Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

Abandonware DOS in 2024: more of the same

As I do every year, before the end of it, I take stock of the updates to AbandonwareDOS. The main focus has been revising content, adding biographies of notable designers, more demos, descriptions, excerpts from game reviews, and, of course, games. The focus remains on abandoned DOS games, though I ...

The best DOS and Windows game designers of the past

During the formative years of the gaming industry, games were typically crafted by a compact team of programmers, with a central figure known as the "designer" spearheading the creative vision. Charged with conceptualizing the initial idea and mapping out the gameplay mechanics and content framework, the designer played a pivotal ...

Abandonware DOS in 2023: demos, applications and we're on Patreon!

Greetings everyone! While 2023 may not have held any particular significance for Abandonware DOS, it marked a significant milestone in my personal life. After 18 years, my fiancée and I decided to share a home, and so far, everything is going smoothly. This shift means I now have more time ...

Abandonware DOS in 2022: more games, more everything

Hello everyone! Another year has passed and Abandonware DOS is still here. Well, there are no reasons for this site to disappear in the vastness of the forgotten internet. I intend to go on, to endure and add more games and more content, in time. Unfortunately, server costs just went ...

Abandonware DOS in 2021: let's say goodbye to a not so great year

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who donated a few bucks to help me keep working on Abandonware DOS. THANK YOU, THANK YOU and again THANK YOU! I must confess that I didn't put a lot of work in implementing new features these last year. I had ...

Abandonware DOS in 2020: what's changed and what's new

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who donated a few bucks to help me keep working on Abandonware DOS. THANK YOU, THANK YOU and again THANK YOU! 2020 will go down in history as the COVID year. I live in northern Italy, in one of the first regions ...

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 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 ...

Abandonware DOS in 2019: what's changed and what's new

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who donated a few bucks to help me keep working on Abandonware DOS. THANK YOU, THANK YOU and again THANK YOU! In 2019 I changed the way that I usually add content on Abandonware DOS. This means that it takes me less ...

Manuals, walkthroughs and readme files

Part of the updates to Abandonware DOS consists in adding every kind of document I can get without copyright notices. I already added lots of manuals, walkthroughs (expecially interactive fiction solutions) and a few maps.Recently, I started digging into the zip files of every games in search for useful ...

Manuals, manuals, manuals

In the old days, tutorials were a plus, something that only a few developers bothered to add to their games. Today, I find tutorials almost annoying, particularly in Real Time Strategy games.Some manuals were the result of a work of careful craftmanship: think about Infocom games or Ultima manuals. ...

The Facebook page of Abandonware DOS

Abandonware DOS, like a plethora of other sites, has a Facebook Page. All the news published on the Abandonware DOS are automatically published on Facebook. At the time of writing https://www.facebook.com/abandonwaredos has only 229 likes. Not much, but, with your help, that number can grow.