Playing on a computer has become something very easy. Those with a couple of decades on their shoulders remember perfectly the process of configuring sound cards by hand, and freeing up every last kilobyte of base memory so the game would run without errors. Soon it will be possible to return to that with Retro City Rampage 486, a demake for MS-DOS of the title that took more than one by surprise in 2012.
The Base Memory Barrier
“The game needs 604k of base memory to run”. Our younger readers probably have no idea what I’m talking about, but there was a time when we had to count kilobytes if we wanted to play under MS-DOS. The 640 kilobytes barrier was inherited through the IBM PC architecture, so any game that asked for more than 600 kilobytes was a nightmare. Audio drivers, mouse support, SMARTDRV, MSCDEX… true jugglers instead of players. With the help of upper memory blocks, MemMaker, QEMM manager and other tricks, playing under MS-DOS became easier, but the manual work was still there. Both the audio system and graphics were configured outside the game, and in several cases, you had to edit files. Today, if we need an MS-DOS environment, the emulation offered by DOSBox is more than enough… and it’s likely we’ll need to run it soon. Why? Because MS-DOS has a new game.
A New MS-DOS Game
It’s Retro City Rampage 486, a demake of Retro City Rampage DX, which in turn is a revised version of the original game. Its developer, Vblank Entertainment, confirmed that Retro City Rampage 486 will be available at no charge for those who already own the game, currently priced at ten dollars on Steam. It’s not the first time Vblank has taken its flagship title and moved it to an older platform. In 2013, ROM City Rampage emerged, an 8-bit “real” variant, compatible with the historic Nintendo NES. The prototype of that build is available within the game itself, and the character must visit an arcade room to access it. While the MS-DOS edition won’t be as limited, we still have to wait to know what the final cuts are. Only one has been confirmed: It won’t have Sound Blaster support.
What kind of hardware do we need? An Intel 486 processor or compatible, 3.7 megabytes of disk space, and four megabytes of RAM. In theory, such a system should be able to run Windows 95 (with more disk space, of course), so the requirements of Retro City Rampage 486 don’t seem that high. The developer will reveal more details soon. Do you have an old Compaq gathering dust in a corner? Retro City Rampage 486 sounds great to bring it back from the depths…
