Drone (Full PC Playthrough)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- LINK TO AN ISO IMAGE OF THE ORIGINAL GAME CD for anybody who wants it: www.4shared.com...
Genre: Shoot 'em up
Platform: DOS
Developer: Pixelsplash Software
Publisher: Pixelsplash Software
Year: 1997
Ladies and gentlemen... this is my first full PC game playthrough! And, to be precise, a playthrough of one of my all-time favourites.
A little background on this game:
Once upon a time, in the town of Bethesda, Maryland (one of America's most highly educated communities - forget Baltimore!), there lived a longtime computer scientist by the name of John Amato, and his wife Cindy Vogan, an art designer. In early 1997, the two founded Pixelsplash Software, and devoted their combined talents to clever website design for third-party clients... and to the creation of their only game, Drone.
Described as a "truly unique PC shooter game", which is absolutely no idle boast, Drone puts YOU in the role of a pilot whose prime goal is to stop 6 deadly nuclear missiles, the game's titular Drones, before they reach the Earth and kill countless numbers of innocent civilians. You are armed with exploding-tip missile bullets that you use to destroy the menacing alien ships escorting the Drones, homing stingers used to take down the bosses and larger groups of ships, and the blue probes used to disarm the Drones.
I first discovered Drone many years back on an eGames CD-ROM my parents bought me at a drug store. IMHO, it was among THE BEST of the 151 games on that CD. Played it to no end when I was a young'un... and still love it to death today. I think the repetition is what contributes to the overall fun of this game... and to the replay value. Every time I destroy that mothership, I'm ALWAYS left wanting more! I can't decide what the best part of Drone is... is it very carefully disarming the Drones (a feature that most certainly sets this apart from other shmups)? The peculiar-looking pre-rendered 3D alien ships? Or is it the exciting, ear-grabbing stereo sound?
Also, most of you may be familiar with the later version found on eGames CDs, such as the aforementioned Masters' Edition 151 collection. That was a Windows/DirectX port released in 1999. Due to the fact that John Amato was having difficulties porting the game code from Watcom C/C++ to work with Microsoft's DirectX APIs, there are some notable differences - for instance, the Snake boss in level 5 was replaced with a repeat of the Air Tank boss from level 1, and the sound was folded down from two stereo channels to one mono channel. Meanwhile, what you see here in this video is the ORIGINAL MS-DOS VERSION from 1997, which unfortunately is pretty much impossible to find these days since at the time it was exclusively available as a direct order from Pixelsplash Software and never had a retail release. Luckily, I was able to contact John Amato himself and he was kind enough to provide me with an original, still-shrinkwrapped CD-ROM copy of the full, registered DOS version of the game! THANK YOU John for that... and also for sending me the version 1.02 patch, which is great since it has never been archived on the WayBack Machine.
In the mid-2000s, John and Cindy quit from the gaming scene together and rebranded themselves as J&C Studios, makers of O-scale train layouts.
Note: Played in DOSBox 0.74. Footage captured using its built-in video recorder, and edited together using trakAxPC. Video was made in March of 2012, but never uploaded until now!
This is the first time I’ve seen this game in like 20 years. Thank you for uploading this!!!
Aahl! So It is called Drone! I used to play this when I was a kid and man did I have fun. Also scared the crap out of me and got my adrenalin pumping sometimes because of how intimidating those bosses were. the sound affects were great as well hahah wow awesome to see this uploaded :)
I agree, those boss sound effects were pretty creepy when I was a kid
Anyone else scared as a kid of the bosses bahaha
Oh, man. This was one of my favorites. What a trip down memory lane, thanks for posting!
I USED TO PLAY THIS GAME ON MY OLD COMPUTER ALL THE TIME
Thank you Ryan for bringing back one of the figments of my childhood!
I've actually encountered 'Drone' from the 'Galaxy Of Games 350' collection from eGames for the PC. I always used to love listening to the music tracks within the folder on the hard drive, especially the successful themes (completing the game in particular). I didn't really like the tune though if you failed to disarm the drone and instead destroyed it, it's titled 'Suspense' if I remember correctly.
Nowadays, playing 'Drone' is almost impossible due to its hyperactive speed, but watching here on TH-cam is definitely worth it. Your'e a super duper player and thanks again for sharing with everyone!
Once I played other version of that game. I remember that childhood times. It gave so much fun, because Drone has non-linear endings.
This game was sooooo addicting as a kid bruh them sound affects were so good they was creepy when I was young the bosses were intimidating too
I always loved it when i hit the Drone and the giant explosion filled the whole screen :D
"To begin disarm, launch the blue probe towards the approaching drone."
Classic~
The sound design was so good on this game, literally decades later I still think about how visceral the sound made the game feel
The nostalgia..
That's wonderful. I used to play the Windows version, which I got on the Galaxy of WinGames cd, but I never knew there was an original. I always wondered why they used the first boss again in the fifth level.
I got the iso to mount and run using the imgmount command on DOSBox, and the game installed. Do you have to run the install every time you pull the game up, or is there a way to save it so that you can simply access it?
Also, how did you modify the sound txt file, and how did you add the patch?
AncientAndMysterious The developers of Drone had problems porting this game to windows, so they had to cut out the snake, among other things. (Watcom C/C++)
Oh, my childhood!!!
When I had beat this game....my life was finally complete as a child.
Oh thank the various Gofs!!! This is a classic from my childhood 👏🤘
Yessssss. I played this as a child. So good.
I used to play the shareware version when I was a kid, been looking for this forever...fuck thank you
I remember getting this at Pic N Save around 2000. Came with Spooky Castle and Zulu Assault.
