Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

Old school forgotten RPGs from the past

RPGs are a strange animal when it comes to old-school PC gaming. If you exclude huge hits and successful franchises, the games that remains are often obscure RPGs, sometimes so awful that playing them is a pain in the keyboard. There are of course exceptions: underdogs that somehow were a ...

The best abandonware games of 2019

2019 has ended. Each game in the "top abandonware games" chart of Abandonware DOS received many votes. This means that you, dear visitor, care about these games, you loved them when they were released and they left something in you... a pleasant memory, a warm feeling of nostalgia maybe?This ...

Old school: first-person party-based CRPGs

Party-based role-playing games with a first person perspective became popular after the release of Dungeon Master in 1989. Before Dungeon Master only a handful RPGs used first person, the Bard's Tale and Wizardry series among others. Dungeon Master managed to create a very neat user interface without sacrificing the gameplay.Some ...

Death Sword (AKA Barbarian): the art of fighting slowly

Death Sword (also known as Barbarian in Europe), is a fighting game developed by Palace Software, set in a fantasy world full of huge sword-wielding barbarians. Compared to modern brawlers, Death Sword gameplay may seem slow, but at the time it was considered adequate. Instead of rushing into multiple chain ...

Simulation games: Team Yankee, Hill Street Blues, Epic and more

Simulation and vehicle simulation games are often the least remembered video game genres by retro gamers. While many simulations did achieve a certain degree of success back in the day, quite a few fell in the dark pit of forgotten retro games. Let's see how many of these you can ...

A niche genre: Metroidvania

Metroidvania is a made up word born from the merge of two game series titles: Metroid and Castlevania. Both games share gameplay and design elements that defines the genre. Metroidvania games are platform games featuring a game world that is freely explorable. Certain areas can be accessed only with player ...

Hard Drivin' in vector graphics

"Hard Drivin', a fast moving, solid-filled vector graphic racing game, gave you the chance to compete against the clock on two separate tracks: a speed track and a stunt track. And for those skilled enough to get a good enough time on either of these, there was a championship ...

Windows 3.1 classic games

Long before the first successful Windows operating systems, Microsoft developed Windows 3.1 (an "operating environtment"). Games that ran under Windows 3.1 weren't so many. In fact, most of them are little more than puzzle games, card games and simple strategy games. That doesn't mean Windows 3.1 lacked good games; in fact, a few ...

Minesweeping at the office

The Microsoft Windows 3.x family of operating environment wasn't known for games, but it popularized the Windows software pretty much everywhere. One of the best known Windows 3.x games was Minesweeper.Minesweeper was a simple puzzle game that required the player to clear a field full of mines and numbers ...

From the arcades: coin-operated conversions

There was a time when coin-operated games were constantly being converted for home systems. Now coin-ops are really difficult to find and everyone prefer playing from home, online or offline, without the hassle of driving/walking to an arcade and lose coin after coin into those hellish money-eating machines. I ...

Sports: American Football games

American Football is a sport that received much attention from developers in the past decades, expecially from american ones. There are american football games of every kind: realistic sports simulations, management strategic games and of course action games.

Strategy games: Battle Bugs, Beyond Columns, Roadwar Europa and more

Lately I'm taking some time to update the info of some of the less popular games on Abandonware DOS. Here's a few:Beyond ColumnsFalling block puzzle - Released in 1989 for DOS. This blatant Columns clone is not much in terms of graphics, but it fills an empty spot in the ...

Chris Crawford: game designer

Chris Crawford is a computer game designer known for simulations and strategy games, including the popular Balance of Power. Among developers he became known for his passionate advocacy of game design as an art form, founding both The Journal of Computer Game Design and the Computer Game Developers Conference (now ...

Action games: Platoon, Moonwalker, TekWar, Strider and more

From time to time I browse the Abandonware DOS database looking for not very popular games that need an update. Here are some action games (platformers, shooters, sports games) I just updated with new content.Tag Team WrestlingSports / Action - Developed by Technos Japan - Published by Data East in 1996 ...

Video games can educate people

Educational games are a peculiar kind of video games of various genres. Gameplay, graphics and sound are still important aspects of educationals, but the mail goal of the developer is to teach the player something: math, history, ecology, anything! Some educationals are created with a young audience in mind, other ...