Games featuring hotseat multiplayer mode

Time to hit the lanes in 10th Frame, a bowling simulator so committed to realism it even simulates the wait between turns. You line up your shot, set your spin, and pray the ancient gods of DOS let your pixel ball behave. The graphics depict a bowling alley with all the ambiance of a dentist’s office, and the sound effects could easily double...

If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a 19th-century merchant sailing the high seas with a suspiciously optimistic outlook on international trade, 1869 is your jam. It throws you into the age of clipper ships, where profit margins are thinner than your sailor’s rations and storms love to ruin your day. You’ll juggle cargo, haggle pri...

You are Sherlock Holmes, and someone has committed a crime, possibly because they couldn’t handle the game’s UI. 221B Baker Street is a detective board game where your mind is your only weapon. And also a notepad, because keeping track of clues is half the game. You wander through foggy London, asking yourself how such elegant mystery-s...

Acquire (1989, DOS) brings boardroom drama to your DOS screen, turning you into a hotel tycoon in a game where the real enemy is... math. It's a faithful adaptation of the classic board game, complete with mergers, hostile takeovers, and the slow crushing realization that your cousin bought all the good stocks before you. There’s no real anim...

If you’ve ever dreamed of commanding a WWII convoy while cold, stressed, and staring at a pixelated radar screen, Action in the North Atlantic (1989, DOS) has you covered. It’s part strategy, part simulation, and all tension. You’ll guide merchant ships past U-boats, manage escorts, and occasionally scream at the screen when your ...

Think you’re good at making tough decisions under pressure? Advanced Civilization dares you to prove it by turning diplomacy into passive-aggressive warfare. Based on the classic board game, this DOS gem lets you take your ancient people from tribal hut to regional dominance—if you can survive plagues, invasions, and your own ambition. ...

Ah, Advantage Tennis—where the graphics are flat, the physics are questionable, and the grunts are blessedly absent. This DOS-era sports sim serves up matches that somehow feel like both a relaxing afternoon and a fierce Wimbledon final. Timing your shots is half the game; the other half is praying your opponent glitches into the net. A charm...

Long before Minecraft let us build worlds, Adventure Construction Set handed you a digital Lego box and said, “Go nuts.” Want to make a dungeon full of orcs and ham sandwiches? Sure. A sci-fi epic with talking robots and lava floors? Absolutely. It’s like a make-your-own-adventure kit with just enough user interface to make you qu...

Mix one part turn-based strategy, one part fantasy novel, add a dash of dragon, and you get Age of Wonders (1999). This is the game where wizards rule, elves sulk in forests, and you get to conquer the world with tactical brilliance - or blind luck. It’s like chess, but with lightning bolts and skeleton armies. Diplomacy is an option, but hon...

Sid Meier took one look at Earth and said, “Let’s leave this dump.” Thus, Alpha Centauri (1999, Windows XP) was born - a 4X strategy game that takes Civilization to space, then adds philosophy, moral dilemmas, and terrifying sentient fungi. It’s like if Civ II read too much Nietzsche and went off its meds. The factions are a...

Alpha Waves is what happens when someone programs a 3D platformer using only triangles and pure imagination. You bounce. That’s it. You bounce through abstract levels that look like a geometry teacher’s daydream, all while calming music lulls you into a weird sense of floating peace. It is part game, part meditation session, and entirel...

Welcome to the future, where space empires are managed entirely via text and colored dots. Anacreon puts you in charge of an interstellar civilization and lets you conquer galaxies with the graphical intensity of an Excel spreadsheet. Micromanagement is the name of the game. You will harvest resources, move fleets, and wonder if your colonists are ...

Aquanoid (1992) takes the classic Breakout formula and throws it underwater, because bricks are apparently much more intimidating when they're wet. You control a paddle, you bounce a ball, you try to pretend you're not just playing a glorified version of Pong with a marine biology twist. Bonus points for the soundtrack, which sounds like a Casio ke...

Arcade Pool (1994) is like playing a game of billiards in your best friend’s basement—if your best friend happened to be a DOS machine with a serious competitive streak. It’s shockingly addictive, with physics that almost make sense and enough charm to make you forget you’re alone, playing pool against a smug AI who always s...

Think you're smart? Arcade Trivia Quiz (1993) is here to humble you with rapid-fire questions about pop culture, history, and whatever else the developers could fit on a floppy disk. It’s like playing Jeopardy! with a host who only accepts answers in blocky text and doesn’t tolerate typos. Educational, frustrating, and a fantastic way t...

Archon: The Light and the Dark is an abandoned DOS fantasy blend of strategy and action game, developed by Free Fall Associates and published for DOS by Electronic Arts in 1984. Archon and its sequels are a unique mix of chess-like turn-based strategy and arcade action games. Take chess and add the fact that every time two pieces land on the same s...

Atomix is a tile-based puzzle game released in 1990 by Thalion Software for platforms like Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64. The objective of Atomix is to assemble molecular structures by moving individual atoms around a fixed grid. Players must slide atoms into place, but they only stop when they hit an obstacle, making positioning a...

Bad Street Brawler is a beat 'em up video game developed by Beam Software and published by Mindscape. Originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1987 and later for other platforms. The game features Duke Davis, a former punk rocker turned vigilante, as the protagonist. In "Bad Street Brawler," players guide Duke through various urban environm...