Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

More shoot'em ups from the past

Shoot'em ups were one of the most popular video games genre in the 80s and, perhaps, in the 90s. Then, for a number of reasons, shoot'em ups gradually lost their appeal as a genre. Yes, there were exceptions like Geometry Wars and similar games, but the golden age was long ...

Game Informer Greatest Games

The winners of the Game Informer Game of the Year are chosen by Game Informer editors. During their earlier years of publication they would give awards for the best game on each console available at the time, occasionally giving an award to the overall best game of the year.Here's ...

Play classic arcades in your browser

Installing and running old DOS games is never easy. You need a basic knowledge of your system and you need a DOSBOX front-end or a Virtual Machine insalled (which could be a daunting task). That's why I try to make some of the DOS games on Abandonware DOS available to ...

Cards, tabletop and board games

Card games and board games are not the most popular games available on Abandonware DOS. After all, there are countless versions of Poker, Clue, Scarbble, Monopoly and many other board/card games you can play for free online or buy on Steam or GOG. That's not an excuse for not ...

CODiE Awards 1992: Lemmings, Civilization, SimAnt

In 1992 two major hits saw the light: Lemmings and Civilization. Both spawned countless sequels, still published to this day.If you were a fan of combat flight simulations, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (by LucasGames) was the obvious choice.And let's not forget SimAnt, one of the weirdest (in a ...

The Ultima series: old school RPGs at its finest

Ultima is perhaps the most popular old-school RPG series of all time. The whole series was designed by Richard Garriott, head of Origin, who redefined the genre more than one time with moral choices, cutting edge graphics, state of the art interface. It's a shame that Ultima lasted only 9 chapters (...

Unconventional racing games

Racing games is a genre loved by many and ignored by others. Me, I was never a huge fan of racing games. I used to play Super Speed at the arcades long ago, but I never quite grew fond of Formula 1 simulations or Outrun-like games. In time, I completely stopped ...

Gamespot Greatest PC Games of all Time

GameSpot is a popular website about video games and one of the oldest video gaming sites on the Internet. This chart was published a while ago on an oldest version of the current GameSpot site.The winners of the GameSpot Game of the Year were chosen by GameSpot editors.Here's ...

Pie in the Sky engine and the Colosso series

Pie in the Sky engine was a game engine developed by Pie in the Sky Software. The Pie in the Sky engine was also used by independent companies to develop their games.The Colosso games (three FPS part of the same series) are quite rare and, surprisingly, the developer liberated ...

PBEM: Play By E-Mail multiplayer mode

What is PBEM? PBEM stands for Play By E-Mail. PBEM games allow a peculiar multiplayer option; players can play turns in an asyncronous way and send the result of their completed turn via e-mail to all opponents. As the Internet evolved, PBEM in recent games ceased to exist and quickly ...

More adventures: point and click, interactive fiction, etc.

Another week, another update. This time I added a bunch of adventure games still missing from Abandonware DOS, pretty different one from the other.Hook and Ween: The Prophecy are two fairly well know point and click adventure games; I'm sure you heard about both of them. Arthur, Legend of ...

Shoot 'em ups: shoot down anything that moves

The phrase "shoot 'em up" amuses me; it's like... a redneck declaration of violent intent. As a subgenre of shooter video games, it's difficult to define. Shoot' em ups are usually identified with some kind of vehicle shooting down (pew! pew!) aliens, soldiers, planes, etc.With this update, I bring ...

Sokoban is a puzzle game genre

When I had to add sub-genres to the puzzle games category, I really didn't know how to do it. I consulted Wikipedia, Home of the Underdogs (the original one) and a few other gaming sites. I thought a lot about it and then I came up with the current sub-genres: ...

An FPS I completely missed: Marathon

I loved Doom (and Wolfenstein 3D before that). I used to play Duke Nukem 3D online with a friend (and I always lost to a cunning use of the Duke hologram). I played quite a few FPSs but I have to admit... I missed the Marathon series completely. To make ...

More strategy games: Battle Isle, Army Men, etc.

