Abandonware DOS retro gaming news

Starquake is a weird DOS science fiction platform game developed by Bubble Bus Software in 1988 and designed by Stephen Crow and Dave Collins. I remember it fondly... it's not punishing and it's still very much enjoyable even today, after more than two decades. The Commodore 64 version boasts a ...

Amberstar is an old school RPG very similar to Ultima 6 that uses a top-down view for interiors and small locations and a first person pseudo 3D view for everything else. Unfortunately, the sequel (called Ambermoon) was available for Amiga only and no version existed for DOS or Windows.

"I think half the attraction of the game is the suspense element and the intellectual ego-massage you can give yourself when you do finally defeat the computer. Laser Squad has that elusive blend of excitement, challenge and addictiveness all mashed into one. Definitely on the short list for all ...

Quarantine is a first-person shooter / driving game hybrid set in a dark dystopian futuristic city where the player drives around in a taxi cab, picking up passengers and killing everyone else. If you loved Carmageddon, you will also like Quarantine. Stay away if you don't like gratuitious violence, gore and ...

There was one time, in the mid nineties, when Blizzard was developing a point & click adventure game set in the Warcraft universe. Unfortunately the game was canceled after a few years of troubled development. The few players that were able to grab an almost working copy weren't impressed: it ...

It's a pity that I never played The Magic Candle when it was published, in 1989. I'm an Ultima fan and the Magic Candle series is very similar to some of the Richard Garriott masterpieces. Lately, I dedicated a few hours to Magic Candle and I felt at home: I loved ...

"The graphics are enhanced, the gameplay is faster and more dynamic and the net play fully incorporated. MW2 fans will be very pleased with the upgrades and those new to the MW2 universe will enhoy a well paced game with superb graphics and cut-scenes. Just make sure you have ...

"B-17 Flying Fortress is a stunning creation from the creators of Falcon 4.0 and European Air War. Considering the depth to which B-17 will let you experience the terror of daylight strategic bombing in WWII from so many different and simultaneous angles, I'm amazed they were able to pull it ...

Back when I was the proud owner of an Amiga 500, if you wanted to play good fighting games (and you didn't own a console) you had to seek out the nearest arcades and spend coin after coin trying to learn every move of games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2. ...

I remember little of Magic Carpet, but one thing I remember clearly was the plain fun I had flying around casting spells. It was one of the smoothest first-person games around at the time and it gave me a wonderful feeling of flying freedom. Sadly I never got a chance ...

Dehumanizing offices? Check. Depressing environment? Check. No windows in the whole place? Check. Good, I'm ready to exploit my workers and become great enterpreneur. All of this thanks to Free Enterprise, a simulation for Windows by Tsunami Media, published in 1996.

"I can foresee Dungeon Master purists turning their 'oh-so-disdainful' noses up at this apparently inferior attempt. But it's not. The interaction elemant and two-player option add something news to what could become a stale genre. If you can forgive yhe jerky graphics, fairly poor animation, and slightly unwieldly controls, ...

Ultima is perhaps the most popular old-school RPG series of all time. The whole series was designed by Richard Garriott, head of Origin, who redefined the genre more than one time with moral choices, cutting edge graphics, state of the art interface. It's a shame that Ultima lasted only 9 chapters (...

X-COM is one of my favourite PC games ever. It's no surprise that I loved Jagged Alliance 2 from the first mission. While I managed to beat X-COM, I was never able to play Jagged Alliance 2 from beginning to end. I regret that and now I wish that some developer decides ...

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.

"On the gameplay side, Xenon 2 has managed to skirt the trap other shoot 'em ups have falle foul of - that is concentrating too much on difficulty. Xenon 2 is geared mor towards playability. Instead of throwing you back to the beginning of the level on dying, you start from ...

"The look and gameplay of Future Wars owes a lot to the Sierra On-Line style of arcade adventure. But, where the Sierra games are simple and quite accessible, Future Wars is complex and hard to get into. I'd say curiosity is probably the main motivating force when playing this ...

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 (yes, whole decades ago) and ported on various platform in the early 80s. The developer - Infocom - was one of the most prolific ...

"Maniac Mansion is a Lucasfilm game, in the vein of Zak McKracken, and owes a lot to the Sierra On-Line style. But it's a lot better executed than Sierra games, with speedy sprites and good use of your micro's memory to store screens, rather than loading them from disk ...

I clearly remember the first time I played Civilization. It was, perhaps, the first time I played a 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate). It took me a fair amount of time to learn the mechanics, understand the pace of the game, the gameplay and to finally beat the computer ...