Games released in 1984 sorted by rating

You are a cat. Not a cool panther or a mystical tiger. Just a good old alley cat trying to make it through a day full of brooms, angry dogs, and questionable fish. Alley Cat is a f...

In Montezuma’s Revenge (1984), you play Panama Joe, an explorer who spends more time falling into pits than actually raiding temples. This early platformer is all about timin...

King's Quest: Quest for the Crown is the first game in the popular series of King's Quest. Developed by Sierra On-line, King's Quest is an early adventure game (one of the first an...

Before Battle Chess, there was Archon. Imagine a board game where pawns and knights settle disputes not with rules, but with full-on gladiatorial combat. Archon gives you light ver...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a humorous free text adventure game based on the novel of the same name written by Douglas Adams (if you never read it, shame on you!). The ...

Rogue is one of the first RPGs in the history of video gaming. It's a text-based dungeon crawler in which you have to fight your way in the dungeon to recover the Amulet of Yendor....

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. T...

Dragon World (1984) might sound like the precursor to a sprawling epic RPG, but it’s actually more of a board-game-style fantasy experience. Less “slay the dragon with ...

In Crime and Punishment, you’re not the criminal—you’re the detective, judge, and executioner rolled into one. Presented as a legal simulation, it tasks you with ...

dBASE III is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that was popular in the late 1980s. It was developed by Ashton-Tate, a software company. dBASE III was a successor to t...

Before there was Baldur’s Gate or Skyrim, there was DND. This 1984 DOS dungeon crawler is as old-school as it gets, complete with ASCII graphics, endless hallways, and monste...

The final part of the original trilogy, Zork III ditches treasure-hunting in favor of introspection, moral puzzles, and the looming presence of the Dungeon Master—basically t...

Castle Adventure is what happens when a medieval fantasy RPG gets crammed into a game smaller than your average selfie. ASCII graphics? Check. Typing commands like “GET SWORD...

With Chess88, you’re entering the elite club of DOS chess nerds who appreciate ASCII art and precision time controls. Compared to its 1981 predecessor, it’s a leap forw...

If you’ve ever dreamed of commanding a submarine in the middle of the Cold War but didn’t want to deal with actual torpedoes, GATO is your safe harbor. Released in 1984...

The Ancient Art of War is a classic video game that was released in the late 1980s. Developed by Evryware and published by Broderbund, it was available on various platforms, includ...

Before Doom and Wolfenstein 3D turned PC gaming into a pixelated bloodbath, there was Castle Wolfenstein. A stealth game in 1984? Believe it. You sneak around a Nazi fortress, stea...

Released in 1984 for DOS, Sorcerer is Infocom at its most mischievous. You play an apprentice wizard who wakes up from a hangover only to find your mentor missing and reality sligh...

Q*bert is a classic arcade game that was created by Warren Davis and Jeff Lee and was released by Gottlieb in 1982. The main goal of Qbert is to change the color of every...

Released in 1984, Zyll is what happens when a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master learns to code and decides to build a text adventure inside a coffee machine. There are no graph...