Night Stalker for MS-DOS?

[Guest LiqMat]

How did I miss this in my childhood in the early 80s? I was in a DOS forum on another site and came across Night Stalker from Mattel for MS-DOS. I had no idea they made Night Stalker in CGA for DOS. Crazy what you learn after all these years.

 

 

 

Edited January 8, 2017 by LiqMat

[Flojomojo]

That looks like it adds a little extra detail, too! Very cool find. The wikipedia page for Night Stalker doesn't mention the game, but the Blue Sky Rangers do.

 

 

 

Mattel Electronics released M Network versions of Night Stalker for the Atari 2600, the Apple II and the IBM PC. (The Atari 2600 version was called Dark Cavern.) A version was also released for the Aquarius Home Computer System.

[Guest LiqMat]

That looks like it adds a little extra detail, too! Very cool find. The wikipedia page for Night Stalker doesn't mention the game, but the Blue Sky Rangers do.

 

 

Yeah I just got done playing it. The controls are a bit funky on the keyboard, but the joystick control works good enough. I knew Mattel had made BurgerTime for MS-DOS, but definitely not Night Stalker. BurgerTime for MS-DOS was even better because it used the CGA composite mode which allowed it to have 16 colors on screen at once. It looked pretty damn good for DOS back in 1982. I still play this version as it runs very smooth in DOSBox.

 

 

 

[jaybird3rd]

Yeah I just got done playing it. The controls are a bit funky on the keyboard, but the joystick control works good enough. I knew Mattel had made BurgerTime for MS-DOS, but definitely not Night Stalker. BurgerTime for MS-DOS was even better because it used the CGA composite mode which allowed it to have 16 colors on screen at once. It looked pretty damn good for DOS back in 1982. I still play this version as it runs very smooth in DOSBox.

I was about to bring up BurgerTime myself, specifically because of the composite mode. That's one of the things that impressed me about Mattel's games for the IBM PC: they seem to have taken extra effort to make the most of what CGA graphics could do at the time.

 

Did Mattel release any games for the IBM except for Night Stalker and BurgerTime? (EDIT: The BSR page seems to indicate that the others were never released. Too bad.)

[mr_me]

They didn't run under DOS; they came on a bootable disk that wasnt compatible with DOS. I dont think they were 386 compatible either; I bought Burgertime around 1990 but couldn't get it to work. You can get cracked versions now that run in dos.

 

The intellivisionlives website also says distribution was a problem in 1983. They were in my 1983 Mattel Electronics catalog but I didnt know anyone that had an IBM compatible PC anyway.

[Guest LiqMat]

They didn't run under DOS; they came on a bootable disk that wasnt compatible with DOS. I dont think they were 386 compatible either; I bought Burgertime around 1990 but couldn't get it to work. You can get cracked versions now that run in dos.

 

The intellivisionlives website also says distribution was a problem in 1983. They were in my 1983 Mattel Electronics catalog but I didnt know anyone that had an IBM compatible PC anyway.

 

Either way, fascinating history. I used to visit the Intellivision Lives! website a bit back when it had interesting PC releases, but somehow missed the whole history of Mattel's computer development. Very cool and to see all those PCjr carts they were going to try and release considering the PCjr had very few game carts made by the end of its run.

Edited January 8, 2017 by LiqMat

[mr_me]

It would have been interesting to see how Mattel Electronics would have done as a software company had they not shut it down. In 1983 they had development offices in Taiwan, France, and of course the United States. There's likely completed games lost somewhere, the French and Taiwanese offices continued development after Mattel Electronics closed in 1984.

http://www.intellivisionlives.com/bluesky/games/credits/computers.shtml

 

edit: Night Stalker on PC is a little weird. You keep running until you hit a wall or press the delete key. You have options to select the robot type so you can start with the invisible bunker busting robots right away. https://archive.org/details/msdos_Night_Stalker_1983

Edited January 8, 2017 by mr_me

[Guest LiqMat]

They didn't run under DOS; they came on a bootable disk that wasnt compatible with DOS.

 

That explains why there are four variations of the Burgertime file and two variations of the Night Stalker file with one even saying this particular release is "possibly best dump available". Also notes they are "DOS conversions" in the info file.

 

Night Stalker on PC is a little weird. You keep running until you hit a wall or press the delete key.

 

Yeah, the del key to stop was a very strange design decision IMO. Have yet to get the joystick to work properly in either one of them.

Edited January 8, 2017 by LiqMat

[BillyHW]

I can't believe we're still rediscovering these old games. DOS games that aren't even DOS games! This is too cool.

 

What kind of OS did they have onboard the disk to get the game running?

[ed1475]

Here's a gameplay video I made of it running on an IBM 5150.

 

Edited January 8, 2017 by ed1475

[Guest LiqMat]

Finally got the joystick to work in DOSBox. Under the [cpu] heading in the conf file set cycles=1000. Had mine set to a lower 500 which prevented certain directional movement. A user over at the Vogons forums helped me out on that.