One of the first PC games I ever played is Crusader: No Remorse back in the mid to late 1990’s. I was lucky enough to have access to a family computer. While I can not remember the specifications of the computer, I can remember it ran Windows 95 and had an Intel Pentium processor. As part of a package deal, the PC came with Microsoft Word, Encarta 97 and two games, one of which was Crusader: No Remorse.
Crusader is an MS DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) game which effectively meant that it ran without having Windows or any other program running in the background. This was so it could utilize nearly all of the computers processing power required to run the game.
I acquired Crusader though gog.com and found that MS DOS is easily emulated on my Windows 10 machine and I had no problems starting it. The game is as amazing as I remembered with 15 long an increasingly difficult missions and complex controls, including side stepping, side rolling, using items, aiming and interacting with the environment. Something the consoles of that era couldn’t hope to achieve with a game pad consisting of 3 or 4 buttons.
It was pretty easy to complete the game on the ‘weekend warrior’ difficulty setting which I consider to be ‘normal’. I also completed several missions on ‘loose cannon’ which I consider ‘hard’ and the first mission on ‘no remorse’ which is ‘very hard’ and requires multiple attempts at just about every turn. As well as completing the game, I recorded and uploaded a playthrough of every level to my youtube channel. Altogether this is about 8 hours of game play and is probably my biggest project to date. I have created a playthrough playlist on youtube but if you want to skip ahead, here is me beating the last level.
I have really enjoyed this retro gaming project, so much so that I foresee me playing more old games in future, especially since, with help, I have recently completed a set up which will allow me to play old Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 games while recording the content with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software).
If you have fond memories or retro gaming projects of your own, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment or contact me via my contact page.
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