The best fixed screen 2D games

Sokoban is a classic puzzle game first released in 1982 by Hiroyuki Imabayashi for the NEC PC-8801 in Japan and later ported to a number of platforms, including DOS, as Soko-Ban. The name "Sokoban" translates to "warehouse keeper"...

The Incredible Toon Machine is a puzzle video game developed by Jeff Tunnell Productions and published by Sierra On-Line in 1994. It serves as the successor to the game Sid & Al's Incredible Toons and is part of the The Incred...

Doh is back, and he’s mad - presumably because no one understood what he was in the first place. Arkanoid 2 takes the original formula and dials everything up: more levels, more power-ups, more neon madness. It’s still...

Scorched Earth (1991) was the “mother of all games” long before Doom took the title. Two or more tanks face off on a randomly generated terrain, and your only mission is to blow everyone else sky-high. Simple? Yes. Add...

The name Carnage says it all—this top-down racer is less about precision driving and more about smashing into your enemies until they resemble digital roadkill. It’s fast, chaotic, and honestly looks like a game a 14-y...

Manic Miner is a quintessential platformer game that emerged in the early 1980s, developed by Matthew Smith for the ZX Spectrum. It stands as a hallmark of the 8-bit gaming era, celebrated for its innovative design and enduring ch...

Solomon’s Key is an arcade puzzle-platformer developed by Tecmo and released in 1986. It gained popularity for its challenging gameplay and was later ported to various home systems, including the NES, Commodore 64, and other...

PC-Man is an abandoned top-down Pac-Man clone in every regard: from the shape of the protagonist, to the cute ghosts. PC-Man was designed by Greg Kuperberg, developed by Orion Software and released in 1982 for DOS. As PC-Man, you ...

Jetpack is a classic 2D platformer video game developed by Adept Software and released for MS-DOS computers in 1993. Created by Adam Pedersen, it became popular for its addictive gameplay, simplicity, and level editor feature, all...

It’s Bomberman (1992, DOS), the legendary bomb-dropping game where you play a suspiciously cute guy with an infinite bomb supply and questionable indoor safety habits. You move through grid-like mazes, drop bombs, destroy wa...

Gorillas, also known as "Gorillas.bas," is a turn-based artillery game that was included as a sample program with Microsoft QBasic, an IDE and interpreter for a variant of the BASIC programming language. QBasic was commo...

Imagine a game where minesweeper meets viral chaos—Chain Reaction (1996) isn’t quite that, but it is a fast-paced puzzle-action hybrid where things blow up in neat little patterns. The chain reactions are satisfying, t...

Imagine Marble Madness had a caffeine overdose and fell into a platformer. That’s Bumpy’s Arcade Fantasy. You control a perpetually bouncing ball named Bumpy (creative, I know), who must navigate tricky levels full of ...

Antix (1985) is Snake, but with a death wish. Created by the same mad genius behind Tetris, this game takes the familiar snake-trail mechanic and cranks it to eleven. You’ve got to avoid walls, your own tail, and existential...

It’s Pac-Man, except it’s… not. Cap Man is a low-budget clone with just enough charm to avoid immediate deletion. You’ve got the dots, the ghosts, the power-ups—but everything feels slightly off, lik...

This is the game where Yugi Moto teaches you how to duel—and then proceeds to obliterate you with Dark Magician. Yugi the Destiny is slick, nostalgic, and full of cards you'll remember from the anime. The music is intense, t...

In Ack-Ack Attack! (1995, DOS), you operate an anti-aircraft gun and do your best to shoot down waves of enemy planes with what appears to be a potato cannon. The game is loud, frantic, and wonderfully simple — a throwback t...