Games released in 1987

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...

Released in 1987, this is less of a simulator and more of a fever dream where you pilot a flying box over a grid pretending to be terrain. 3-D Helicopter Simulator was ambitious for its time, with wireframe graphics that suggest a helicopter-shaped object doing helicopter-shaped things. You’ll take off, hover awkwardly, and then promptly cras...

In ACE 2 (1987, DOS), you and a buddy can engage in split-screen dogfights so slow they make real air combat look like fast-forwarded ballet. The graphics are simple, but the charm is in the rivalry — few things bond friendships like chasing each other through the skies with barely responsive controls. Not quite “top ace” material...

Ace of Aces (1987, DOS) is a game where you pilot a WWII plane via a series of still-image panels that suggest action more than deliver it. It’s like a flipbook with ambitions. You’ll toggle views, dodge bullets (sort of), and feel like you’re in a dogfight told by someone who once read about planes. Surprisingly addictive, despit...

Acheton (1987, DOS) is one of those text adventures where the game cheerfully tries to kill you every five minutes — and does so with words. You're tossed into a sprawling, brain-melting maze of puzzles so obscure they might as well be written in Klingon. There's no map, no mercy, and definitely no hand-holding. But for the brave (or masochis...

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...

In Airball (1987), you don’t play a knight, a space marine, or a plumber - you play a literal ball of air. Trapped in an isometric nightmare of spikes, fans, and poison gas, your squishy self must navigate hazards that clearly hate balloons. The controls are floaty (pun intended), the graphics are colorful, and the entire experience is wonder...

Aldo’s Adventure is what you get when someone squints at Donkey Kong and decides to remake it after four cups of coffee and a long nap. You play Aldo, a brave little guy whose hobbies include climbing platforms, dodging hazards, and falling in love with repetitive music. The levels are simple, the enemies look like they're made of leftover pi...

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 menace himself. Released in 1987 for DOS, this Pac-Man-esque maze game tasks you with dodging angry dads, catching pizzas, and avoiding the law. (Yes, really.) It’s lik...

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 ...

Apollo 18: Mission to the Moon (1987) lets you relive the lunar missions in all their... spreadsheet-like glory. This game is as educational as it is punishing; you’ll learn about thrust vectors, fuel efficiency, and your tolerance for failure. Spoiler alert: one wrong number and you’re plummeting into the Moon like a space-themed bowli...

In Arcade Volleyball (1987), two pixelated figures smack a ball over a net with all the grace of caffeinated stick figures. It's simple, it's bizarre, and it somehow manages to be insanely fun—especially when your opponent spikes the ball right into your square little face. Physics? Optional. Strategy? Laughable. Fun? Absolutely.

Tank controls + polar bears + Cold War vibes = Arctic Fox. In this early vehicular combat sim, you're piloting a futuristic snow tank across an icy wasteland to stop some aliens or Russians or alien Russians. The plot is thin, the enemies sparse, and your tank controls like a drunk walrus on skis. But in 1987, this was high-tech stuff. There’...

Yes, Astrotit (1987) is really the name, and no, it’s not what you think — though it does feel like it was named by a bored teenager. This side-scrolling shooter puts you in command of a spaceship shaped suspiciously like a flying insect, blasting your way through bizarre alien landscapes that look like they were designed during a fever...

Step aside, arcade action—B-24 Combat Simulator (1987) is here to test your patience, eyesight, and possibly your sanity. It’s all about realism, baby. You’ll take off, navigate, bomb targets, and hopefully land, all while squinting at an interface that looks like your uncle’s ham radio setup. The game is so committed to sim...

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...

If you ever wanted to roleplay in a text adventure where a coconut is of utmost importance, Beyond Zork has your back. This is Infocom at its most delightfully weird: part RPG, part parser game, all nonsense. You’ll customize stats, fight monsters, and read walls of text that somehow make you laugh, think, and shout “WHY?!” in equ...

Black Monday (1987) combines economic panic with the thrill of—wait for it—spreadsheet navigation. It's like Wolf of Wall Street without the fun, drugs, or DiCaprio. You’re managing a business during a financial collapse, and everything is falling apart faster than your patience. Charts, graphs, bad decisions—it’s all ...

With a name like Blort!, you'd expect a fart joke or a kids’ cartoon gone wrong, but no—it’s a 1987 arcade-style blaster for DOS. You play as a cosmic defender shooting weird blob-like aliens while dodging pixelated chaos. The controls are twitchy, the sounds are charmingly obnoxious, and the score system encourages reckless brave...

Welcome to Border Zone (1987, DOS), where the Cold War is hot and your only weapon is your brain (and maybe a good map). This text-based espionage thriller from Infocom combines spy drama with multiple protagonists and a real-time twist—yes, time passes even while you’re thinking. Which is terrifying. You’ll sneak past guards, dod...

Borland Eureka: the Solver is an abandoned text-based application developed by Borland Software Corporation and released in 1987 for DOS. The product is designed to solve complex problems, generate tables and plots, and perform what-if analysis. The user writes an equation, sets options, and instructs the software to solve the problem. The pro...

Borland Turbo Basic was a programming language developed by Borland, a software company that was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Turbo Basic was part of the Turbo series of programming languages and development tools that Borland created during that time.Turbo Basic was designed as a fast and efficient version of the BASIC programming language. B...

Boulder Dash Construction Kit is both a full game and a level editor, built around the gameplay mechanics of the original Boulder Dash (1984). You still play as Rockford, the pixelated, googly-eyed spelunker, digging through caves, dodging falling boulders, and collecting diamonds before time runs out. But the real star here is the Construction Kit...

Bureaucracy is an abandoned text-adventure game designed by Douglas Adams (yes, the writer of The Hitchhiker Guide of the Galaxy), developed and published by Infocom in 1987. Bureaucracy is a peculiar interactive fiction; the game challenges you to solve frustrating bureaucratic problems in a world populated by strange characters.

Business Simulator is an abandoned business simulation game developed and released by Reality Development in 1987 for DOS only. Business Simulator is a text-based management simulation designed by an university professor.