300 Favourite Games

300 Favourite Games is a 1998 compilation featuring a curated selection of 337 shareware and demo games, spanning genres like adventure, arcade, board, card, and strategy. The collection includes titles dating back to 1983, with a mix of DOS and Windows-compatible games, some requiring specific environments to run. The games are organized into categories and can be launched directly from the CD or installed on the user’s machine.

300 Favourite Games: Review

Introduction

The year 1998 stands as a monument in gaming history—a supernova of creativity where The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, and StarCraft redefined interactive storytelling, immersion, and competitive play. Yet amidst this galaxy of masterpieces, a quieter, more democratic force emerged: the compilation disc. Among these, 300 Favourite Games (1998) promised a sprawling digital diaspora, a “hand-picked” treasury of shareware and demos from the PC underground. While overshadowed by AAA titans, this curio—developed by Aludra Software (John Wong) and published by Expert Software—serves as a vital archaeological dig into the pre-internet era of gaming. It is less a cohesive experience and more a fragmented mosaic of a bygone digital frontier, offering raw, unpolished gems alongside forgotten relics. This review excavates its significance, flaws, and place in gaming’s cultural evolution.

Development History & Context

Vision and Constraints:
300 Favourite Games emerged from the shareware boom of the early 1990s, a period when developers distributed games in truncated form to entice full purchases. Aludra Software’s vision was curation: assembling 337 titles (a discrepancy noted by observant players) spanning genres and eras. The compilation’s core tension lay in technological ambition versus execution. While marketed for Windows 3.1/95, the bulk of titles were DOS relics—a gamble on backward compatibility that often failed. The browser system, capable of running games from CD, copying DOS executables, or launching Windows installers, attempted to bridge generational gaps but was hampered by expired shareware trials and OS fragmentation. John Wong’s programming handled these logistics with admirable pragmatism, yet the result was a Rube Goldberg machine of compatibility, not seamless integration.

The 1998 Gaming Landscape:
1998 was a watershed year. Sony’s PlayStation dominated the console market, while the Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn delivered exclusive masterpieces. On PC, online multiplayer and 3D accelerators were ascendant, with StarCraft and Half-Life pioneering new paradigms. Yet budget compilations like 300 Favourite Games thrived in the shadows. They capitalized on the “value” segment, targeting consumers wary of $60+ titles and eager for variety. Expert Software—no stranger to compilations—leveraged this niche, positioning the disc as a gateway to PC gaming’s past and present. Its release coincided with the decline of DOS and the rise of Windows-native applications, making the compilation both a time capsule and an awkward transition piece.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

Fragmented Storytelling:
As a compilation, 300 Favourite Games contains no unified narrative. Instead, its “story” is told through the thematic clusters of its games:
– Adventure Games (27 titles): Rooted in text-based origins (Adventure, a Colossal Caves clone) and early horror (Hugo’s House of Horrors), these tales evoke pulp exploration and puzzle-driven intrigue. They reflect the genre’s shift from parser-based interaction to graphical interfaces, with Walls of Bralock representing the era’s embrace of point-and-click simplicity.
– Arcade Games (116 titles): This category embodies high-score culture—space shooters (Earth Invasion), platformers (Aldo’s Adventure), and even the surreal Oakflat Nuclear Power Plant Simulator. Their narratives are minimalist: survive, dominate, repeat.
– Strategy & Board Games (50 titles combined): WinRisk and WinTrek translate tabletop strategy to the digital realm, emphasizing territorial control and resource management.
– Kids Games (25 titles): Titles like Zurk’s Learning Safari frame education as playful adventure, reinforcing the edutainment trend of the 1990s.

