10MHz 8088 Playing Hero's Quest I

This is my 10MHz 8088 CompuAdd XT clone playing Sierra's classic "Hero's Quest I: So you want to be a hero?".

This was our family's first PC given to us by our grandfather sometime around 1991, which I have kept all this time. It is a great machine!

At one point this PC had the motherboard replaced with a 486 board and used like that for a number of years before I reinstalled the original board back in place. I recently dug up a working amber monitor (for nostalgic reasons) and added an 8-bit SCSI host adapter and Micropolis hard drive which turned out to be a surprisingly good combination to get an unusually large amount of disk space for an 8-bit machine.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• 8088
• Hero's
• Quest
• Hero
• Sierra
• Monochrome
• XT
• 8-bit

[frigginjoe]

My Tandy 1000 EX was only a 7.16 mhz 8088 and played the game faster in 16bit color with the 3 channel sounds.

Was this Hercules graphics or just the monitor was monochrome?

I'm just curious because I normally expect Tandy 16-color graphics and sound to come at the expense of speed like it usually does, but this game actually played pretty well for me.

[KB3PNC]

@frigginjoe I was actually using a Hercules graphics clone at the time, but in my experience they typically all perform about the same...ie rather slow for any kind of monochrome graphics animation. I have several 8-bit VGA boards and they are MUCH faster...but what's the fun in that? :)

Also, just wanted to add after using a relative's Tandy 1000 SL, I've always wanted to get my hands on one. I remember DeskMate being really amazing at the time. I have plenty of respect for those Tandys!

[frigginjoe]

@KB3PNC lol yeah but the Tandy 1000EX was the single worst one of them all.

Fun to have, but almost everything I got was just too slow unless I used 4-color CGA and single-channel beeper sound. Well, even then it was still too slow. Sierra games ran decently though.

Great video, it's nice to see this game again. One of the earliest games to add replay value based on who you pick and how you play. :O As for the comment it's extremely slow.. If you had an 8088 back then, slow was the norm :(

[KB3PNC]

@frigginjoe Having never used an EX, it sounds like it was a completely different animal then the SL. My grandparents had an SL I got to use from time to time and I remember it being like a Cadillac compared to my XT clone. The CPU seemed every bit as fast and the color graphics (some form of EGA I assume) had high resolution and much faster then my Herc graphics. I used the XT in this video for years with no hard drive and only monochrome graphics...learned to make the most of what I had.

[carifyme]

well its faster then a core i7.......

[jdcrispe95]

1FPS :'D

[mrt1r]

That reminds me of my child hood. I loved all of those old Sierra games! I remember that my dad bought a VGA card and a color monitor just to play those in all of their glory.

[finsmudge]

now try Skyrim.

[alexmarjanovic98]

there wasn't a lot of fun 'cos theres a lot of waiting

[ianhzabner]

Don't drink the Dragon's Breath!

[grzegorz2285]

if you compare this with commodore amiga then you choose amiga amiga is much better

[nhking4]

lol my ipod nano is more powerful,

amazing how far technology has come :)

[billyschorn]

and here im sitting with a dual core 1.4Ghz cellphone????

[danydrumsable]

10Mhz are So FUnny!

[fjnobre]

Is that a IBM Model M Keyboard? I WANT ONE OF THESE!

[SuperToasterCat]

NOW MAKE IT PLAY SKYRIM!