Abandonware DOS retro gaming news

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

"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 ...

Another week, another update. This time I added a bunch of adventure games still missing from Abandonware DOS, pretty different one from the other.Hook and Ween: The Prophecy are two fairly well know point and click adventure games; I'm sure you heard about both of them. Arthur, Legend of ...

Sometimes I like to spend quite some time looking at Google Analytics statistics of Abandonware DOS. I'm amused that "horror" (and variants) is a much searched keyword.What is that you like in horror games of the past? Did they scare you? I remember that the game that scared me ...

Legend was a developer who created quite a few adventure games. The first ones were interactive fiction adventures with a unique interface (Spellcasting 101, Gateway, etc.). You could type commands and read room descriptions, but you could also click on a list of verbs, a compass to move from room to ...

Space Quest games are all somewhat "abandoned". Sierra is defunct and no one is maintaining the old Space Quest games. (Un)fortunately a few digital stores have Space Quest games in their catalog (se GOG) and that's why almost all Sierra games on Abandonware DOS aren't available for download.

Sierra On-Line published lots of games back in the 80s and the 90s and was famous for the various "Quest" series. Think about King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry ("Love Quest"?). I'm sure you remember a few.Police Quest wasn't perhaps one of the most popular ...

Every gaming platform has its video game mascotte: Mario, Sonic, etc. Codemasters came up with their own character: an egg shaped... thing... called Dizzy. This strange fellow was the protagonist of a series of action adventure games on Spectrum, C64 and many other systems, PC included. Here are some Dizzy ...

Text only games are a curious phenomenon. Unlike other kind of old games, they survived to this day in one form or the other. Maybe that's because it doesn't take a huge team to develop a game completely (or partially) devoid of graphics. When I say text-only games, some of ...

When I think about superheroes and supervillains what comes to my mind are comics, big budget movies, cosplayers. And then, and only then, videogames. If you think about it, the superhero theme wasn't that popular in old videogames. Nonetheless, there are a few DOS games about super-men in tights.With ...

I added every possible Sierra Online adventure to the Abandonware DOS database... and then I found out that I missed something: EcoQuest. I never liked the EcoQuest series, I never even really played them much, but they deserve a place on Abandonware DOS.  I also missed Last Half of ...

In the 80s and the 90s we all saw a lot of good blockbuster movies come out. Some of them were good, some of them were bad. Unfortunately, most of video games based on movies (called 'tie-in') were really bad. Developers tried to put everything they could in those games ...

After RPGs, a genre that is really loved among nostalgic DOS and Windows PC gamers is adventure. And by adventure I mean interactive fiction, point & click, etc. Unfortunately, the best ones are far from being abandoned: I'm talking about LucasArts and Sierra adventures aren't abandonware. From time to time ...

Here's a bunch of games involving some kind of humor in one way or another. It's not always great humor and it's not always great games either. Bad Street Brawler deserves to be played! Dilbert's Desktop GamesNord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of ItMonty Python's Flying CircusUltimuh MCMLXVII: ...

Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures and Star Wars: Yoda Stories are two little gems that stood the test of time suprisingly well. You probably will need a virtual machine to play both, but it's worth it.

Comics, manga, graphic novels were always an inspiration for game developer. Sometimes someone decided to acquire a license and make a game out of the comic itself. Here are a few examples: Batman, Dylan Dog, Fantastic Four, Ranx, Snoopy, Spider-man and even Yellow Kid.