Thematic Cohesion Through Eclecticism:
The compilation’s overarching theme is democratization. From Baccarat’s casino glamour to Ungaria’s abstract grid puzzles, it mirrors the genre sprawl of 1990s PC gaming—where a teenager could play tactical warfare and a jigsaw puzzle in the same sitting. There’s a nostalgic innocence here, a pre-social media era of solitary discovery. Yet its disjointedness also reflects gaming’s pre-streaming, pre-YouTube days, where player imagination filled narrative gaps.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Browser and Execution:
The game’s core “loop” is exploration via its categorization system. Players navigate Adventure, Arcade, or Mind Games categories, launching titles through a rudimentary browser. Execution varies wildly:
– Direct CD Play: Windows-native games like FBI Fred launched instantly.
– DOS Workarounds: Titles like 3D Tunnel required copying to the hard drive, often failing on modern Win 95/98 systems.
– Expired Trials: Some games refused to run, their 30-day shareware periods long expired.

Genre-Specific Mechanics:
– Arcade: Twitch-based action dominates—Missile Attack clones demand reflexes, while pinball games emphasize physics.
– Strategy: Apples & Oranges and Ports of Call blend resource management with spatial planning, showcasing early AI and economic simulation.
– Mind Games: Moraff’s Spherejongg and Tetris clones prioritize pattern recognition, with Aggravation offering asynchronous multiplayer via hot-seat play.
– Flaws: The UI is clunky, with shortcuts cluttering the desktop. The lack of save states for DOS games and inconsistent tutorials exacerbate accessibility issues.

World-Building, Art & Sound

A Patchwork of Worlds:
The compilation’s “world” is its catalog. Adventure games evoke gothic manors (Hugo’s House of Horrors) or alien planets (Weird Island), while strategy games map empires (WinRisk). Sports titles like Digital Downs simulate racetracks, juxtaposed with the sci-fi absurdity of Strategic Bomber. This eclecticism creates a sense of boundless possibility—a digital diaspora where scale and scope override cohesion.

Visual and Auditory Archaeology:
– Art: DOS games use 16-color VGA palettes (Aldo’s Assault), while Windows titles boast dithered backgrounds and pixelated sprites (Grot 31). The aesthetic is unapologetically retro, a testament to the limitations of 1990s hardware.
– Sound: MIDI soundtracks dominate (Jetpack’s chiptune beats), complemented by PC speaker blips and sampled speech. The audio landscape is uneven—some titles feature dynamic sound effects, others silence.
– Presentation: The browser’s static menus and utilitarian design reflect the era’s functionalism. Screenshots on the CD inlay promise polish the disc rarely delivers.

Reception & Legacy

Contemporary Reception:
No contemporary reviews survive in the archives, but its design hints at a mixed reception. The “337 vs. 300” discrepancy and compatibility issues likely frustrated buyers, while the inclusion of expired shareware trials sparked accusations of false advertising. In a 1998 market saturated with polished titles, 300 Favourite Games was a budget curiosity—affordable but unremarkable.

Legacy as Time Capsule:
Today, its value is historical. It preserves obscure titles like Wa-tor for Windows (a cellular automaton sim) and Abmis the Lion (an early action-adventure), artifacts of a pre-indie era. The compilation exemplifies the shareware ecosystem: a space where experiments like The Jelly Bean Factory (a puzzle hybrid) could coexist with clones. Modern preservationists emulate it to access gaming’s pre-3D-accelerator roots, though compatibility patches are often required. Its influence is indirect: it foreshadowed Steam’s “massive library” ethos but lacks its curated quality.

Conclusion

300 Favourite Games is less a game and more a digital fossil—an imperfect, sprawling record of PC gaming’s formative years. Its technical flaws and inconsistent quality render it a niche curiosity for historians, yet its ambition is undeniable. In 1998, while Ocarina of Time and Half-Life pushed the medium forward, this compilation celebrated gaming’s democratic spirit: the joy of discovering Alien Worlds in a bargain bin, the pride of mastering Mahjongg against AI. It is a monument to variety over polish, quantity over refinement. For players seeking polished narratives, it fails. For those seeking a window into the chaotic, creative bedrock of modern gaming, it is indispensable. In the grand tapestry of 1998, 300 Favourite Games is a frayed thread—one that, when tugged, reveals the entire weave.