Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

GOG Summer Sale Festival

Summer is here and at GOG Good Old Games are on sale, right in time for the new awesome trailer of Cyberpunk 2077. The games on sale at very low prices are too many to list here: CD Projekt Red games, a D&D collection, Mafia series, Banner Saga series, ...

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 develope 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: ...

New acquisition for my collection: Jinxter

Jinxter is one of those games with feelies, items, manuals, etc. that makes "unboxing" an experience filled with pleasure. Jinxter (by Magnetic Scrolls) box contained: the magazine "The Independent Guardian", a staff memo (in the form of a letter), the adventure guide, a "Old Moose Bolter" beer mat (which is ...

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 ...

New acquisition for my collection: Windwalker

Windwalker is not one of the most popular games developed by Origin. It's a strange RPG-action mix. Not a great game, but the big box contains lots of paper: the manual (wonderfully illustrated), a small copy of the I Ching (the chinese Book of Changes), two floppy disks, the usual ...

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 ...

Legend Entertainment Interactive Fiction

Legend was a developer who created quite a few adventure games. The first ones were interactive fiction adventures with a unique interface (Spellcasting 101, Gateway, etc.). You could type commands and read room descriptions, but you could also click on a list of verbs, a compass to move from room to ...

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. ...