The MS-DOS has an excellent collection of games that everyone should experience. After all, MS-DOS is one of the nicest roots in PC gaming in general, and some of the more iconic ones had some excellent roots in MS-DOS as well.
Also, i purposely did not mention Wolftenstein 3D and Doom since those games, everyone may already know off already. Also, those are already parts of Video Gaming's history. The entries I'm mentioning here are ones that people may have missed out but were quite popular back in the day, and also some having some significant cultural influence to today's titles.
Duke Nukem
Duke Nukem. Not a lot of people actually know that Duke Nukem didn't start his career in the glorious and well loved Duke Nukem 3D first person shooter. Duke actually started his career as the eponymous hyper masculine manly man in a series of side scroller games for the good ole MS-DOS. Heck, Duke was so manly that he didn't need shades at the time. The game features an excellent level of side scrolling and environmental interactivity back in the day as you go around looking for key cards and shooting anyone that gets in your way.
This was the time before voice acting in video games became a regular thing and before John St. John, the voice of Duke himself, became a reality. This was back in the day that a side scroller can have a decent level of in-game interactivity and kickass gunplay at the same time which to my limited knowledge of MS-DOS games, became a sort of blueprint to other MS-DOS games such as one related entry below.
Its been ages since I've played the duke side scroller games since the last time I remember playing these games was decades ago, as a young kid who would eventually grow up to enjoy PC gaming along with the tried and tested gaming consoles.
Jazz Jackrabbit
Jazz Jackrabbit is a side scrolling game starring the titular character Jazz who is a green Jackrabbit armed with a variety of weapons and with some fancy feet that enables him to move fast. The game is an action oriented side scroller with a decent emphasis on shooting and exploration as you find keys in order to progress to the next level while shooting down enemies in your way with the different weapons that you can find.
Jazz is often cited as one of the first moves of putting the side scroller, a popular genre and style of gameplay from consoles such as NES, Sega Genesis, and even arcades into PC. Everyone i knew had the shareware version of the original game which was quite a popular thing back in the day. it was one of those "YOU GOTTA PLAY THIS DOOODE! WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING WITH YOUR LIFE" kind of games.
Jazz is basically what may happen if you give Mario, Sonic, and a rabbit a gun, a whole load of badassitude, and sticks of roided carrots.
BLOOD
This is a classic First person shooter game that i consider to be one of the more overlooked games when people talk about "Old school shooters". Mainly since unlike other old games such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and even Wolftenstein 3D being fortunate enough to actually have modding communities behind them, as well as even newer generation titles to bring them in the table (Wolftenstein has the Wolftenstein reboot that continued up to Wolftenstein the Old Blood, Duke Nukem unforunately had Duke Nukem Forever which harmed the franchise in ways unimaginable, and of course Doom, the big granddaddy mother f*cker of First person shooting has been rebooted twice with Doom 3 in 2005 and of course DOOM 2016,). I forgot to mention Shadow Warrior as well, a classic from 1997 which is gloriously rebooted in 2013 and an EXCELLENT follow up in Shadow Warrior 2. Okay anyway more into Blood.
Blood is one of those games that people may or may not remember for whatever reasons. I feel that this is a game that's been overlooked by even the most hardcore of FPS fans save for the true champions. I guess what made Blood so overlooked is that it has never had its source code released by its original developers unlike what happened with Wolftenstein 3D, Doom, and Duke Nukem 3D where dedicated users have made ways to make these games be played in modern operating systems, as well as dedicated modding communities, though mods based on Blood exist for the likes of CLASSIC Doom.
Anyway, what is Blood? its a first person shooter that stars Caleb, an undead gunslinger seeking revenge against a dark god. Much like the plethora of first person shooters released during the 90s which i would respectfully call "Doom clones", you play Caleb as you navigate through levels, finding keys, mowing down enemies with an assortment of weaponry (which I'd be talking about more in the next TLDR), and heading to the next exit. Its as simple as it is.
But what do i find special about this game? Its one of those games that I could say that has a unique charm to it. Blood is one of these games that made liberal use of the less sensitive mid-late 90s and the post Doom school shooting controversy drama that I'm very lucky to have lived by, though not really lucky to have really experienced this game at all till i finally got it. Anyway, Blood is what it is. Its a very bloody game that uses some rather graphic imagery and violence to ridiculous and over the top levels, which is good. Its silly, dumb, and f**king fun which is much like the games from this era of "Dooms". It makes great use of its cheeky horror movie + pulp fiction + cult fiction + occult inspired imagery and themes.
The other great thing about Blood which I have greatly noticed is the weaponry. See in that era of Doom clones in the mid-late 90s, games that followed after Doom and Quake were pretty stock with their weaponry. Almost every "Doom style shooter" even Duke 3D, were pretty stock when it came to their weaponry -> Starting Pistol, Shotgun, Machine Gun, Rocket Launcher, Plasma Gun (a more powerful machine gun that uses a rarer ammo type), and of course the game's BFG. With
Blood, the rules of basic FPS weaponry were thrown out of the window. Instead of the basic pea shooter pistol, the player's first basic weapon is a Pitchfork and a Flare Gun. Yep, already the first 2 weapons you get are already unusual. Then you get dynamite which is a very staple weapon in this game, then some more familiar weaponry such as a Sawn off Shotgun, a Tommy Gun, flame thrower, to some more bizarre ones such as Voodoo Dolls, and aerosol cans. The game basically has a couple of weaponry that should be seen to be believed, and I was more than satisfied to be fighting off some zombies, cultists, cyborgs, and the assortment of bizarre enemies in this rather bizarre take on the "Doom style shooter".
One thing i do have to say about Blood is that this game is HARD AS OVERSALTED PORK. I kid you not. I've played the likes of Wolfenstein 3D, Classic Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake and Quake 2 at their hard difficulty (Ultraviolence) settings and Blood is one of these games that manages to actually infuriate me to a certain degree with how challenging and even borderline cheap it was when i played it on its take on the "Ultraviolence" difficulty setting. The enemies' threat level in this game are incredibly powerful relative to how early they are encountered. As early as the first level, you get to face zombies that literally take several take downs before they can really die, or a stick of dynamite to gib them into pieces, then you have cultists with shotguns that can hit you at ranges that you won't believe and deal loads of damage with laser like accuracy, then you have enemies that charge in and explode, machine gun wielding cultists take fire at your direction until you die, and make the Chaingunner dudes from CLASSIC Doom be proud, the traditional bullet sponge melee monsters, and the game would often group them together into clusters. Simply put, Blood is one of those games that don't fudge around when it came to difficulty. Even the basic difficulty setting is challenging enough to actually require a modicum of skill to make it past the first few levels especially when you have to consider working with some unusual weaponry at the start of the game, weapons that are out of the familiarity of the basic "Doom style" stock weaponry and as I've mentioned previously, the bizarre assortment of mobs. Blood is one of those games that was quite challenging, even to borderline frustrating levels of challenge but again this was made during the times that you had to suck it up and deal with it like men with endless quick saving as well as trial and error.
What hurts for me about this game is that since there is STILL NO Source port to make this game be playable for modern OS's such as Win7, 8, or 10, the only way for you to play this game is via DOSBOX, and MS-DOS is already was a pain in the derrier to work with back in the day, and it still is today.
