• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Games for the IBM 5155 portable (or XT desktop)

G

Gib

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
103
Location
Oregon
I think it was WMH who asked a few weeks ago (I've lost track of the thread) about games for the IBM 5155 portable. At the time, I suggested that the 5155 (which I also have) is not much of a gaming machine, given its slow CPU (8088 4.7Mhz), limited memory (256kb), limited storage (2 360kb floppy drives), and limited display (CGA on a 9 in. monochrome composite monitor). An IBM PC XT with a mono CGA would be an equivalent system and thus equally unsuited for gaming.

But perhaps I was wrong, as my subsequent online research, downloading, and experimentation suggests. Most of the games I tried, were either too advanced for the 5155, or too primitive to hold my interest for more than a few minutes. I found a few programs, however, that are quite acceptable on the 5155, especially since mine has upgraded memory (512kb) and storage (2 1.44mb floppies and a 128mb CF card):

PACMAN (the Atari version, not a clone, ported to the 8088)
Space Commander (a very nicely done Invader clone; I haven't found an official version of Invader for the 8088)
Wheel of Fortune (official version looks and works well)
Scrabble (official version; well worth playing on the 5155; comes with CGA, EGA, and VGA drivers)
Digger (this classic is fun to play, for awhile anyway)
Frogger (works fine, but that train is a killer)
Fowl Play (a Frogger clone that's kind of cute)
Casino (developed internally at IBM for staff play on the 8088; includes blackjack, poker, and slots)
Blackjack (I found one that's better than the IBM version above)
Pong! (oddly, it's hard to find a Pong that works and looks good on the 5155; I had to modify this BASIC program and qb/l compile it)
Donkey (childish, but fun, motoring along a highway with many stray donkeys)
Offroad (desert 4-wheeling, driving fast, jumping over obstacles -- what's not to like?)
Lemonade (the Apple II classic, or a good clone, ported to the 8088; the .bas version crashes, but the .com works fine)
Baby (infants are thrown from a burning building and you catch them if you can, which I often can't)
Volleyball (Pong-like, but with a big graphic volleyball that can be finessed over the net)

That's about all I've found, so far. If you have a 5155, XT, or similar 8088 system and you've found other games that look and work well, please share your knowledge.
 
Last edited:
ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/misc/xtfiles.rar has a metric crapload of 4.77MHz-friendly CGA games in it. From that file's readme:

A special note about the games: I tried to pick the best-performing games for
this snapshot, ones that are fun to play even on the lowest of the
low-performing PCs (ie. any 8088 computer). Hopefully you'll agree. I've even
included a special games directory called TECH For games that are truly a
technical masterpiece, achieving some truly amazing graphics, speed, or sound
for such a slow machine and limited graphics card. Some of the best 3D
graphics on a slow machine include Jet, Die Hard, Deep Space, and Vaxine. Some
of the best CGA graphics tricks include Bob Wilder and others. Some of the
best sound comes from Mach 3 and Space Racer. They may not always be fun to
play, but they sure are hard to beat from a programming perspective!
Click to expand...
 
lucasdaytona said:
Would be very nice if you share your modifications.
Click to expand...

Pong! was one of several Pong clones (in .bas and .exe form) that I came across. None of them run properly on an 8088 computer. Some require QBASIC, which itself requires at least a '286 CPU. Some run, but too slowly, since their speed settings were programmed for faster-than-8088 CPUs. Pong!.bas is in the former category, and it came with the compiled Pong!.exe, which is in the latter category. Both were derived from Ping, which is included, and which is a mess. Since I couldn't find anything better, and since Pong! works acceptably on a faster computer, I set about modifying it (i.e., trying to increase the speed settings) to run on the 8088.

To make a long story short, I ran qb/l (the /l accesses needed libraries), loaded Pong!.bas, upped startspeed% from 5 to 15, added + 10 to speed%, and added * 1.15 to baddh * speed%, and then before leaving qb, I compiled as a standalone .exe. The result is a Pong!.exe that is barely acceptable on an 8088. I'd like it to play faster, but the program malfunctions at any higher settings. (Send me a PM if you want me to email the .bas and .exe files to you.)

What I really want is a Pong that was programmed to run on an 8088 in the first place. If anyone can point me towards one, I'd appreciate it.
 
Last edited:
You missed two:

16LOWRES\BRICKS.EXE is a Pong clone. It uses text mode to fake a 16-color 160x100 graphics mode, so if you can hook your machine to an RGB monitor you'll see some nice color.

ARCADE\DOH is Arkanoid 2: Revenge of Doh which is a port of the arcade game, which itself is an enhanced Pong. Even if you don't like enhancements, you should give this one a shot since it has nice clean graphics, and supports both a joystick or a mouse for more fine analog control (pong games are no fun using the keyboard). Use "ARK2 R" to reconfigure the game's options.
 
