nothing changed, really.
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>>11422336
>>11423721
Great game, even greater community. My sense of humor was basically informed by Dink Smallwood.
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>>11422046
I remember playing this, was a Snow Bros clone. Got a rectangular mini CD-ROM of it out of the dentist's treasure bin, the only prize I ever got out of there that wasn't some cheap plastic crap or sticker
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>>11426269
I forgot I used to spend hours on this shit goddamn
>>
Damn, i am keeping an eye for a point and click adventure game that i have spent years searching for, the only thing i remember about it is that i came with a shareware disk.
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>>11429084
Do you have any more details? "Point and click adventure that came with a shareware disc" is almost as vague as you can be.
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>>11422157
I liked this one
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>>11425552
Absolute legend, thanks.
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>>11422032
>Why are games from this era never talked about?
Availability.
Sure the shareware versions are still often available but to get the full registered versions you usually had to pay the developer directly and either get a download link, a license key or they'd mail you a CD-R or a floppy disc.
Very few of these smaller companies or individual devs are still around, let alone responding to purchase emails or sending out keys.
Most of the currently available titles are re-releases on Steam like Elasto Mania Remastered and DX-Ball 20th Anniversary Edition.
And no, you can't pirate the vast majority of registered shareware games either.
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>>11425552
I'm just discovering most of the games in this thread but seeing good guys like you makes me smile. Great thread. Feel a bit like I got some presents this year.
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Neophyte
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>>11431758
literally proto Crosscode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw4xMXjHo8Q
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Bud Redhead: The Time Chase
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>>11422039
Lol i remember playing a SpongeBob Zelda clone on Nick's webpage
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>>11422336
I have a physical copy of this one. First game I ever bought.
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WildTangent had a few whehn I got a new emachines computer in the later '00s.

>>11422091
This might be, or reminds me of, some shitty online game that was adjacent to Graal where you controlled space marines or something fighting bug aliens in industrial interiors. I randomly think of it for years.
>>
bumping for interest
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>>11422039
>>11433190
archive: details/spongebob-squarepants-krabby-quest
>>
Does anyone remember that shoot'em up, except you played as a Barbarian with a slingshot walking on the ground?
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>>11422032
Does anyone remember a game where you were a skinny dude standing on top of a pillar and smacked colored balls that came from the edges of the screen? The game had a kung fu style name and aesthetic where every couple of levels you gained a new belt. The game was very barebones and had a single colored background with y2k era fade to black afaik. I found it again a couple years ago but forgot the name again, I think it was just some dude who made it and oosted it on his website. Estimated release around ~2000.
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>>11422219
Ultra is better peridot.
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>>11433524
I played DungeonUp which is pretty much a modern clone of this game, and it was just okay.
If I played it way back when the original was released, I would have probably loved it much more.
>>
Do you know some good site for download Pc games?
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>>11437938
https://store.steampowered.com/
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>>11437938
https://www.myabandonware.com/
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>>11438236
zoomer
>>
90s shareware looks better to me than the badly aged render graphics i see in most of these screenshots
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>>11440298
humorless clod
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>>11437938
https://www.homeoftheunderdogs.net/
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>>11422043
I'm cool cat bad
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>>11440868
>zoomer calling anyone humorless
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>>11441436
i-i-is this... "it"? You know... the skibidi... I can't say it loud, it's too scary
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Never met another soul who knew about Shroomz
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>>11440868
sounds like the name of a 2000s shareware game
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>>11433569
>This might be, or reminds me of, some shitty online game that was adjacent to Graal where you controlled space marines or something fighting bug aliens in industrial interiors. I randomly think of it for years.
Alien Swarm? 2010 PC game on Steam? It's not retro but it's what that screenshot reminds me of.
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>>11441465
Looks like Mr. Driller
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>>11422160
>cube-based level structure
>teleporters are colored tiles with a star on them
>purple cannons
huh, i wonder if they were inspired by wonderland
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bumping for interest
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Yep, it's all dogshit, just like I remember it.
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>>11422162
WTF I REMEMBER THIS THANK YOU ANON
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The 5 Russian-made and recently translated in to English Fallout 2 fan made stand-alone games are at least as much fun as the last good game I played, Tamriel Rebuilt.
Just finished the last one I'd got around to, Olympus 2207. Highly recommended. Pic related.
Some of these have obvious replayability too, different factions available etc... I tend to go through them as a small guns/unarmed/lockpick guy first time around and kill/pick my way through everything, but I might have to do a speech guy run on some of them soon.
>>
>>11448939
This looks like fun!

>>11422165
I had to buy this again on steam but I still have my original copy from so long ago. Another good game in the same genre is Raptor: Call of the Shadows


All of these games would have been good cheap fun when they were new.
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>>11446407
Based take.
The memorable amateur stuff from the early 2000s were the mods for real games. Shareware from this time was Steamslop before Steamslop.
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>>11446407
>>11449932
stop samefagging
>>
>>11450007
2000s PC shareware is weirdjank that nobody had a reason to play, because there were plenty of good games on PC and emulators by that time.
People in the thread are trying to pass off 90s shareware as being from this 2000s era. If it was made by Epic or Apogee/3D Realms it's not from the 2000s, they had moved on to commercial games by then.
>>11422252
Jazz 2 is from 1998 and is the last shareware game Epic released, only a few weeks before Unreal. It's one of the final games of the 90s shareware era, not a 2000s turd.
>>
>>11431584
>DX-Ball 20th Anniversary Edition
The developers had more content planned for this game but they've abandoned it. The achievements don't work either lol.
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>11450036
>jank
opinion discarded
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>>11450036
Wonderland was really good, though, and there are no Wonderland clones for some reason.
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>>11423387
>Little Fighter 2
finally. played a shitton of this with my buddies back in highschool
>>
>>11422032
Surprised nobody itt has mentioned the Escape Velocity series. EV Nova was THE shareware game in the early 2000s imo. Massive story and setting, and endless replayability through plugins. The gimmick for enforcing shareware payment was also pretty funny.
>>
>>11422153
>>11422157
>>11422160
These were made from the same developer. I think their website now gives the games out for free.
>>
goofy ass thread



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