I got this crazy idea to test how the old Finnish freeware DOS games would work in DOSBox.
Note that these games are not exactly the most shining examples of free/shareware games that were produced in Finland in the MS-DOS era. Pet, they clearly are an indication of the fact that Finns have traditionally been pretty keen on making games on their own! Hobbyist gamemaking scene is something quite out of ordinary here. If you want some high-quality freeware action, try Tapan Kaikki instead =)
Ryssän Kauhu
My machine is a Pentium III 600MHz, which doesn't seem to have enough horsepower to run any 486 or Pentium era games in DOSBox at an acceptable speed.
So, I was kind of surprised to find out that Ryssän Kauhu works perfectly in DOSBox, at full speed! Amazing! High quality Finnish game design! Er... or something like that. You need to disable the GUS emulation though, and only enable SoundBlaster. And not use any scalers either, or at least on my machine.
The game is quite simple: Soviet soldiers march from the horizon and your job is to kill them with a Minigun (well, this is set in World War II, and I'm pretty sure Finns used Maxims or stuff like that, not Miniguns - but I don't think the game is entirely historically correct anyway...)
The game is simply remarkable for one reason: The sound acting is hilarious. Specifically, hilariously bad. I could easily get to Level 3 in the game before I got the sound working, and after the sound worked, I couldn't get past level 2...
Oikeutta Eläimille
Too bad Oikeutta Eläimille doesn't work as well. The game is sluggish, sometimes crashes DosBox, and sometimes makes DosBox completely freeze (fortunately it doesn't freeze X11). Otherwise, it's perfect.
The idea of the game is to kill animal rights activists who are trying to release the foxes from your fur farm. Completely crazy stuff.
Leave a comment