Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and download (if available)

I remember buying this when I was a kid (or rather I think my mother bought it for me), and I still have the box around somewhere, but sadly the disks have long since died. I spent a lot of time playing it and I loved it, and when the sequel came out I loved that one even more. I think I'm gonna get this mostly for the sake of completion, and I might even fire it up once or twice, but I still think I'll stick with number two when I feel like playing some Populous.

Thanks anyway, though. The nostalgia is flowing through me as I write this.

yes i remeber the game too, at that time when the game was on the market i had to decide if i will hold hands with my first girlfriend, or i go home to play Populous!well i decided for the 2nd.just to see the foe´s creaters take a free swim in lava!(poor girlfriend, but she did not like computer games anyway) :angel:

long time lurker: as far as I remember this game came first on Amiga/Atari ST and not PC; the graphics were considered to be superb at the time the game came out and so was the interface: remember that this is long pre-winxp - so the interface was seen as easy and intituive

the amiga version had a bangin´intro track I still remember 15 years later, I hope this is an the pc version as well

Uhmm... quick thing I want to set straight: Overlord provided all screenshots except for two. The credit goes to him for it :bye:

It's not that important, but nevertheless, thank you for pointing that out! And, of course, thank you for those 2 screenshots! :ok:

This is actually a rather memorable occasion (the placing of this game on this site, that is) and I am inclined to ramble on a bit...

Some PC games have made gaming history. One of these is Populous. Some other games like this are Syndicate, UFO Enemy Unknown, DOOM, Civilisation,..., well check this site out for more gems like this. The reason these games were played to death by EVERYONE (yes, I know, except you :bleh: ) is that they were completely original concepts which set the stage for a billion clones (some of which were excellent).

This originality is sorely lacking these days in many fields :cry: . Is our imagination exhausted ? Is our creativity degrading ? Are we doomed to go to the movies and having to choose between Rocky 94 and Scream 56 ?
Fortunately, the answer is no, as HomeWorld is a quite recent and brilliant example of (can't wait till NEXUS hits the shelves :w00t: ). The problem is that games (and movies) are much bigger now, cost a lot more to make, and take a lot longer to make. And because it is so expensive, new concepts are risky things to try out. But when they are good, the payoff is HUGE.

Back to the good old days, when I was first introduced to Populous, it was absolutely revolutionary. The very first God-game. Even the graphics were very impressive then. It blew my mind and I played it for ages. I even bought the expension pack. Bullfrog still remains the most innovative game company ever in my humble opinion, and this is were they really started to roll. Respect :ok:

Well, it seems I got very :ot: and I deserve to be :rifle: , but the very first God-game can't help but make you philosophical. Gods bless Peter Molyneux and his cronies for providing me with countless sleepless nights.

Cheers,
Lodewijk

All of the maps of the original Populous were created simply by generating strings of random numbers (and Peter Molyneux admitted in his 2000 GDC presentation that the Promised Lands expansion pack to Populous simply consisted of those random numbers reversed).

Yea brilliant game. :ok:

I believe it came out on the Atari ST first, which I had at the time. And I think it was written in C.

Does anyone have a pic of the box (or was it the magazine advert?) showing little people building and expanding out of a computer (or screen or book) onto a desk?
It was really cool anyway, I'd love to see that again!

I also agree that Populous 2 was a big improvement on this brilliantly original game.

Trevor.
trevor@ezfrog.com

Can any of you save your progress in Populous? Everytime I click on the Filename box i get the prompt for my Deity name and then the Deity Verification Check; just like when i first start the game. I can't save my game. Does anyone know how to get around this? I even copied all the files to a floppy disk and run the game from there, but no luck.

How do we get past the copy protect on this?

How do you get past the copyright protection?

" What planet uses this sheild?"

@ Kane and Kitten - simple enough, just press enter and - voila! :ok:

During the game, you have to click on the world icon, near the phone, sound and other icons - on the far right - you will be prompted for folder, choose it (or type it in) and name of the savegame. You just type it in, and there you have it!

Thanks for your explanation OvErLoRd. I must say, I assumed that nobody saved their games and thought populous was just too old to save properly. I even copied the game to a floppy and tried from there; but this was before reading your post.