OMG i remember this game :D. Ah the memories 😏
I remember having this game on my old old laptop from '99-'02 and the gameplay was only about half this speed. Lucky for me, this made the game super easy. Now whenever I try to play it on my new laptop the gameplay is so fast I consider myself lucky if I make it to the second level.
the nostalgia!
I know a game like this that was with some eGames thing.. called Raptor if I recall correctly.. this just reminded me of that.
I searched this game for a long time
I remember playing this on Galaxy of Win Games 95/98! Those games were fun and nostalgic! By the way, can Galaxy of Win Games 95/98 be played on the modern day computers? Is there any way to play them without using the old computers?
i think you need an emulator sadly
If you have the more common eGames Windows version (which can be differentiated by the fact that all the game files are in separate folders: "Sights", "Sounds" and "Data"), then you're pretty much SOL. Even when I tried it on both Virtual PC and VirtualBox it won't work...so you'll likely need an old Win95/98 comp to play it.
HOWEVER, if you have the rarer DOS version (which has all the game files in one directory - I used it for this video), you can simply use an app like DOSBox to run it.
Yeah, I have that one too. Actually, Raptor was also a DOS game to begin with, and it was later ported to Windows for the eGames release.
Same here, watching the mothership explode is one hell of a fun experience for me. ;)
Jesus I remember this game. It's a shame you can't get it anywhere. Any chance you could re-upload?
There are multiple ways to get this game. After a quick google search I found this: www.old-games.com/search/?s=drone
Completely forgot about this until today, thanks for the reminder! Love how LOUD this game is...
(The ISO link up there is dead, but I found it here: www.old-games.com/download/7521/drone)
Many thanks for that link, unfortunately that website has this horrid 5KB/s download speed unless you give them money.
What OS are you running this on? I remember having this game as a kid on our first laptop, and it would run at this speed which IMO made it pretty easy. But then our next laptop ran Windows XP, and the game would run at like twice the speed, which made it almost unplayable. How can I slow the game down to this speed on a more recent OS? (Funny calling XP "more recent")
It is a royal pain in the ass, isn't it? The game itself isn't too hard as far as PC shmups go, but the developers obviously knew that SOME element of challenge was necessary.
19:50 - Now that's what I call a cheap shot.
I got this on Galaxy of Games and the bad endings scared me so much I never finished it XD
Thanks for saving me time from uploading my own. :-)
I actually did, though that was VERY long ago when my skills disallowed me to win the game without pressing the L key relentlessly every time I saw I had only one life left.
This is awesome! :D
I have this, but with one problem: This is Drone: SUPER-HYPER-FAST-AS-SHIT EDITION!
The Omnilution 2.0 Yes, that's the unfortunate problem that arises with trying to play the DirectX-based Windows version of Drone on modern-day computer systems that have thousands of times the processing speed of that required for the game to run correctly (the system requirements in the readme file specify that the game should be run with at least a Pentium 100). That's one of the other reasons why I was hunting down a copy of the original DOS version - I could play it conveniently with DOSBox on my 64-bit Windows 7 system without having to worry about compatibility or speed issues, and furthermore there's the added bonus of using DOSBox's built-in video recorder to capture high-quality footage of the game.
Sure! I can get it up on 4shared and send the link to you if you like.
Actually, I made an ISO image of it last year. I believe it's only something like 25 megabytes, so it'd be easy for me to send it via TransferBigFiles.
One of the first games I ever owned, it was back in 1998... there were games in grayish cases that you could play... just insert the disk and it started right away. Without the DOS thing.
Oh and this game ran x3 slower for me. Yes, THIS game, significantly slower. VERY slow.
Can you do that please? I do have dosbox and that would be the only way I would get to play this game again. I'm in a bind with money at the moment so I cant really buy anything.
I always loved eGames.. it's still on my Windows ME but it doesn't work the way it should.. I'll click a game, and it just wont open. I've gotta find the disc..
dang. Probably will not be able to find a iso of the dos version I suppose then. -_-
sweet man thanks :D
Far more than a few people have asked, so I might as well get the link up in the description.
Oh yes I remember this from the egames disc. By the way does anyone remember that game where you had to rescue chickens from space, each level opened with a bible verse for some reason? Trying to track it down
I know you posted this 2 years ago, but in case you (or anyone else) is still wondering, that game was called Adventures With Chickens.
@@tylerhind6709 Hah yes, You found it!
@@Kirasupporter1 Glad I could help deliver that sweet nostalgia.
Yo, the link is a dud. If you're still keeping an eye on this video, would you like to update the link?
Can you please tell me how you got this game to work? I'm trying to run it on windows 7.
Hopefully per chance you will be able to see this message but, if it's possible, could you re-upload the .iso along with the 1.02 patch? I would love to be able to archive this great game, as I have spent many hours on it years back.
If you don't have the disc or files anymore, could give me John's email address so I could test my luck there? Many thanks.
how do you take pictures in this game for what key
Any updates on the links?!?!?!!
I need it some help! Drone DOS Doesn't not running on game!
How should i do?
This game was called before Goldrake and was for the Amiga.
I wonder if I could still get the Amiga demo
DO A BARREL ROLL
Get this on 4shared?
Could you possibly make a tutorial on how to get this to work with DOSBox?
Good idea - in fact, it might even help to make a tutorial for installing any game off of a CD-ROM in DOSBox in general.
Ryan Alexander :DDDD
Talking about boss btw
I always got nuked some how.
I hate the 6th drone. U have to shoot the crap out of it or hope to get lucky.
Who else tried pressing L?
alrightie, just PM me your email address and I'll send it on over.