Last edited:
Trixter said:
You missed two:

16LOWRES\BRICKS.EXE is a Pong clone. It uses text mode to fake a 16-color 160x100 graphics mode, so if you can hook your machine to an RGB monitor you'll see some nice color.

ARCADE\DOH is Arkanoid 2: Revenge of Doh which is a port of the arcade game, which itself is an enhanced Pong. Even if you don't like enhancements, you should give this one a shot since it has nice clean graphics, and supports both a joystick or a mouse for more fine analog control (pong games are no fun using the keyboard). Use "ARK2 R" to reconfigure the game's options.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I came across bricks.exe previously and ruled it out. It's just not watchable on an 8088. All the bricks are flashing constantly and annoyingly. Whatever the author was trying to do, it doesn't work in CGA. I do like brickout games, but their format is not classic Pong, which is two paddles hitting a ball back and forth across a net.

I hadn't tried Ark2 before. Again, it's brickout, but this author has done a terrific job with the graphics. Looks great and plays well on the 5155.

I don't doubt that there are many more good games within that 130mb "metric crapload," as you put it. Thanks again for the link.
 
NathanAllan said:
Do you like roguelike games? Here's a neat one.

http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/alphaman.htm

the main page has a lot of games on it, too.

http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/

I'm not sure which ones will run on an XT, though.
Click to expand...

Thanks. If only to see the 32 Pac-Man clones, mind-bogglingly displayed on a single page of 4 screenshots across and 8 rows down, this website is worth a visit. The specs of most games are beyond my elderly 5155, but it's still a good link, because I do have several other computers that can run software the 8088 can't.
 
Other games that you can play: (run fine on my Toshiba T1000 (CGA ,512K but I think they will be OK with 256k)
GALACTIC BATTLE requires 256K CGA-nice shoot'em up game
MOON PATROL
APPLE PANIC-the nice platform game
PAKU PAKU-excellent pac man clone with 16 colors from forum member deathshadow
ALLEY CAT-the classic but difficult game
Rollo and the Brush Brothers http://www.download-central.ws/DOS/Games/R/Rollo/
PARATROOPER
ZAXXON-try it,it is old so it may be run with 256k
J-BIRD-a clone of 1982 arcade Q*Bert
If I'll remember more I'll let you know
 
Last edited:
angel_grig said:
PAKU PAKU-excellent pac man clone with 16 colors from forum member deathshadow
Click to expand...
I'd be interested in feedback on how it fares on a 5155. I've no clue if the mono cga would make some of the colors hard to see or not... usually depends on how they weight blue and red. (I've seen a few mono CGA's like in Heath/Zenith units that only show the green channel, showing blue and red as black!)

But yeah, if you've got at least 66k showing free after DOS boots up, should run without problems. I've even gotten it to run on a 128k system under DOS 2.1 -- though it's REALLY tight and I had to pull a few configuration tricks.
 
Poke-Man (file name often "CPOKEMAN") by Al J. Jiménez (1982) is an excellent color text-mode Pac-Man clone, which will even run just fine on the original text-only MDA card. If you don't mind the lack of true graphics, it has excellent playability on an original PC/XT and is very fun:

http://www.download-central.ws/log/2011/02/25/
 
deathshadow said:
I'd be interested in feedback on how it fares on a 5155. I've no clue if the mono cga would make some of the colors hard to see or not... usually depends on how they weight blue and red. (I've seen a few mono CGA's like in Heath/Zenith units that only show the green channel, showing blue and red as black!)
Click to expand...

The 5155's monitor is mono composite, so it probably depends on the type of CGA card installed.
In earlier IBM CGA models, the composite output doesn't vary the luminance between chroma colors... so on a monchrome display, colors 1-6 all show up as a single shade, and colors 9-14 as another (brighter) shade. Someone here once posted a photo of his 5155 showing a color bar test screen, and that's what it looked like. Not very good for games I imagine, since in 4-color mode you can't tell the colors apart, other than black/white.

Later IBM CGA models (as well as PCjr and Tandy video hardware) do vary the luminance factor between colors, so they truly produce 16 different monochrome shades. The card's part number can help here - 1804472 and 1501486 are the "earlier" type, 1501981 the "later" type which is obviously a better choice for gaming if you're going to use the composite output.

As for the OP: here are a few more classic games for 8088/CGA machines which haven't been mentioned yet. I grew up with this stuff so I still enjoy them from time to time!

