Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

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 ...

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 ...

More adventures: point and click, interactive fiction, etc.

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 ...

Horror-themed games from the past

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 ...

Police Quest: 1, 2, 3 and "4"

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

More adventure games: ecology, horror, comedy...

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 ...

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 ...

Paper and cloth maps from the past

Many old games published during an age of PC video gaming where digital distribution was still a dream of some publishers, came in physical boxes full of various goodies.A few enlightened publishers gifted (well, we paid...) us players with gorgoeus maps. RPG was perhaps the genre that most of ...

A pint of point and click and a barrel of interactive fiction

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 ...

Humor in old video games

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: ...

Desktop adventures for Indy and Luke

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.

Games based on comic books

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.

Retro spotlight: Blade Runner

Blade Runner is one of those point & click adventure games that somewhat manages to fully capture the spirit of a cult movie without copying the original plot. Fans of the Blade Runner movie will enjoy this game, even without Harrison Ford.

Spotlight: games based on a TV series

Today, we're used to high quality TV series such as Game of Thrones, Daredevil, Madmen. This level of writing wasn't always the top priority of the producers of TV series aired a few decades ago. Anyway, lot of us old guys remember fondly series like The A-Team, Miami Vice and, ...

Spotlight: Indiana Jones games

The popular archaeologist and adventurer created by George Lucas was the star of four movies and the protagonist some of the best point and click (almost abandoned) adventures ever created for PC. Unfortunately, Indiana Jones was also the main character of some of the worst action games.All the Indiana ...

Spotlight: Interactive Fiction

Interactive Fiction, or 'text adventures' is one of the oldest adventure genres around. The first interactive fiction game, called simply Adventure, dates back to 1975. One of the most well known series is Zork, developed by one of the most popular interactive fiction companies of all time: Infocom. Other popular developers ...

Text-only games: roguelikes and interactive fiction

In the past, lots of home computer games (PC, C64, Speccy, etc.) used ascii characters (simple text) to represent the game world, the interface... well, everything on screen. These text-only video games may seem primitive and outdated now and, in fact, the genre almost died with the fast evolving graphics ...