The best fixed screen 2D games

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 & A...

Ugh! answers the eternal question: what if a stone-age delivery service were the basis for an entire video game? You play as a caveman whose main skills include grunting, flying a ...

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, m...

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 fa...

Often mistaken as a Dig Dug clone, Digger is more like its eccentric cousin who insists on bringing a disco soundtrack to every family gathering. Released in 1983 for DOS, it combi...

Frogger needs very little introduction, yet it still deserves respect. Originally released in 1983, this deceptively simple game asks you to guide a frog across busy roads and trea...

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, ce...

For those who got hopelessly addicted to the card game inside Final Fantasy VIII, Triple Triad Gold (2000) was like someone saying, “Here, now you can ruin your productivity ...

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 s...

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 g...

Released back when computers still hummed ominously and monitors glowed like radioactive jellyfish, Epidemic! throws you into the grim business of stopping a deadly outbreak. The i...

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...

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 litt...

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 Soft...

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 mo...

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,...

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 ...

Lemonade Tycoon is a business simulation game that allows players to run their own virtual lemonade stand and try to turn it into a successful and profitable business. The game typ...

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 powe...

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, fra...