~Power Gamer For Windows

"A utility for running DOS games in Windows"  -  By Neil Gorin


~Reviewed by Alex Willmer



`Calling all  GUI junkies and Windows addicts!  How would you like
`to play DOS games under Windows?

`As the  help file  so clearly  says: "Despite  the popularity  of
`Microsoft Windows,  the DOS game (and indeed the DOS program) are
`far from  dead.   You may  well feel  at home with graphical File
`Manager type  programs, but  beyond card  games,  there  are  few
`challenging games  for Windows" . . . "When you run your game, it
`thinks it's  running under  plain DOS  - that's  because  it  is!
`Power Gamer  painlessly (and invisibly) closes Windows, runs your
`game and then restarts Windows for you."

`Your game  will have full access to your PC, the Sound card, Joy-
`stick, etc.,  and will  run at  full speed.  When I was told what
`this did I was not convinced, run DOOM 2 under Windows?  - surely
`you jest!   Windows  hogs memory and processor power like there's
`no tomorrow.   It's  unstable at  the best  of times; if it can't
`normally multitask nibbles and notepad, I really can't imagine it
`trying the same feat with Doom and Desktop publisher.

`My picture  was fiddling  about with  configs and  spending hours
`trying to  get it up and running.  Power Gamer can't quite manage
`that.  (What were you expecting?  A miracle?). It doesn't work by
`shunting Windows into virtual memory or anything fancy like that.
`It does work, though, and flippin' well at that.  How it works is
`so blatantly simple, it makes you wonder why nobody thought of it
`before.   All Power  Gamer does is to shut-down Windows, then run
`the game  under DOS.   When  you're finished,  it simply restarts
`Windows and  everything's fine.  The help file says: "Power Gamer
`allows you  to add  any DOS game to a Windows Program Group, with
`the virtual guarantee that it will run!"  As far as I can see, it
`does!   I've tested  it without  mercy, throwing  various obscure
`system monitors  and big word processors at it, but no matter how
`hard I tried, I could not get it to crash.

`On the  whole, Power  Gamer is  good.  It only uses at most 5k of
`precious memory, and this can quite easily be dropped to 2k. It's
`easy to  add a  game to  program manager; simply set it up as you
`would normally,  and then  add "pwrgamer"  to the  beginning.   A
`generous range  of icons  are supplied with the program, although
`some are taken from Window's own range.

`There are  some down-sides  to Power  Gamer.  The  help  file  is
`limited: it  has just  enough to  allow you  to get  Power  Gamer
`running with your favourite game.  There could be more. The hints
`'n' tips  section is  limited to  the use of parameters, avoiding
`batch files,  freeing 3k  of memory  and setting up mice. Options
`are limited to being able to turn a warning message off.  That is
`all that  you would  really need,  I suppose,  so it  isn't a bad
`thing.   There aren't  many other complaints I can make about it.
`It closes anything you're running, down, and lets "Do you want to
`save  untitled.txt?"   and  other  such  annoying  but  necessary
`messages through.   One  very brilliant  thing I  found was  that
`Power Gamer  doesn't let "Are you SURE you want to exit Windows?"
`get a sniff at the inside of your screen.

`One major  problem is  something nobody can do anything about it:
`the classic  memory.   No matter what you need, it's a problem at
`the best of times.  Assume you've battled Himem and won, and have
`found a memory configuration that will actually work with Doom 2,
`you will  then find that this config is Window's worst nightmare,
`and that  Windows'll be running like a snail on sedatives.  (Yes,
`this does  include you  chaps with  more money  than sense,  that
`already own  an over-priced  Pentium.)   (Sorry, just  had to add
`that little gripe in!!)

`Power Gamer  isn't disk  space hungry either.  The measly 300k it
`takes, gives  you the  program, the  help file, all the 'read-me'
`files and a DLL file.  The installation was easy.

`All in all, Power Gamer is very good. Running games under Windows
`is no task for the faint hearted.  Neil  Gorin could have written
`a complicated program that wrote & finely tuned pifs (Microsoft's
`own sad  attempt at  games under  Windows.) Instead, he's come up
`with an  ingenious method  that's easy  and simple  to use. Power
`Gamer uses  comparatively no memory & due to good programming (or
`luck!), is almost impossible to crash! (An amazing feat under DOS
`alone.)


~`If you  have to  run games under Windows, you have to have Power
~`Gamer.  Neil Gorin I salute you.

83%

~"Despite a few quibbles a brilliantly polished off piece."


`-----------------------------------------------------------------


`The shareware  version   (v.1.00)   is available  on the editor's
`trainer disk number 24. (View the option "Trainers and DOX disks"
`from the articles section of Cheet Sheets issue 35 or above), and
`the registered  version costs  14.95 available  from Neil Gorin.
`(See the 'about' button below for more details.)

