Games released in 1988 sorted by popularity

Before co-op brawlers were everywhere, there was Double Dragon (1988 on DOS). Two brothers, one kidnapped girlfriend, and enough street thugs to populate a small city—that’s the setup. The game is all about walking rig...

Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World is a classic role-playing video game developed and published by New World Computing. It was originally released in 1988 for various home computer platforms, including the Apple II, MS-DOS...

Let’s be honest—Centerfold Squares (1988) is what happened when someone asked, “What if Qix but hornier?” You draw squares to reveal pixelated images of... let’s say, confident women. It’s surpr...

Rambo III is an action video game based on the 1988 action film of the same name, featuring the iconic character John Rambo, portrayed by Sylvester Stallone. The game was developed and published by various companies for different ...

Deluxe Paint, often abbreviated as DPaint, was a popular bitmap graphics editor and animation software package. It was developed by Electronic Arts (EA) and released in the mid-1980s. Deluxe Paint was initially designed for the Co...

Radical! Gnarly! And other 80s slang words! California Games is what happens when sports simulations meet neon-colored vibes and a love of spandex. You’ll hacky sack, BMX race, and throw frisbees in pixelated glory. Half the...

Skate or Die is an abandoned sports game, developed and released by Electronic Arts in 1988 for DOS and a number of other platforms. Skate or Die is a multi-sport kind of game, including every kind of unconventional "sport" done o...

You’ve never really lived until you’ve watched a rook pick up a pawn and slam dunk it into the floor. Battle Chess (1988) turns the world’s most intellectual board game into a medieval cage match. The pieces don&...

GW-BASIC (short for Gee Whiz BASIC) is a dialect of the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. It's one of the early implementations of BASIC and was included as the default programming environment in early ve...

Before NBA 2K made your thumbs cry, there was One-on-One Basketball. You get to control either Larry Bird or Julius Erving in a thrilling display of 80s pixelated hoop dreams. The court looks like it was drawn with a ruler and thr...

Your uncle is dead, but his ghost can still blow out candles. That’s the premise. Bubble Ghost is a quirky physics puzzler where you guide a delicate bubble through haunted rooms by gently blowing on it—yes, literally ...

Paperboy was one of (if not THE) arcade hit of 1985. It was developed by Atari for the arcades and later published by Mindscape for DOS in 1988. More conversion were made for quite a few other platforms. Paperboy gameplay is pecul...

Ultima 5 takes a darker turn. Lord British is missing, and his regent, Lord Blackthorn, has turned Britannia into a police state where virtues are enforced at sword-point. You know things are bad when honesty is compulsory and pun...

Arkanoid is a classic arcade video game that was first released in 1986 by Taito. It is a breakout-style game, which means that the primary objective is to break a wall of bricks or blocks by bouncing a ball off a paddle at the bo...

Classic Concentration brings the Alex Trebek game show to DOS, complete with low-res puzzles and that addictive memory card-flipping mechanic. Match two elephants, and boom—you get a piece of a rebus puzzle that looks like i...

Before Madden became a household name, 1988 gave us this DOS football classic, where plays are drawn like cave paintings and players move like molasses in January. Yet, for its time, this was the real deal. You could call plays, m...

In Corruption, you’re a businessman trapped in a web of deceit, murder, and paperwork. It’s an interactive fiction game where every conversation could be a clue—or a setup. The writing is sharp, the tension is re...

Alternate Reality: The City is a role-playing video game developed by Paradise Programming for various platforms including Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, and Commodore 64. It was released in 1985. In Alternate Reality: The City, play...

Released in 1988, BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception is part RPG, part strategy, part “did I just die in the tutorial again?” You’re a young MechWarrior on the run, assembling allies and blowing stuff up w...

Star Goose is a classic video game developed by Logotron and released in 1988 for various home computer systems of that era, including the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC. It is a top-down, vertically scrolling shoo...