For 3D Realms & Major Stryker Fans:

Yesterday was the 25th Anniversary of the release of Major Stryker, one of our early classics.  It was originally released Jan 15, 1993.  The game was discontinued some years ago, and released as freeware by us back in 2006.  You can download it from the 3drealms.com website for free. Here is a link to download the game from us for free: https://3drealms.com/catalog/major-stryker_47/

However, in talking to some of the developers on the actual anniversary, we discovered that we had a working beta version of Major Stryker as well that was dated August 12, 1992.  We have decided to release the beta for you to check out.  There was one legendary beta that we cannot seem to find - was the first beta.  That one was so hard that every single beta tester complained it was too hard.  That almost never happens, so it was made a bit easier to play, that is what you're seeing here.

The game is mostly complete, but it is not totally finished.  The music is there, but no sound effects are there.  The gameplay is mostly finished, but not totally polished.  Order screens are not finished, and various help is incomplete.

Tech Stuff: This beta does require DOSBox to work - there is no shell provided for this release, nor will we give any support in getting it to work under DOSBox.

Back in the day we used to take multiple steps to prevent our betas from leaking. For some titles we used a physical hardware dongle, and on some we made it so the games had to be played inside a specific date range *AND* have a specific environment variable and/or a command line parameter to run.  Not all of them used all our security methods, but this Major Stryker beta used some of them. To get the game to run right, you need all the files in the directory, and have to start the game with the "PLAY.BAT" batch file inside DOSBox.

Summary: We thought this would be something fun you guys would like seeing. Was a fun little surprise to discover on the anniversary day, and after some check with various folks, we're releasing it for free on the day after.  Enjoy!

Come visit us and let us know what you think.

Joe Siegler
3D Realms
Jan 16, 2018

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