Now, i have followed your steps and it didn't work, in fact that's what I was doing before, but somehow the game asked me again about my deity name and then the copy protection stuff, right after i clicked on the file name box.

It's obvious that saving works, because it's working for you. So, after trying a few things, I managed to get it working. I moved the populous folder to C:\, instead of my long path d:\games\strategy\. After this i thought the pathnames were important. I tried a few things, like placing populous inside many folders and also changing the lenght of name folders (i never went over 8 characters, knowing that populous is a dos game and won't like Windows long filenames). Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

To summarise: if saving doesn't work for you, move the entire populous folder to C:\, or D:\, which worked for me too and keep folder names no longer than 8 letters.

If you're running it in DOSBox you should be able to get around that by having it mount your long folder (Like C:\Program Files\Games\Dave's Games\DOS Games\) as a drive (usually C:\) root, then the games will disagree with it less often.

i know its not the one you are after but
you can get populous the beggining
here
i got a copy second hand from a shop for 50p!! used to have it on the ps1 but the ps1 version was really bad. to much slowdown on the ps1 but this version rocks.

were is a manual for this game :sos: :sos: :sos:

Checked the Extras box on the review page?
If it's not there, try www.replacementdocs.com .

Anybody know how to activate the mouse? Or am I the only person with this problem?

Try using the DosBox emulator.
You can download it here.

If you have any problems with it, try having a look at the official FAQ on the DosBox site.
Basic Setup and Installation
Command Line
Z instead of C at the command prompt
Internal Programs (important, especially MOUNT)
Most of the stuff in there is not really needed, but you would do best to familiarize yourself with the specific topics I linked to.
The mounting of your DosBox games directory, switching the promt to the emulated C: drive and clearing the screen from previous commands can all be executed from the [autoexec] section of dosbox.conf, so you won't have to re-type them every time round.
Frontend programs can help running DosBox with varying configurations for different games.
For both a more accessible user interface and oldschool feel, you can use Norton Commander (get it from our programs and utilities page - scroll down to the bottom to find it). NC might seem awkward at first, but in fact it is a very functional genuine DOS era file manager frontend. It has a plethora of functions that will help you in navigating around the directories, while still retaining the command prompt.

Thanks!

i dont know this 1 but populous: the beggining is awsome! Im playing it right now.

I have tried downloading this game three times! Each time, it tells me that I am using an unknown method of compression! (I use winzip) What gives?

Try the newest version of Winzip, and don't use the context menu options to unpack the archive.

This is partially my fault, when I was packing the game I used a less popular subtype of ZIP compression. A repack is coming right up.

I finally got around to downloading this game - mostly because I just couldn't believe that it was released in '98!?! Wow, I remember thinking that the graphics were so incredible when I was a child.

The best thing is that the game still does look pretty good on my laptop today.

*sigh*

Good times, thanks Abandonia :D

A great game... but I cant remember how one could choose one of the world by their names. Believe it or not but I still got my old list of world names and I would love to continue where I stopped 10 years ago... well more 15 year...... Still have to do nr 177 Immandieout .... (think that was the name)
So where can I type in the names of the worlds?

Greetz
Morker

It was the first strategy game I played. I didn't know there is a PC version, since I played it on my Master System.

I spent an entire summer playing this game--determined to beat it--which I eventually did. This was easily the most difficult game I have ever beaten. Although you 'merely' had to play a couple hundred of the thousand worlds, the later worlds were nearly impossible to beat.

Now I want to play again but a few of the critical keys do not seem to work??!?!
Computer help build castle "/"
Computer help raise "*"
raise land "+"
lower land "Enter"

I can't get the above to work even with remapping the keys. I suspect the problem is due to the fact the mouse buttons are set up to raise and lower land and so there is a conflict with all land modifying keyboard commands. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

hi guys. the info on the main screen for this game states that you shouldn't run the game with the populous.exe file

so i try and run it from popvga-4.bat by double clicking it but nothing happens. how do i work it?

Use DosBox to run it.

thanks. finally got it to work :)

Sorry, but all your tips couldn'*t help with my problem in saving the game!
I'm running it on DosBox and it works good, but saving remains impossible. He doesn't save it, but always asks me for the copy protection code and i couldn't find the manual anywhere on the internet. Replacementdocs seems to be a good site, but only has a manual for the atari-version of populous which my acrobat reader doesn't open! Any ideas left?

