Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

Witchaven: a fantasy first-person slasher

Witchaven is an abandoned fantasy first-person shooter (or "slasher", since you'll wield melee weapons) developed by Capstone and released by IntraCorp in 1995 for DOS and Windows. Witchaven includes RPG elements such as experience and leveling your character but it's primarily an action game with swords and spells.More info about ...

Dragon's Lair III: The Curse of Mordread

Dragon's Lair III, also known as Dragon's Lair III: The Curse of Mordread, is an installment in the classic Dragon's Lair series of animated arcade games. The game was released in 1991 and represents a continuation of the series known for its full-motion video (FMV) animation and interactive gameplay. Players control ...

It Came From The Desert: giant ants from the 50s

It Came from the Desert is an abandonware action-adventure game developed by Cinemaware and released in 1990 for PC (DOS) and Amiga. It Came From the Desert is an action-adventure game with a peculiar flavor: it's set in the 50s, in the USA, and it's based on those old monster movies ...

Fighting with Body Blows by Team17

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 ore Street Fighter 2....

From the arcades: Turbo OutRun

Turbo OutRun is an abandoned DOS action racing game set in North America, developed and published by Sega in 1990. Turbo OutRun is a conversion from the arcade classic of the same name and it's the sequel of the popular OutRun. The OutRun games are regarded as iconic and representative of ...

Retro game spotlight: The Lost Vikings

I'm not a fan of platformers. I love RPGs, I enjoyed many point & click adventures, I like most strategy games, but I never got excited while playing a platform game. Lost Viking is different. I LOVED the concept of controlling three different vikings in order to solve riddles and ...

Cadaver and Cadaver: The Payoff

Cadaver (and the expansion Cadaver: The Payoff) is a blend of adventure and platform game developed by Bitmap Brothers. The gameplay reminds me of the glorious Head over Heels with a few differences: a fantasy setting, an inventory and the fact that you can die... and I died a lot ...

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 ...

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&...

Relaxing with Alpha Waves

Alpha Waves was the ultimate relaxing experience for PC. As a platform game, Alpha Waves it's an ok game; not bad, not very good, but if you consider the whole relaxing experience, it's worth a try. Alpha Waves stands the test of time, after all these years it's still fairly ...

Delivering papers as a digital paperboy

Paperboy was an unusual 1985 arcade hit developed by Atari, later published by Mindscape for DOS in 1988 and for other platforms as well. Paperboy gameplay is peculiar: you control a paperboy on a bicycle and you have to deliver newspapers to a number of houses while avoiding dogs, cars and other ...

Zool: the ninja from the Nth dimension

Zool was to Amiga what Sonic was for Sega consoles: a cool protagonist (a ninja of the Nth dimension!) for a high adrenaline action platformer. Zool was designed by George Allen and published by Gremlin in 1992 and it was an instant success. It was ported for many platforms, DOS included, ...

What was your favourite classic arcade game?

Everyone knows what "classic arcade" means. And everyone should know what the most popular and loved classic arcade games are (or, should I say "were"?). Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders are perhaps the most iconic classics in the early history of video gaming. If you're a true retro-gamer you ...

Rampage: monsters VS buildings

As a kid, I remember spending hours at the bar down the road playing at Rampage as Lizzie. Destroying buildings and eating tasty humans was one of my favourite past-times. It's surprising that the coin-op conversion of Rampage for DOS ended up as a nice game. Granted it's not the ...

What was your favourite fighting game?

Fighting games (or VS fighting), is a genre that appeals quite a wide range of gamers.Fighting games involves hand-to-hand fighting against a single opponent for the whole duration of a match. A distinctive trait of fighting games are special attacks, i.e. combinations of graphically striking moves which enhance ...

The worst games based on movies

Movies have always been a source of inspiration for video games. Almost every successful movie has its video game (and sometimes even unsucessful ones). The results in the gaming world weren't always so good. I remember lots and lots of mediocre games that tried to patch together different moments of ...

Commander Keen: side-scrolling platformers

In the 90's PCs weren't exactly popular as a gaming system for platform games. The whole Commander Keen series was an exception. Created by a trio of talented designers (John Carmack, John Romero and Tom Hall), Commander Keen games - side scrolling platformers - contributed to put PCs under the ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Underdogs on Abandonware DOS

No, I'm not talking about the long gone site Home of the Underdogs, a milestone in the abandonware website scene, I'm actually talking about games available on Abandonware DOS that almost no one pay attention to (myself included).Download count for these games is low and - for a few ...

It's winter time! Snow, Santas and trains

Christmas is coming and I decided to add a few games in theme with the holiday season. Winter, Christmas, snow... every ingredient that makes "winter time" is present in the following games. A few of them are special editions of games already published (Skyroads, Jetpack). Transarctica is a peculiar one; ...

Dizzy, by the Oliver Twins

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 ...

Pinball: the art of bouncing balls

Pinball is a very specific subgenre of action games that can't be assimilated to other kind of games. It's not a platformer or a shooter, and there were a lot of pinball games in the 80s and the 90s, so I think it's only fair that there's a whole category ...

Action and arcades: Comix Zone and other games

I was browsing platform games on Abandonware DOS when I noticed something was missing. I talking about a game I loved and I bet most of you played it at least once: Comix Zone. So... here it is, available with this content update along other action and arcade games. Comix ...

Sequels to action games: Gauntlet, Rick Dangerous, Xenon and more

Back in the day, sequels were not always appreciated. That number "2" after the title for many meant lack of ideas. This wasn't just about video games, everything was subject to that kind of treatment "if it's good, why change it?".I don't see this kind of hate anymore. In fact, ...

Comics and superheroes in videogames

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 ...

To the arcades! Abandoned coin-op conversions

No, I'm not talking about the actual place where you can play coin-ops, and I don't even know if such places still exist. I'm talking about very old games that can be defined as "arcades".Jumpman Lives! is a classic and need no presentation. Pango is a rip-off (homage?) to ...

Nice movies and shitty games

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 ...