Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

Play Ultima 1 in your browser

Play the classic RPG that started the popular Ultima series. Ultima I (later renamed The First Age of Darkness) is not as good as some of the sequels, but it's worth an hour or two, just to see what Lord British was doing in his garage many years ago.

GDC Spotlight Awards - 1999

The Spotlight Awards was a video game awards event hosted in the 1990s at the now popular GDC (Games Developers Conference). The Spotlight awards took a lot of gaming platforms into consideration, but 1999 awarded many PC games.The best video games for 1999 according to the Spotlight awards were:1999Baldur's Gate ...

Retro spotlight: Blade Runner

Blade Runner is one of those point & click adventure games that somewhat manages to fully capture the spirit of a cult movie without copying the original plot. Fans of the Blade Runner movie will enjoy this game, even without Harrison Ford.

Electronic Games Arcade Awards - 1984

Electronic Games was a computer magazine focused entirely on early video games. Every year, the Electronic Games Arcade Awards crowned a few Games of the Year. This is a list of the best games published in 1984, the year that Ghostbusters came out. 1984Agent USA Electronic Educational Game of the YearApple ...

RPG oldie: Ultima 7 Part 2 - The Serpent Isle

I remember the moment I started playing Ultima 7 Part 2. I had The Black Gate still in my mind: I loved it, and I wanted something similar. After a few weeks (or months?) I finished Serpent Isle and I was a bit disappointed. Sure, it's a wonderful Ultima game, but it ...

Space Hulk: a board game classic

Space Hulk is a strategy game based on the board game of the same name designed by Games Workshop, the company behind the popular Warhammer 40000 franchise. Take your squad of Space Marines and go kill some alien scum!

Abandonware spotlight: Hill Street Blues

Hill Street Blues is an old DOS "driving" game developed by Krisalis in 1991. The gameplay it's similar to a Grand Theft Auto clone (we're talking about GTA 1 or 2) in which you are the police and you have to apprehend criminals. Hill Street Blues is a rare example of game based ...

New subgenre: Casino games

Surprisingly there are quite a few strategy casino DOS games. A casino game is usually a collection of smaller games packed into one: roulette, jackpot, card games.

What are Infocom Feelies?

Infocom filled their game boxes with a lot of items and called them "feelies". Some of those feelies were used as a form of copy protection, others were there just to let the player "feel" the game outside the computer.

Electronic Games Arcade Awards - 1983

Electronic Games was a computer magazine focused entirely on early video games. Every year, the Electronic Games Arcade Awards crowned a few Games of the Year. This is a list of the best games published in 1983.19833-D Sky Attack Mini-Arcade Game of the YearTomytronic 3DAdvanced Dungeons & Dragons Best Adventure ...

Play Micro Machines in your browser

Micro Machines was one of the most successful line of toys of the 80s and the 90s. Micro Machines are cute toy cars the size of a pencil sharpener. There's a TON of them, and children of the time loved to collect them all. Actually, cars weren't the only vehicle ...

Retro underdog: Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol

Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol is fantasy RPG game released in 1995 for Windows 3.x, but it runs flawlessy even Windows XP (see this faq if you want to play Mordor in a virtual machine). Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol is a mix of first-person and top-down perspective dungeon crawler; ...

Developer spotlight: Origin

Origin Systems was founded in 1983 by one of the most popular game designers of all time: Richard Garriott. The most notable games of Origin Systems are the RPGs belonging to the Ultima series: Ultima from I to IX, Ultima Online, Martian Dreams and Savage Empire. Let's not forget the entire ...

Spotlight: the Megatraveller series

Megatraveller games are space sci-fi RPGs based on the pen and paper RPG Traveller. Both games features: space exploration, planetary exploration, space combat, trading, interaction with NPCs.Neither Megatraveller games received critical acclaim. Both games were reviewed on many video games magazines; some liked them, some not.A third ...

Play SimCity Classic online

SimCity is one of the most successful video game series ever existed and for a good reason. SimCity was a groundbreaking game, to say the least, when it was published in 1989.The concept is simple: you are the mayor of a city and you have to make it flourish. The ...

Retro classic: Championship Manager

Championship Manager is one of the most loved soccer management video games ever published for DOS, Amiga and Atari ST. The Championship Manager series endured until 2011 and spawned a plethora of simulation games. The first CM was published in 1992 by Domark and allowed the player to compete only in the ...

Free Games Utopia: a new site

In the last months I worked on a side project very similar to Abandonware DOS in concept, but with different content (don't worry, I'm not neglecting anything, I'm still working on Abandonware DOS on a regular basis).The new website is finally online and it's called Free Games Utopia.As ...

In the making: Kick Off World

A group of Player Manager fans are developing a wonderful remake called Kick Off World. Some of you may not know that Player Manager was a managerial football game developed by Anco (Kick Off series), designed by the popular Dino Dini and published in 1990.Here's a description of Kick Off ...

Sid Meier's SimGolf on Abandonware DOS

SimGolf is a golf simulation different from other golf games. In SimGolf, the player is tasked with running a golf course, designing holes, taking care of golfers and even playing. It's an underrated game that deserves a place among the best of its genre.

Empire TV Tycoon: a remake?

Does anybody remember MadTV? MadTV was a unique business simulation published in 1991 by Rainbow Arts in which the player had to run a TV station. To my knowledge, no other similar game existed (at least not for DOS or Windows, at the time).Thanks to Steam Greenlight, now we have ...