Burger Time
Lode Runner
Cosmic Crusader (excellent little Galaxian clone by Michael Abrash)
Night Mission Pinball
3-Demon
Bruce Lee
Bushido
Ninja Mission
Soko-Ban
Archon
Jumpman
(Beyond) Castle Wolfenstein
Tapper
Prohibition
Snipes
Moon Bugs
Conquest
Xonix
Montezuma's Revenge
Sopwith
Flightmare
 
Jumpman
(Beyond) Castle Wolfenstein
Click to expand...
have to toot my own horn here with these 2 games.
Not that it matters on a 5155 machine, but I reverse engineered these 2 games and updated them for modern hardware, particularly addressing the speed issue that old games suffered from when run on machines faster than 4.77MHz.

http://www.oldskool.org/pc/jumpman
http://www.oldskool.org/pc/BCW

sorry for taking the topic slightly off course.
 
Don't forget "SpaceWar" (this is the version I remember and loved). The list is pretty endless though. We've had other dos game threads as well but it's a good list to have that would be useful on a monochrome display. I'll have to check that archive out Trixter put together. Probably has most the games one would want to play anyway.

Other good for mono/CGA that haven't been mentioned yet:
Janitor Joe. Fun with a joystick, I only played it with CGA graphics but don't think mono would make any adverse difference.
Castle Adventure is also a good one. Easier than the early D&D maze games and a bit easier on the eyes imho.
Sleuth is a fun "who done it'" mystery game and should look fine in mono.
Pango was fun with music as well and I think while it looks nice with color probably isn't losing much either.

Said this a few times but I had Sopwith and Wheel of Fortune running at the last VCFSW show on a 5155 and Compaq Portable. Folks enjoyed them quite a bit. For fun I also loaded a horrible pac-man clone (in comparison to the sx-64 on the table next to it) called Pac-Gal. lol I can still hear the annoying chirping noise while it moves and dying tune it plays.
 
Last edited:
I'll second that version of Space War. Excellent fun.

Nyet - a Tetris clone. I have untold hours on that game. FWIW, this game also runs great on faster machines w/o slowdown utilities.

The Carmen Sandiego series ran fantastically well on my 8525 back in the day - it's a bit faster than the 5155, but IIRC was of comparable speed on the 5150 when I tried them.

Thexder by Game Arts/Sierra is another game that runs fantastic in CGA on a 5150. Of course the old Sierra Quest games (KQ1-IV, SQ1-3, PQ1-2) are good on a 5150/5160-era machine with CGA as well

Also Line Wars ran great on the 5150 with CGA back in the day, but good luck finding it today - or even screen caps! I've only really found Line Wars 2, it's much more popular successor.

If you like American game shows, then Jeopardy ran fantastically well on a 5150/5160-era machine, and Classic Concentration was another one that I logged quite a few hours on (I used to play these quite often during school lunches against a friend)
 
deathshadow said:
I'd be interested in feedback on how it fares on a 5155. I've no clue if the mono cga would make some of the colors hard to see or not... usually depends on how they weight blue and red. (I've seen a few mono CGA's like in Heath/Zenith units that only show the green channel, showing blue and red as black!)

But yeah, if you've got at least 66k showing free after DOS boots up, should run without problems. I've even gotten it to run on a 128k system under DOS 2.1 -- though it's REALLY tight and I had to pull a few configuration tricks.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, there's a lot of "snow" on the screen when PAKU-PAKU runs. The 5155 CGA card-composite mono monitor combo throws a lot of artifacts on the screen in response to the coding of some programs. Maybe a member with technical expertise can explain why. Most of the games I've been trying out -- if they run on the 5155 at all -- do not have this problem. I like PAKU-PAKU, and it looks great on a VGA monitor, but the snowstorm is too distracting for me to play the game on the 5155.
 
Last edited:
Maverick1978 said:
The Carmen Sandiego series ran fantastically well on my 8525 back in the day - it's a bit faster than the 5155, but IIRC was of comparable speed on the 5150 when I tried them.
Click to expand...

I have "WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO" in its original box, looking like it was just handed to me by a clerk at CompUSA. It was a gift from Christmas Past that I never installed but recently came across in a box of PC software. The WITWICSD box includes both 720K and 1.2MB disks, and the specs are 640K, hard disk... uh oh, VGA. The 5155 portable is CGA.

I'll (finally, after decades have passed) go ahead and install the software on another computer, since I'm in the mood to play games.
 
From what I recall Carmen Sandiego (at least the one I played) was on my 486 and had quite a bit of higher end graphics and animations on the screen. I suppose one could play it on an older system but it seems like it would be painful on anything less. The 486 and VGA made it quite entertaining though. I don't think this one would be good on lesser systems either but Carmen Sandiego reminds me (maybe I just played them in the same timeframe) of Cypher: Operation Wildlife lol. Probably more entertaining as a kid but I liked the little animations on the menu system like the kids playing volleyball. To me at the time it was almost like a little world in there.

...I guess no one brought up Ultima. I would think the early ones and perhaps early Wizardry would be ok on mono.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top