I see you like to play Transylvania…

Transylvania Title Screen

A few weeks ago, I was on the phone with my dad, and for some reason we got to talking about old text-based adventure games we  used to play on an ancient Apple II computer. Now, I’m not really sure what inspired me to do this, but nostalgia is a powerful thing, so recently I decided to search all over the internet for old computer games to see if I could figure out the titles to all the games we used to play.

It was a difficult task. After all, the internet barely existed way back then. Armed with only my faint memories from when I was a youngling (and a little luck), I was able to rediscover this aggravating and frighting game, Transylvania. Even more fun was discovering how to actually play old DOS games on an up-to-date Windows machine.

You need these things:

  1. DOSBox
  2. DOSShell
  3. Some place to download old DOS games

I’ll let you figure out how to piece them together.

The best part about the whole experience was slowly remembering things as I played through the game, though occasionally my memories conflicted with what I was seeing in Transylvania. For example, I distinctly remember picking up a cross on top of the grave… and then you used the cross to kill the vampire in his castle… and then you could go to the basement of the castle to pick up this sweet item… but it wasn’t there! WHY!?

Transylvania Grave

It turns out they made several versions of Transylvania, and the DOS version I found wasn’t the same as the old Apple II game I used to play. It was actually a lot harder, but still quite fun. I totally stayed up until 2:30am and beat the game. On a weeknight. I strongly recommend taking the time jump back into your childhood and finding some of these gems. If anyone can find Grandma’s House, let me know.

Rob / October 12, 2011 / Cool Stuff, Gaming

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