Should I buy it?

[Arrakis81]

Hello everybody!
The other day I was searching something useful in a cheap-computer-stuff basket in a shop. Among several copies of the usual "100 shareware stupid games" compilation, I found a quite old box containing "Prisoner of Ice" cdrom. Price: 10 Euro (6.80 pounds more or less).
To those who have played it: is it worth that money? I remember it had great graphics and HP Lovecraft related story, but what about its length and difficulty? Well, it's a good price of course, but I wanna know if this game is going to last more than two hours on my HDÃ, 

Thanks for your comments, bye!

[Calamity]

Personally I think you should. I recently got it again (I had first played it many years ago) and though it's not as cool as I remember it's still great. Being a huge fan of Lovecraft myself I also find it hard to resist something based on my favorite monster mythos. To answer the length question, it all depends on how you are with puzzles. For the most part the puzzles are logical but there are a few that made my head hurt.

If you can find it, also be sure to pick up Shadow of the Comet. It's technically the prequel to Prisoner and even though it has a clunky control system, I find it to be a better game.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

But don't waste your money if you have XP. Even VDMSound won't run those games (DOSBox migh, not sure though)

[Calamity]

But don't waste your money if you have XP. Even VDMSound won't run those games (DOSBox migh, not sure though)

Dosbox does but you need to do a bit of work for it. If the problem araises either PM me or simply ask here and I'll explain how to get it to work.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Really? I'm asking you right now then! I have both PoI and SotC, but can't get them to work... and DosBox never really worked for me... if you can help, please say how!

[Calamity]

I'll glady help you then!

With SotC you don't have to do anything special, just take the icon that starts the game and drag it into the Dosbox icon (or you could always do it out the long way by first going into Dosbox, mounting the drives and going that way).

Now with Prisoner it's a bit of a pain but here we go:

1) Extract (or install) the game to a directory called: c:\games\ice after that there should be a subfolder entitled prisoner (thus having the directory being c:\games\ice\prisoner

2)Now create a new directory entitled infogram and create a folder in there entitled ice

3)Copy ice.cfg from C:\games\ice\prisoner\saves to c:\infogram\ice

4)Open c:\games\ice\prisoner\__ICE__.PAR with notepad and change it to look like this:

LANGUAGE_LETTER=E
OPTIONS_PATH=c:\infogram\ice

And save

5)start up dosbox and mount c c:\

6)mount d c:\games\ice\prisoner -t cdrom

7)switch to the d: drive

8)for some odd reason to get the game to run properly you have to type dir next

9)lastly typing in ice640 should get the game to run. This also fixes a save glitch that comes with trying to run the game on XP.

I hope that helps.

[LGM]

That's almost as bad as standing on your head while balancing a biscuit to open a door....

[sedriss]

I remember how stunned i was when i first saw the graphics in Prisoner of Ice..
Especially in the intro(i think), when some dude is running in the snow, and he left footprints! Man.. i was totally amazed.

[Arrakis81]

Thank you all very much! 

Now that even my technical doubts are gone (thanks Calamity) I think I'll go get it tomorrow ...

[Kinoko]

Why is it that SO much stuff doesn't work on XP? All I ever hear about slightly old software (or really old) is that it doesn't work on XP.

[Mr Jake]

I think its mainly sounds that doesnt work, because Windows XP uses a DOS emulator rather than actual DOS (iirc)

[viktor]

I think its mainly sounds that doesnt work, because Windows XP uses a DOS emulator rather than actual DOS (iirc)

man that stinks. I actualy kept my old computer just becouse of the old games.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Not just that. There's all kinds of random incompatibilities, some games just won't run at all - Phantasmagoria 2, Ceremony of Innocence, Riddle of Master Lu... it MAY have to dfo with the fact that DOS has been removed. Others, like Discworld Noir, have to re re-burned WITHOUT it's copy protection, because WinXP's native burning feature screws it up somehow. ANd lastly, some games have WEIRD bugs - in Gabe Knight, you can run it but you can't save anywhere except on the map screen.

I HATE XP! But I didn't have a choice in the matter, unfortunately. Ah well, at least newer games come out all the time...

...

...and frankly, I'm waiting for SCIStudio 4 to export everything in the old SIerra games and remake them with AGS so they can be run in any system, so I'm not too worried.

[Volcan]

All I ever hear about slightly old software (or really old) is that it doesn't work on XP.

I heard the same thing. If I'll buy a new computer, I'll install win98 over win XP.

[Calamity]

Not just that. There's all kinds of random incompatibilities, some games just won't run at all - Phantasmagoria 2, Ceremony of Innocence, Riddle of Master Lu... it MAY have to dfo with the fact that DOS has been removed. Others, like Discworld Noir, have to re re-burned WITHOUT it's copy protection, because WinXP's native burning feature screws it up somehow. ANd lastly, some games have WEIRD bugs - in Gabe Knight, you can run it but you can't save anywhere except on the map screen.

I HATE XP! But I didn't have a choice in the matter, unfortunately. Ah well, at least newer games come out all the time...

I hear you completely with that mon ami. All I want to do is play Phantasmagoria 2 but the damn thing won't install properly and what makes things worse is that even though I have the Windows only version and I've tried setting it up with tricking it by using this patch someone made (that makes it DOS compatible) and it still doesn't work even through DOSbox. Argh! I don't understand it because the first one runs fine on XP, but I don't really want to play the first one right now.

PS I have a fix for the GK one too (if it's Sins of the Fathers you mean which I'm assuming since sadly I haven't played the other two so I don't know if they have any issues) if you want I'll happily help you out.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

No, thanks... I heard about the fix you have, and I bet that's the same one I have (it involves copying the entire CD to the hard drive, right?). It didn't work... and neither did your PoI help. Seems like DOSBox don't like my system, mon!

[Calamity]

Yep that's the one. Hmm I wonder what the deal with Dosbox not helping out is... :\

[Blade]

XP sucks. I never tried DosBox, it seemed too complicated. A had ScummVm and couldn't save games I played with it.

I've got PoI and I think it rocks (and I'm not gonna try it on my XP).

[jrl2222]

Their is an easy work around. Install a second hard drive in your system with windows 95 or 98 on it. Then just boot to that and install your games. Most new computers let you choose which drive you want to boot to in the bios even if it is the slave drive. Thats what I do for all my old games. I have windows 98 installed on a 5 gig drive along with all the games that don't work in XP. You can get hard drives for under $10 on ebay if they are under 10 gig.

[InCreator]

10 euro sounds too much for a game which you have to emulate through DosBox.

This, and emulating isn't completely perfect all the time too, it depends more on a game itsself.