DOS Games Discussion

Some games (like Alley Cat) won't let you quit without rebooting. Any simple way around that?

Also, anyone know what the benefit is by not letting you quit normally?

For Alley Cat, press Ctrl-Y to exit. As for the other games, I'll let someone else answer you because I don't have a good solution to it. Normally I try all the different ways (Esc, Ctrl, Alt, alphabets & function keys) to see if they work. If they don't, I do a Ctrl-Alt-Delete to end program.

All games should use the ESC key as a universal quitting key.

To exit sopwith, press ctrl+break
Other games use ctrl+x or ctrl+q as the exit key.

Thanks guys. I guess I would need the original game manuals or wear out my keyboard to figure it out.

Alley sets resolution to 320x200. Only way to return is Reset.

I downloaded a lot of old DOS games from HOTU and many of them from the 80s needed reboot to quit. What is it with the 80s and preventing people from quitting the game?

JMS wrote:I downloaded a lot of old DOS games from HOTU and many of them from the 80s needed reboot to quit. What is it with the 80s and preventing people from quitting the game?

I once thought about this question but never found the answer.
The inability to quit until one reboots, is annoying.
This was especially common for bootable game disks (games that run on a game disk that had copywrite protection sectors and cannot run from harddisk unless one cracks the game).

Long ago, I used to play one of my favourite games, Magic Pockets. It was impossible to quit. After the credits were shown, it went back to the demo screen Many years later, I found a found a way out i.e. not to install the game. This would result in an automatic termination after the credit were shown since it could not loop back However, there would be no introduction if the game was not installed. Anyway, that is okay as one does not need to keep seeing the introduction again and again if you are going to play the game many times.

It seems like DOS game floppy disks were kinda like Nintendo/Sega cartridges in the old time. Put floppy in drive A, turn on computer, wait, the game starts, to quit turn it off/reboot.

Now I am using dosbox to try out some of the old dos games (that I used to play), especially those that I could not have figure out how to quit except by using "Alt-Ctrl-Delete" to quit. Ahh what a nice feeling about not worrying about force quitting a dos game as I just only need to close the dosbox window.

Some games - the Boss Key (aka ur boss walking by when ur in work lol) works to actually quit the program ... F10 was boss key for Jumpjet ... however there was another game . . . cant remember the name - but the boss key only made it LOOK like u were working and wouldnt allow anything to be done ...

Most Exit Short Cuts in Dos Games:

Esc
Ctrl + Esc
Alt + Esc
F10
Ctrl + F10
Alt + F10
Alt + x
Ctrl +x
Ctrl + Q
Alt + Q

Thanks so much Sorcerdon, you've just made this topic earn a star - *

(I put stars/asterisks on the left of topic names that contain useful information).



Nonetheless, this topic has reached the highest point of maturity, so therefore locked.