Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

Hail Caesar! For the second time

Caesar 2 is many things: a simulation set in ancient roman times, a city builder, a wonderful strategy game. Caesar 2 is all of this and more: it's one of the early games developed by Impressions that set the gameplay and quality standards later implemented in old strategy games like Zeus and ...

Retro game spotlight: Fantasy General by SSI

Fantasy General is a hex-based turn-based strategy fantasy wargame set in a D&D world. The player can duel either against a computer or a human opponent or even take part in a longer campaign. There are two sides to chose from, one good and one evil (no neutral!), ...

Jones in the Fast Lane: board game meets life simulation

Jones in the Fast Lane is the kind of game that you don't see often these days. It's a mix between a digital board game and a modern day life simulation. The goal of the game is to live the life of Jones, making choices about school, work, your home, ...

Utopia: The Creation of a Nation (1992)

I bet not many of you remember Utopia: The Creation of a Nation. It's a single-player strategy game with strong city building elements set in the future. In Utopia your goal is to build and manage a planetary colony in an open-ended gameplay.ACE magazine review "Seems a little daunting ...

1986 in retro gaming: Archon, Karateka, Space Quest

30 years ago, computer gaming was growing slowly. Computers like the C64 and the Spectrum were the main source of digital amusement among Home Computer owners. Finally after a few disappointing years, in 1986 a handful of interesting games began to conquer the PC public:Archon was an hybrid between an ...

Wargaming: The Perfect General

The Perfect General is a turn-based strategy military game developed by White Wolf Productions and released in 1991 by Quantun Quality Production. The Perfect General gameplay is quite simple compared to other wargames, but it's based on a solid set of rules and let the players progress at their own pace ...

1998 in PC gaming: Dune 2000, Axis and Allies, Railroad Tycoon 2

20 years ago PC gaming was thriving. Half-Life re-defined the game design of FPSs. Baldur's Gate and Fallout 2 gave hope to gamers who were waiting for the next generation of RPGs. Adventure gamers enjoyed Grim Fandango immensely. Real-time strategy fans spent countless hours playing StarCraft. And let's not forget&...

Supremacy: Your Will Be Done

Supremacy: You Will Be Done (also known simply as Overlord) is a rare example of mix between real-time strategy and science fiction themed 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploid, eXterminate). Supremacy was developed by Probe Entertainment and published by Mastertronic in 1990.PC Review wrote about Supremacy in 1992: "Two huge civilisations battle ...

Retro company spotlight: Strategic Simulations Inc.

SSI (Strategic Simulations Inc.) was one of the most prolific game companies of the 80s and the 90s. SSI was founded in 1979 and developed and/or published more than one hundred games. SSI was popular among video games players for two things: wargames and RPG goldbox games.Strategy games developed ...

Games set during the cold war period

There was a time when the two major political superpowers were at war, but nobody knew. U.S.A. and the former U.S.S.R. used spies, subterfuge, blockades, political and military influence all over the world. The so called "Cold War" era lasted decades and ended in 1989 with ...

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 ...

Cards, tabletop and board games

Card games and board games are not the most popular games available on Abandonware DOS. After all, there are countless versions of Poker, Clue, Scarbble, Monopoly and many other board/card games you can play for free online or buy on Steam or GOG. That's not an excuse for not ...

PBEM: Play By E-Mail multiplayer mode

What is PBEM? PBEM stands for Play By E-Mail. PBEM games allow a peculiar multiplayer option; players can play turns in an asyncronous way and send the result of their completed turn via e-mail to all opponents. As the Internet evolved, PBEM in recent games ceased to exist and quickly ...

More strategy games: Battle Isle, Army Men, etc.

Looking back at the past Abandonware DOS content updates, I noticed a few missing games that deserved to be included in the Abandonware DOS database. Most notably: Army Men, one of the Battle Isle games and a few more I remember from a time when I played them, many years ...

Wargaming everywhere

As I add to Abandonware DOS every game I can think of, week after week, I get increasingly astonished by the sheer number of wargames available back in the day. I had no idea that wargaming was so popular in the 80s and the early 90s.With this update I ...

Strategy in the far east: Japan, China, the Pacific

I'm a fan of turn-based strategy games, but I have to admit I've never played KOEI games. KOEI was a Japanese company founded in 1978 (!) known for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition series. Romance of the Three Kingdoms wasn't the only game that deserve some praise. With ...

Solving murders and simulating detectives

Pure and simple detective stories are hard to find in video gaming today. Everyone goes for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, but the good old murder to solve is not so popular. Back in the 90s (or the 80s) you could play some adventure games based on a detective story. There was ...

Text only gaming: it's not always about interactive fiction

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 ...

Memories from Populous: play god in your browser

I clearly remember the first time I heard about Populous. I was young and still living with my parents. It was a late sunday morning, the sun was high in the sky and the smell of roasted chicken was all around the house: lunch was almost ready, but I was ...