Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

Pinball: the art of bouncing balls

Pinball is a very specific subgenre of action games that can't be assimilated to other kind of games. It's not a platformer or a shooter, and there were a lot of pinball games in the 80s and the 90s, so I think it's only fair that there's a whole category ...

Game Critics Awards in 1998: Homeworld, Half-Life, Grim Fandango

The Game Critics Awards are annual awards held after the very popular E3 video game conference since 1998. As you can see, 1998 saw the birth of great classics for every kind of gamer: Half-Life for shooter lovers, Homeworld for RTS gamers, Grim Fandango for adventure addicts and Alpha Centauri for the ...

Text only gaming: it's not always about interactive fiction

Text only games are a curious phenomenon. Unlike other kind of old games, they survived to this day in one form or the other. Maybe that's because it doesn't take a huge team to develop a game completely (or partially) devoid of graphics. When I say text-only games, some of ...

Action and arcades: Comix Zone and other games

I was browsing platform games on Abandonware DOS when I noticed something was missing. I talking about a game I loved and I bet most of you played it at least once: Comix Zone. So... here it is, available with this content update along other action and arcade games. Comix ...

A bunch of games for Windows

The name of the site is Abandonware DOS, but some of the games hosted here are games for Windows. I'm talking about old and abandoned games for Windows, not easy to make them run properly if you're not using a Virtual Machine.I don't usually add many Windows games but ...

Memories from Populous: play god in your browser

I clearly remember the first time I heard about Populous. I was young and still living with my parents. It was a late sunday morning, the sun was high in the sky and the smell of roasted chicken was all around the house: lunch was almost ready, but I was ...

CODiE Awards 1990: SimCity, Carmen Sandiego, Space Quest 3

1990 was a seminal year in videogames. The last decade of the millennium saw the birth of two genres: city building simulations and god games.The first was represented by the first chapter in a long series of sims: SimCity. There are not many well known city building games around ...

Sequels to action games: Gauntlet, Rick Dangerous, Xenon and more

Back in the day, sequels were not always appreciated. That number "2" after the title for many meant lack of ideas. This wasn't just about video games, everything was subject to that kind of treatment "if it's good, why change it?".I don't see this kind of hate anymore. In fact, ...

Manuals, walkthroughs and readme files

Part of the updates to Abandonware DOS consists in adding every kind of document I can get without copyright notices. I already added lots of manuals, walkthroughs (expecially interactive fiction solutions) and a few maps.Recently, I started digging into the zip files of every games in search for useful ...

Comics and superheroes in videogames

When I think about superheroes and supervillains what comes to my mind are comics, big budget movies, cosplayers. And then, and only then, videogames. If you think about it, the superhero theme wasn't that popular in old videogames. Nonetheless, there are a few DOS games about super-men in tights.With ...

CODiE Awards 1989: Tetris, Battle Chess, King's Quest 4

In 1989 Tetris was the single most awarded game. The fact that it was a puzzle game based on a very simple concept and made by a nice russian man has contributed to the Tetris myth. Thank you Alexey Pajitnov.1989 was a very important year in world history. Just think at ...

Sports: hockey, golf, football and more

Sports games are not the most sought after on abandonware sites. Nonetheless, a few of them are fondly remembered by fans. I wonder if any of you ever heard, or played, the games I uploaded in this update.Golf, hockey, football (or soccer... whatever) and wrestling; here they are: Tony ...

GOG Summer Sale: Ziggurat giveaway

The GOG summer sale goes on and there's another giveaway. The first one was Xenonauts about a week ago. Now GOG is giving away Ziggurat... for free, yes. The GOG Summer Sale ends on June 18 so there's still time to buy games. Here's a few retro titles on sale: Zork, ...

Flight simulators: not for everyone

Personally, I never got in flight simulators. I tried everything: combat oriented flight sims, copters, planes, everything, but it's simply not my genre. I knew people who spent a lot of money to buy special joysticks, three monitors and other peripherals just to enjoy piloting a Cessna from one airport ...

GOG weekly sale: a mix of different genres

This time the GOG weekly sale offers a mix of new old-school games of different genres: Pizza Connection, King of Dragon Pass, Frozen Synapse, River City Ransom, Flatout, Sacred Gold, Darkstar One, Ghost Master, Patrician 3, the Blake Stone series and more...

Be a (simulated) manager: trade, trade, trade

The simulations genre (I'm not talking about vehicle simulations) wasn't that popular until SimCity and Populous came along. Both games started two genres: city building and god games.With this update I'm adding a different type of simulation: trading sims. I'm not sure of the appeal of trading in a ...

Puzzles: word games, sokoban, action puzzles

The puzzle genre for PCs did not leave lots of memories of the past. I mean, if you exclude Tetris and Lemmings, it's not that easy to remember REALLY good puzzle games for DOS or even Windows. Sure, there's The Incredible Machine, Atomix, Logical, but none of them comes immediatly ...

To the arcades! Abandoned coin-op conversions

No, I'm not talking about the actual place where you can play coin-ops, and I don't even know if such places still exist. I'm talking about very old games that can be defined as "arcades".Jumpman Lives! is a classic and need no presentation. Pango is a rip-off (homage?) to ...

Retro spotlight: Lands of Lore, The Throne of Chaos

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos is a fantasy RPG published in 1993, very similar to other dungeon crawlers like EotB or Dungeon Master. Lands of Lore was developed by Westwood Studios who wanted to start a new franchise after the success of the Eye of the Beholder series.

Pew pew! Boom boom!

Pew pew! Boom! Pew pew pew! Crash! I have to admit... I really don't know what to write about shoot'em ups. Well, let's try.Here's a bunch of (mostly) vertical scrolling shoot'em ups: shoot enemies, avoid more enemies, reach the end of each level, meet the boss.There's really not ...