Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

A classic roguelike: Angband

Angband is a classic roguelike still under active developement that spawned a plethora of variants (more than sixty!). If you like dungeon crawling and you don't mind complex ASCII games, try it now!

Remake of the month: OpenMW

The Elder Scrolls is a well known series of video games. It started with Arena, now released as freeware by Bethesda. Soon Arena was followed by Daggerfall, one of he most bug ridden games of the series. And then it was the turn of Morrowind. That's when, in my opinion, ...

In the making: Pioneers

Pioneers is a unique game. It reminds me of Colonization and Oregon Trail, but it's something quite different. To quote the official website "Pioneers is a turn-based exploration/adventure RPG where you lead a party of travellers in search of treasure-rich temples, new tribes and ways to go down in ...

Spotlight: games based on a TV series

Today, we're used to high quality TV series such as Game of Thrones, Daredevil, Madmen. This level of writing wasn't always the top priority of the producers of TV series aired a few decades ago. Anyway, lot of us old guys remember fondly series like The A-Team, Miami Vice and, ...

Retro underdog: Aleshar World of Ice

Aleshar World of Ice is an old top-down perspective RPG game released for DOS in 1997, designed by Ossi Honkanen. Aleshar is an open world (sort of), fantasy RPG set in a world covered with ice and snow.

Play Starglider online on AbandonwareDOS

Starglider is a first person combat sci-fi simulator rendered in wireframe vector graphics and inspired by the coin-op Star Wars. Starglider was conceived initially for the Amiga and the Atari ST, and later ported on many systems, including MSDOS. A sequel, Starglider 2, was published in 1988. Play Starglider online on AbandonwareDOS! ...

In the making: Painters Guild

Painters Guild is in developement and nobody knows when it will be released, but it's a really promising and interesting little game. As the official site states: "In Painters Guild you can make paintings, sell them and develop your guild into the greatest of the Renaissance.". Painters Guild is, simply ...

20 years ago in retro gaming: Earthworm Jim

Earthworm Jim is one of the best platform games ever released for PC back in the 90es by Activision. What makes Earthworm Jim a great abandonware game is the perfectly balanced gameplay and the humor of titular character. Even the name "Jim", together with the science fiction ...

Spotlight: Indiana Jones games

The popular archaeologist and adventurer created by George Lucas was the star of four movies and the protagonist some of the best point and click (almost abandoned) adventures ever created for PC. Unfortunately, Indiana Jones was also the main character of some of the worst action games.All the Indiana ...

20 years ago in retro gaming: Menzoberranzan

Menzoberranzan is an abandoned DOS fantasy first person perspective RPG developed by DreamForge Intertainment in 1994 from an original idea by John McGirk. Menzoberranzan setting is based on the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms campaing setting. Menzoberranzan gameplay is party-based and class-based.Publisher: SSI Strategic Simulations Inc.Developer: ...

Grim Fandango Remastered

Double Fine remastered one of the most loved old school adventure games of all time: Grim Fandango. Go to GOG.com to preorder Grim Fandango Remastered!

Elite is back, and it's more dangerous than ever

I'm sure I'm not the only one here to love space simulation games. I admit I didn't play the original Elite a lot... but I literally consumed Frontier and I had my share of battles in the more recent Eve Online.Someone called space sims ...

Spotlight: Interactive Fiction

Interactive Fiction, or 'text adventures' is one of the oldest adventure genres around. The first interactive fiction game, called simply Adventure, dates back to 1975. One of the most well known series is Zork, developed by one of the most popular interactive fiction companies of all time: Infocom. Other popular developers ...

Play Transport Tycoon Deluxe online

If you loved Transport Tycoon (Deluxe or not) back in 1994, you will be glad to know that Aleksander Guryanov ported that wonderful simulation online. You can play Transport Tycoon Deluxe here in your browser as a single player session or even multiplayer. Transport Tycoon is an isometric business simulation ...

Remake of the month: Gabriel Knight 1 - 20th Anniversary Edition

The original Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, published in 1993 by Sierra On-Line is one of my favourite point & click adventure games of all time. Praise Jane Jensen for the plot, dialogues and ideas. My compliments to the voice actors. Kudos to whoever decided to drop the chance of ...

20 years ago in retro gaming: Master of Magic

Master of Magic is a turn based 4x strategy game developed by SimTex and published by the well know Microprose, very similar to Civilization, with a fantasy twist. You play as a wizard and your objective is to evolve your race from a small settlement to a bursting empire. To ...

Spotlight: 4x strategy games

4x is a well known strategy genre acronym that stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate. The player controls a whole empire and is tasked with managing resources and technical developments (eXploit), expanding their domains with their military (eXplore and eXpand), and fight against computer A.I. factions or other ...

Text-only games: roguelikes and interactive fiction

In the past, lots of home computer games (PC, C64, Speccy, etc.) used ascii characters (simple text) to represent the game world, the interface... well, everything on screen. These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated now and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics ...

Fansite spotlight: The myth of Leisure Suit Larry

Leisure Suit Larry series is one the pioneers of the adventure genre. And not just that, the series broke the chains of mainstream content, dealing with themes that were considered mature and dirty for its time, although they are not anything near that by today standards. And that was ...

Remakes of the month: OpenTTD and Simutrans

Transport Tycoon is one of the best tycoon games ever developed, maybe second to Railroad Tycoon or Roller Coaster Tycoon. While both Railroad and Roller Coaster cousins had a lot of sequels, Transport Tycoon was a lonely child (well, if you don't count Locomotion...). Maybe that's why a bunch of ...