Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

Play classic action games online

Action games are perhaps the best to be played online in quick sessions. No waiting turns, no strategic planning, just quick reflexes and plain fun. These are just some of the action games available on Abandonware DOS to download or to play directly in your browser. Castlevania Castlevania was such ...

GOG Dungeon and Dragons sale

Good Old Games is hosting an interesting sale: the Dungeon & Dragons sale. Games based on the most popular pen & paper RPG ever designed are discounted, up to -75%. And there's a giveaway too: get Eye of the Beholder I, II and III for free, for a limited time!...

Remake of the month: OpenTTD

OpenTTD, as the name suggests, is an open source remake of Transport Tycoon, a simulation designed by Chris Sawyer.Transport Tycoon was a business simulation game that puts the player at the head of a transport company to compete against rival companies. The player can build stations, airports, railroads to ...

Graphic adventures with a text parser

There's a fine line between a "text adventure" (also called interactive fiction) and a modern graphic adventure. Before the advent of point & click adventure games such as Monkey Island, Gabriel Knight or Day of the Tentacle, designers first attempted to create graphical adventure games with a text-based interface. You ...

The best DOS game designers of the past

Back in the last century (I'm talking about the 90s, the 80s and even the 70s), video games were often developed and sometimes published by a small group of programmers. Among the team were the "designer", the one who came up with the idea of the game in the first ...

Dreamweb: a top-down cyberpunk adventure

Cyberpunk video games are receiving a lot of attention lately. The upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 and the tactical RPG series Shadowrun Returns are just some of the most popular recent cyberpunk games.Some of you, dear retro DOS games lovers, may remember a cyberpunk game from more than 20 years ago: Dreamweb....

Abandoned games set in the 19th century

The 19th century was the age of steam, railroads and remarkable discoveries. It was the age of literary masterpieces like the Sherlock Holmes novels, Dracula and Jules Verne's sci-fi stories.Some of the most popular games set in the 19th centurey are:The Oregon TrailThe Lost Files of Sherlock HolmesMartian ...

Al Lowe: the father of Larry Laffer

Al Lowe is an American video game designer, programmer, and musician who developed several adventure games, mostly for Sierra On-Line. He is best known for creating the Leisure Suit Larry series.Name: Al Lowe Born on: 24/07/1946Occupation: video game designer, game programmer, musicianKnown for: Leisure Suit LarryWiki page: http://en....

2000 games and applications

After a quite a few years, Abandonware DOS reached the 2000 games (and applications) milestone. I personally played each game to ensure it worked, took screenshots, wrote info and added everything to the Abandonware DOS database. The trick was to come up with a method to do this in the least ...

What were your favourite shoot'em ups?

Shoot 'em ups were extremely popular in the '80s and '90s, even among PC owners.In a shoot 'em up, players control some sort of vehicle (or an aircraft) with the only goal of destroying the largest number of enemies while dodging their bullets as long as they ...

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 ...

GOG Spring Sale Classics

It's spring time and everyone in the world is waiting for this COVID-19 hell to fade and become a thing of the past (me included, sheltered in my home in northern Italy).For all of us trying to come up with new ways to fill this free time, Good Old ...

Puzzle games based on TV game shows

Games based on TV game shows were popular in the early days of DOS video gaming on older PCs. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that every major game show of the eighties was translated into a video game: Family Feud, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and more.Here's ...

What does COVID have to do with Abandonware DOS?

As you probably know, Abandonware DOS is run by one person only: here I am. I'm Italian and - lucky me! - I live in Lombardy, the Italian region where the Coronavirus is most present: almost 15000 cases so far, and rising.It's like living under curfew. I can go out ...

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 ...

Business simulations: merchants, managers, CEOs

Business simulations (also called tycoon simulations) are video games that focus on the economic and the management side of running a business. In tycoon games the player can be in charge of any kind of business: a company, a sports team, an hospital, an amusement park, even a drug ...

CODiE Awards 1996: Dark Forces, Ascendancy, IndyCar Racing 2

In 1996 quite a few things happened. Charles and Diana got divorced, France finally stops nuclear tests in the Pacific, Nintendo releases the Nintendo 64 and the mad cow disease hits Britain. Deep Blue defeats chess champion Kasparov, Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 3 and Windows NT 4.The 1996 CODiE awards go to an almost ...

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 ...

David Braben: an Elite game designer

David Braben is a British game developer and designer, also founder and CEO of Frontier Developments plc. He's best known for co-creating Elite in 1984 (with Ian Bell), the space trading and exploration game that started a whole genre. Name: David Braben Born on: 02/01/1964Occupation: game designer, programmer and entrepreneurKnown for: ...

Old school forgotten RPGs from the past

RPGs are a strange animal when it comes to old-school PC gaming. If you exclude huge hits and successful franchises, the games that remains are often obscure RPGs, sometimes so awful that playing them is a pain in the keyboard. There are of course exceptions: underdogs that somehow were a ...