What The EFF is on this Disk!?

Unlabeled Mystery Disk

For whatever reason, I never labeled this disk. I always knew what was on it when I was a kid, as of course games were all that were on my mind circa 1992 (that and comic books). As time marched on this disk made it’s way deeper and deeper to the bottom of a desk drawer, forgotten until last year when I started tearing apart my childhood desk (not literally dismantling it, but ’emptying it’.) Of course I found the requisite dried out colored markers, my old combination lock that served me for over 10 years, and this disk. The ‘blank disk’.

Why didn’t I bother to label it? I don’t know. It was the only disk with this style label, so I guess I felt that that was its label. Prince had his symbol, this disk had its label. It dates back to sometime in the 90s with my Pentium 90mHz. I think once I got a Playstation after I started to commute to college, my days of playing disks were few and far between. That brings us to today. Luckily my i5 desktop has a 3.5″ floppy drive. I guess I had the foresight to plan for stuff like this. Or I just hate unused bays in a computer tower. These are actually DOS ‘.exe’ games. So for once, no mucking around in BASIC. Just DOSbox.

Anyway, without further adue, I present What the EFF is on this disk!

SANDSTORM – Hmm. This came out in 1992. Made seemingly for the times. You are in the Middle East controlling US weapons. Some stages are a lame version of Missile Command but with nicer graphics, as you operate a Patriot missile battery while others have you flying a Tomahawk missile to land on it’s target. Actually, this game reminds me of another game I discussed here on The Fair Shake – M.A.D. It’s mouse controlled, and the graphics have that not-quite-clunky-not-quite-nice-looking appearance of any number of early 90’s DOS games. Worthy of a playthrough, the Tomahawk stages are pretty fun.

OAK FLATS NUCLEAR SIMULATOR – Ok. This game always mystified me. When I was a kid I couldn’t really figure it out, but I didn’t have the instructions for it. This was pre Internet days so I’m forgiven, right? (Fun fact: I capitalize Internet.) It’s a simulation / game where you are in control of a nuclear power plant. You control the cooling pumps, valves, radioactive fuel rods, maintenance, everything. It’s pretty deep. Apparently this was a game on several systems back in the day, like the C64. Hope you like numbers… the DOS version is full of them. There are several ‘updated’ versions of this in current release if you do some Googling. Give it a shot, it is interesting.

 JUMPJET – Oh yeah. Jumpjet. A quirky side scrooling shooter with decent sound effects for the time. Each level has a different goal, culiminating in shooting at a big flying skull while you fly a Harrier Jet. Sound familiar? I covered it before here.

Three games that kept me entertained after school in the mid 90s. Sometimes if I was too lazy to drag the SNES out of the closet and hook it up, I’d just boot up the PC. Man that sounds so long ago “boot up the PC”. With sleep mode and constant on technology, I can’t really recall the last time I did a full shutdown on my i5. Oh wait, we lost power two weeks ago, so then.

It’s funny how even starting the desktop back then was a big deal, where now, it’s just always here, on, ready to go. My cell phone starts up quicker than my old 386 did.. Even with a gazillion pictures on the memory card. Anyway, I should go reboot this desktop and get something to drink. I’m thirsty.