Looking back at the past Abandonware DOS content updates, I noticed a few missing games that deserved to be included in the Abandonware DOS database. Most notably: Army Men, one of the Battle Isle games and a few more I remember from a time when I played them, many years ...

Space simulations: combat, trading and exploring space

Space simulation games are part of a niche genre that appeals to specific gamers, not everyone like it. I think we can categorize two main groups of space sims players: the ones who only want to fight in space (no trading, no mining, etc) and the ones who like full ...

The Underdogs on Abandonware DOS

No, I'm not talking about the long gone site Home of the Underdogs, a milestone in the abandonware website scene, I'm actually talking about games available on Abandonware DOS that almost no one pay attention to (myself included).Download count for these games is low and - for a few ...

Qix clones and remakes

Qix is that very old arcade game in which you have to draw rectangles in order to claim portions of the screen. Like other classic arcade games of the time, Qix was later ported on quite a few platforms. A few developers took inspiration from the original Qix and created ...

Horror-themed games from the past

Sometimes I like to spend quite some time looking at Google Analytics statistics of Abandonware DOS. I'm amused that "horror" (and variants) is a much searched keyword.What is that you like in horror games of the past? Did they scare you? I remember that the game that scared me ...

Game Critics Awards (E3): 2000

The Game Critics Awards is a annual award event that happens just after the very popular E3 video game conference. The Game Critics Awards take place since 1998.In 2000, Black and White won a lot of prizes (good for you Peter Molyneaux). Neverwinter Nights was a personal favourite: it deserved both ...

More RPGs: Might and Magic, Wizardry, Elder Scrolls

While browsing the Abandonware DOS database, I noticed that a few very popular RPGs were missing. How could I forget to include them? I had to add them to the already long list of old school RPGs, even if they are not technically abandoned (and you can't download them for ...

Wargaming everywhere

As I add to Abandonware DOS every game I can think of, week after week, I get increasingly astonished by the sheer number of wargames available back in the day. I had no idea that wargaming was so popular in the 80s and the early 90s.With this update I ...

First-person shooters: future, present, past

First-person shooters is a pretty straightforward subgenre of action games. Gameplay mechanics are simple and straightforward: run away from enemies, shoot them, find items and power ups and go on.What I always liked in FPSs was the variety of theme/setting from game to game. Here's a few examples. ...

Obscure abandoned DOS RPGs

There are a lot of role-playing games already on Abandonware DOS: from the Ultima series to Might and Magic, from the Wizardry series to Rogue.I periodically convince myself that I covered every possible RPG published for DOS and periodically I find out that I missed a few ones. The ...

Flight simulations at dawn

For a game collector like me, flight simulators are something to look for. The original big boxes of flight sims published a few decades ago included all sort of items: keyboard layouts, maps, huge manuals. I own a few and I plan to buy some more.Anyway... I have to ...

It's winter time! Snow, Santas and trains

Christmas is coming and I decided to add a few games in theme with the holiday season. Winter, Christmas, snow... every ingredient that makes "winter time" is present in the following games. A few of them are special editions of games already published (Skyroads, Jetpack). Transarctica is a peculiar one; ...

Strategy in the far east: Japan, China, the Pacific

I'm a fan of turn-based strategy games, but I have to admit I've never played KOEI games. KOEI was a Japanese company founded in 1978 (!) known for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition series. Romance of the Three Kingdoms wasn't the only game that deserve some praise. With ...

Classic Arcades: clones and remakes

When I talk about abandoned games I usually think about games published at the end of the eighies and through the nineties. There are some "ancient" games that deserve the definition of "classic". Everyone knows them: Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Defender, Donkey Kong.To be honest, I don't think they can ...

Cars: racing and building vehicles on wheels

I just added a bunch of car-racing games, including a couple of top-down fixed-screen ones that I always liked. It seems there were a lot of racing games being published back in the nineties that I couldn't remember, but I've never been interested in cars anyway. Actually, one of them ...

Police Quest: 1, 2, 3 and "4"

Sierra On-Line published lots of games back in the 80s and the 90s and was famous for the various "Quest" series. Think about King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry ("Love Quest"?). I'm sure you remember a few.Police Quest wasn't perhaps one of the most popular ...