Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

The beginning of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss is a first-person 3D RPG set in the Ultima universe created by Richard Garriott. Ultima Underworld was designed by Paul Neurath, developed by Blue Sky Productions and released by Origin Systems in 1992. It was followed by Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds.More info about ...

The Zork universe: an underground empire

Zork is one of the most popular text-adventures and one of the first interactive fiction games ever created. The first Zork was developed in the seventies and ported on various platform by Infocom in the early 80s. Infocom was one of the most prolific developers of text-adventures for home ...

A classic roguelike: Linley's Dungeon Crawl

Dungeon Crawl (also known as Linley's Dungeon Crawl from the name of the original programmer: Linley Henzell) is a classic roguelike: an RPG with permadeath, procedural generation and high replayability. Dungeon Crawl was released on 1997 but it's not maintained anymore. The spiritual successor of Crawl is DCCS (Dungeon Crawl Stone ...

Retro racing: Grand Prix 2 by Geoff Crammond

Grand Prix 2 is an abandoned Formula 1 racing game designed by Geoff Crammond and published by MicroProse Software in 1995 for DOS. Grand Prix 2 is the sequel to Formula One Grand Prix and was a one-man project (which was uncommon at the time). Grand Prix 2 was essentially an accurate simulation of ...

The Origin of The Savage Empire

After the success of Ultima 6: The False Prophet, Origin decided to "create worlds" not part of the popular Ultima series using the same engine as Ultima 6. They came up with two games: The Savage Empire and Martian Dreams. The Savage Empire is set in a stone-age-like time period and features ...

Cabal: an abandoned shooting gallery game

Cabal is an abandoned arcade conversion of a popular shooter game set in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Cabal was developed by TAD Corporation and released by Capcom in 1989 for DOS.Zero Magazine (issue 06) wrote: "The idea in not only to shoot everything that moves but also most of ...

Civilization 2: an improved sequel

Civilization 2, later renamed Sid Meier's Civilization II, is a turn based 4X strategy game developed and published by MicroProse in 1996. The gameplay is similar to the first Civilization, many aspects were improved and new features were introduced: a new isometric perspective, hit points for units, new civilizations, new wonders of ...

Post-apocalyptic RPGs: from Wasteland to Fallout

Wasteland was an early party-based top-down RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world that filled a gap in RPG video games at the time (we're talking about the late 1980s): sci fi RPGs weren't many and post-apocalyptic ones were even less.There are two series of games that are part to ...

X-COM: Terror from the Deep - The sequel

X-COM: Terror from the Deep is a DOS science fiction tactical strategy game, the sequel of one of the most popular DOS games in history X-COM Ufo Defense. Terror from the Deep was designed by Stephen Gross (the X-COM original being designed by Julian Gollop) and was published by MicroProse ...

Ascendancy: 4X turn-based strategy game

Ascendancy is a science fiction themed turn-based strategy game developed by The Logic Factory and released in 1995 for DOS. Ascendancy is a classic 4X game (eXpand, eXplore, eXploit, eXterminate), similar to Master of Orion, yet with a few differences such as a technology tree.More info about Ascendancy:Genres: strategy, 4...

Retro game spotlight: The Lost Vikings

I'm not a fan of platformers. I love RPGs, I enjoyed many point & click adventures, I like most strategy games, but I never got excited while playing a platform game. Lost Viking is different. I LOVED the concept of controlling three different vikings in order to solve riddles and ...

Loom: a fantasy adventure by Lucasfilm

Loom is one of the first graphic adventures released by Lucasfilm Games. It was designed by Brian Moriarty and it follows a fantasy theme. There's no inventory and it lacks classic commands like "look", "take", etc. You can play tunes using a combination of notes in order to interact with ...

Knight Games: medieval olympics

Olympic games were something back in the 80s and the 90s: Winter Games, Summer Games, California Games, anything-you-can-think-of games. Some imaginative developer thought that the world needed a different kind of "multisport" game and came up with he idea behind Knight Games."What Knight Games lacks is the feeling of ...

Amulets and Armor: a lesser known first-person CRPG

Amulets & Armor is a first-person RPG with a fantasy setting. It was developed and published as shareware for DOS by United Software Artists in 1997. Amulets & Armor became freeware in 2013. Gameplay is mission-based; the player can take up quests in any order and even complete the same quests over ...

Play Elite online: the birth of space simulations

The very first Elite was the kind of game that starts a whole genre. Space sims - I'm talking about the trade-fight-explore kind of sims - started with the creation of David Braben and Ian Bell. Games like Freelancer and EVE Online owe Elite a great deal. The Elite series ...