The best top down games

Don’t be fooled by the name—Amazing Maze is more of a slightly-better-than-average maze. But hey, in 1983, navigating a screen full of walls and hoping you guessed righ...

Arnhem is the kind of wargame where you spend more time reading hex maps than shooting anything. It’s all about recreating Operation Market Garden — you know, that WWII...

Before realistic fighting games, there was Boxer Rebellion—a 1982 title so primitive, it makes Pong look flashy. It’s boxing with fewer rules and more pixels per punch....

Firezone is one of those late-80s action titles that seems determined to test both your reflexes and your optimism. It drops you into hostile territory and expects you to cope. The...

Ikari III: The Rescue takes the military action of its predecessors and adds one crucial ingredient: punching. Released in 1990 for DOS, it shifts from run-and-gun chaos toward bea...

X-Fighter feels like one of those early experiments where developers were still figuring out what “space combat” should even look like. It is simple, direct, and unapologetical...

Remember ALF? The sarcastic alien who really had it in for cats? Well, in ALF: The First Adventure, you get to live the dream—or nightmare—of controlling the furry mena...

Here comes another bubble game—but this one packs a punch. Bubble Trouble is a frantic shoot-’em-up where you pop evil bouncing bubbles before they bounce you out of ex...

Saddle up for an awkward mix of minigames that vaguely resemble rodeo events. Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show tries to recreate the excitement of a 19th-century traveling circus but ...

Empire Soccer 94 is football stripped of glamour and presented with a straight face that makes everything unintentionally funny. There are no licenses, no famous players, and no at...

There’s a quiet ambition to First Expedition, a game that invites you into exploration with a mix of curiosity and caution. It doesn’t rush; instead, it nudges you forw...

Batalia (1986) is what happens when war games and spreadsheet programs fall in love. This early DOS strategy title throws you into tactical battles with graphics that would struggl...

Shanghai II: Dragon’s Eye (1990, Windows 3.x/Mac) takes the serene logic of mahjong solitaire and wraps it in a calm, almost meditative presentation. Tiles stack in intricate...

Released in 1994, Alien Olympics answers the age-old question: “What if the Olympics were hosted by Martians on acid?” This wacky collection of mini-games has you compe...

Trade in your sword and crown for a dice cup in King Graham’s Board Game Challenge. The noble hero of King’s Quest takes a break from slaying dragons to play board game...

If you’ve ever wanted to command armies older than your great-great-great-grandparents, Encyclopedia of War: Ancient Battles is your time machine with a keyboard. Released in...

Final Frontier is a late-80s slice of space ambition, the kind that assumes you’re perfectly happy staring at menus while imagining epic interstellar conquest. It’s str...

Gremlins is what happens when someone decides that cute, chaotic movie creatures should be turned into a game that is slightly less cute and a lot more confusing. In Gremlins, you ...