Games released in 1983 sorted by popularity

The Hobbit is an early computer adaptation of Tolkien's famous novel, transforming Bilbo Baggins' journey from comfortable hobbit hole to dangerous adventure into an interactive te...

Pac-Man is a 1983 DOS adaptation of one of the most influential arcade games ever created, preserving the irresistible formula that transformed a simple yellow circle into a worldw...

Originally released in 1983, Lode Runner became one of the defining puzzle-platform games thanks to its brilliant combination of action and strategy. Players collect treasure while...

Planetfall is a 1983 interactive fiction adventure created by Infocom that combines science fiction, humor, and clever writing into a memorable journey. Players explore an abandone...

Donkey Kong is a landmark video game franchise created by Shigeru Miyamoto and first released by Nintendo in 1981. The original arcade game introduced players to a narrative where ...

Microsoft Word represents one of the most important steps in the transformation of the personal computer into an everyday writing machine. Early versions were a far cry from the en...

Borland Turbo Pascal 1.0 was the first release of one of the most influential programming environments of the 1980s. It brought Pascal development to DOS in a package that was rema...

Frogger needs very little introduction, yet it still deserves respect. Originally released in 1983, this deceptively simple game asks you to guide a frog across busy roads and trea...

Often mistaken as a Dig Dug clone, Digger is more like its eccentric cousin who insists on bringing a disco soundtrack to every family gathering. Released in 1983 for DOS, it combi...

In Infidel, you play a not-so-noble adventurer whose moral compass is spinning like a broken ceiling fan. As a treasure-hungry explorer poking around an ancient Egyptian tomb, you ...

Galaxian is one of those early arcade classics that proved space shooters didn’t need complicated rules to be thrilling. Instead of aliens politely marching in formation, the...

Borland Turbo Pascal 2.0 continued the remarkably successful formula established by the original Turbo Pascal, providing DOS programmers with a fast compiler and integrated program...

3-Demon from 1983 is basically Pac-Man with a taste for LSD. You’re in a first-person maze, munching dots while glowing ghosts try to ruin your day. It’s surprisingly c...

You survived Zork I, and now it’s personal. In Zork II, you face off against the enigmatic Wizard of Frobozz, who exists mostly to mess with you like a magical prankster with...

Enchanter is interactive fiction with teeth. As a text adventure, it relies entirely on imagination, yet it manages to feel richer than many graphical games of its era. You play as...

Forbidden Quest (1983, DOS) belongs to that early era when imagination did most of the heavy lifting. Sparse visuals and text-driven cues invite you to picture grand dangers lurkin...

Ultima 2 asks the pressing question: what if you mixed time travel with fantasy and a truly mean sorceress named Minax? The answer is chaos. You’ll bounce between eras—...

Released in 1983, this classic arcade-style shooter has you defending humanoids from alien abductions. Fly your ship across a scrolling landscape, blasting enemies and saving innoc...

Fleet Sweep takes the high drama of naval warfare and filters it through early-80s minimalism. Think less cinematic spectacle and more abstract tension as you maneuver through trea...

In 1983, Battlezone asked: what if vector graphics could give you war-induced vertigo? You’re in a tank, in a wireframe world, fighting other tanks. That’s it. But it&r...

Dig Dug is a classic maze arcade action game that was first released by Namco in 1982 as a coin-op and later for a number of other systems. The gameplay of Dig Dug involves digging...

Step into feudal Japan with Bushido, a game that tries to simulate samurai life on a machine barely capable of rendering a convincing circle. Still, there’s something charmin...

Stargate is a 1983 DOS game inspired by the science-fiction concept of portals connecting distant worlds. The game presents an early computer interpretation of space travel and exp...

Pango is a 1983 maze-action game that belongs to the golden age of simple concepts executed with remarkable confidence. Players navigate enclosed levels while avoiding enemies and ...

Don’t be fooled by the name—Amazing Maze is more of a slightly-better-than-average maze. But hey, in 1983, navigating a screen full of walls and hoping you guessed righ...

In Bert and the Snake, you are Bert. And yes, there's a snake. That’s the plot. It’s a maze game from a time when naming conventions were refreshingly honest and graphi...

Black Friday (1983) isn’t about shopping mayhem—though you might wish it were after trying to figure out what’s going on. This early DOS title is part stock marke...

Beneath Apple Manor is a pioneering game in the roguelike genre, originally developed and released in 1978 by Don Worth for the Apple II and later re-released for DOS as a "Special...

Evolution is an early experiment in simulating progress, and it wears its ambition proudly. The game attempts to model development and change over time, often in abstract ways that...

Ah yes, Air Trax from 1983 - a game where “flight” is more of a philosophical concept. It’s clunky, it's slow, and it looks like it was coded in someone’s g...