Greetz,
Nick

you can type anything your hear wishes for. the game shoud be cracked. just tried, it worked btw

i am not sure what do because i don't find manual so please could make one or provide for us

Problems with saving games
 

If anyone is having problems saving a game in populous then please read.

I originally downloaded populous from another classic gaming site.
I could not get the save feature to work. when you clicked save it asked for the deity name and would not let you enter a filename.

After much frustration I downloaded the version from the abandonia site. unzipped it to c:\pop and bingo the save now works.

It appears that some versions of populous on the web are corrupt.
If your version does not have the 4 different versions for diff resolutions and sound cards then it is likely that you have a corrupt version.

Abandonia has it correct though.


Thank you Abandonia for a great site that continually makes me remember the good old days of gaming.

:):):)

Some Codes
 

I really loved to play Populous on my ATARI ST. Short after buying the game Ifound a computer magazine with all the codes for all levels in. Of cause this is gone since long, but I made a list of the levels I played so far:

0 GENESIS, 1 , 2 , 3 TIMUSLUG, 4 , 5 SCOQEMET, 6 SWAUER, 7 , 8 EOAOZORD, 9 BURWILCON, 10 MORINGILL, 11 , 12 BILCEMET, 13 , 14 WEAVHIPHAM, 15 , 16 BADACON, 17 , 18 HOBDIETORY, 19 BUGQUEEND, 20 , 21 CORPEHAM, 22 BINOZOND, 23 , 24 LOWINGICK, 25 QAZITORY, 26 , 27 MINMPME, 28 , 29 , 30 SUZALOW, 31 , 32 SHIDIEHOLE, 33 , 34 JOSTME, 35 , 36 CALOZBOY, 37 , 38 SWAINGPAL, 39 KILLOHOLE, 40 EOAMELAS, 41 BURMPAL, 42 MORHIPPIL, 43 NIMOUTJOB, 44 BILADOR, 45 , 46 WEAVINPERT, 47 ALPLOPOUT, 48 , 49 IMMPEPIL, 50 , 51 BUGWILLIN, 52 SHADOGODON, 53 COROPERT, 54 BINMEOUT, 55 , 56 LOWHIPBAR, 57 , 58 VERYELIN, 59 MINGBDON, 60 HAMINMAR, 61 FUTLOPLUG, 62 , 63 DOUPEBAR, 64 , 65 HURTIKEING, 66 , 67 , 68 CALMELUG, 69 SCOMPHILL, 70 SWAHIPMET, 71 , 72 EOAEING, 73 , 74 MORINCON, 75 NIMLOPILL, 76 BILTHILL, 77 , 78 WEAVEAED, 79 ALPIKEHAM, 80 BADOGOOND, 81 , 82 HOBMEILL, 83 BUGMPTORY, 84 SHADKOPEND, 85 , 86 BINEHAM, 87 SADGBOND, 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 MINOXEND, 92 HAMEAME

any one have the code/password for deity verification check?

torrent
 

[BEEEP]

No alot of seeders, but I am for nowm, and I will keep it alive for a while.

This version doesn't seem to ask for copy protection (words from the manual) atleast not so far after playing a few levels and saving games...

How to play?
 

Hi,
A friend had it on Atari, always wanted to play. Great, now I can, thanks!

But the play commands don't seem to work?
I can move around, set options etc by keyboard or mouse, but none of the gameplay commands do anything - raise/ lower land, set leader, fight/settle etc.

I start by playvga4.bat, select tutorial mode, read the docs at http://www.consoleclassix.com/snes/populous.html

[Edit]
Hooray, asking a stupid question solves the problem.
A: Uncheck the ZZZ button to get the action going.

Ok, thanks, gotta go, got some worlds to rule!

gladpack

I downloaded the Promised Lands data disk from another Abandonware site. Does anyone know how to actually use the data disk? I installed it... but then I don't know how to get the game to switch to the graphics and worlds from the data disk.

Ignore misread the question, sorry.

[Edit²]
Think I remember, was it via 'custom' that you had to access the extra scenarios?