Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

1994 in retro gaming: The Elder Scrolls: Arena

The Elder Scrolls: Arena is the first chapter in the popular fantasy RPG series "The Elder Scrolls" developed by Bethesda Softworks. Like the other games in the series, Arena takes place in the continent of Tamriel and allows the player to roam freely in an open world scenario.The Elder ...

Rogue: the first roguelike

If you're into roguelikes, you already know what Rogue is. Rogue is one of the first RPGs in the history of video gaming. It's a text-based dungeon crawler in which you have to fight your way in the dungeon to recover the Amulet of Yendor. Rogue became popular around 1980 ...

RPG spotlight - Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar

Ultima IV is remembered as one of the best Ultima games ever released, designed as usual by Richard Garriott. Garriott took the Ultima series to a whole new level by introducing the eight virtues: honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality, humility. Ultima IV started the trilogy known as "Age ...

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. II: The Two Towers

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. II: The Two Towers is an abandoned fantasy top-down DOS RPG game set in the The Lord of the Rings universe. The Lord of the Rings II was developed and released by Interplay Productions in 1992. The Lord of the ...

Icewind Dale: better than Baldur's Gate?

When I played Baldur's Gate, I knew that RPGs weren't dead. There was this feeling that a new wave of RPGs was coming. I loved Baldur's Gate, but I found some parts of the story and the NPC's a bit too naive. What I loved of Icewind Dale, was that ...

The Magic Candle series: almost like Ultima

The Magic Candle is a series of old school RPGs developed by Mindcraft much like Ultima. You control a party of adventurers in a top-down perspective environment. You can explore towns, fight monsters, talk to people, manage your inventory and even get someone of your party to work for a ...

Retro company spotlight: Strategic Simulations Inc.

SSI (Strategic Simulations Inc.) was one of the most prolific game companies of the 80s and the 90s. SSI was founded in 1979 and developed and/or published more than one hundred games. SSI was popular among video games players for two things: wargames and RPG goldbox games.Strategy games developed ...

What is your favourite dungeon crawler?

Dungeon crawlers are RPGs in which the player has to explore one or more dungeons (or similar non-open world environments), fight hordes of cunning monsters, looting treasure, gain experience and levels and so on. Usually, dungeon crawlers have simple storylines and a linear progression. A lot of rogue-likes can be ...

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 ...

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 ...

Old school: first-person party-based CRPGs

Party-based role-playing games with a first person perspective became popular after the release of Dungeon Master in 1989. Before Dungeon Master only a handful RPGs used first person, the Bard's Tale and Wizardry series among others. Dungeon Master managed to create a very neat user interface without sacrificing the gameplay.Some ...

Lesser known old school RPGs for DOS

Ultima, Wizardry, Fallout, Might & Magic are among the most popular old school RPGs that every RPG fan played or know something about. However, lots of RPGs published in the distant past never reached a wide popularity. Some the RPGs uploaded today on Abandonware DOS are not exactly well known, ...

The Ultima series: old school RPGs at its finest

Ultima is perhaps the most popular old-school RPG series of all time. The whole series was designed by Richard Garriott, head of Origin, who redefined the genre more than one time with moral choices, cutting edge graphics, state of the art interface. It's a shame that Ultima lasted only 9 chapters (...

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 ...

More RPGs: Might and Magic, Wizardry, Elder Scrolls

While browsing the Abandonware DOS database, I noticed that a few very popular RPGs were missing. How could I forget to include them? I had to add them to the already long list of old school RPGs, even if they are not technically abandoned (and you can't download them for ...

Obscure abandoned DOS RPGs

There are a lot of role-playing games already on Abandonware DOS: from the Ultima series to Might and Magic, from the Wizardry series to Rogue.I periodically convince myself that I covered every possible RPG published for DOS and periodically I find out that I missed a few ones. The ...

Retro spotlight: Lands of Lore, The Throne of Chaos

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos is a fantasy RPG published in 1993, very similar to other dungeon crawlers like EotB or Dungeon Master. Lands of Lore was developed by Westwood Studios who wanted to start a new franchise after the success of the Eye of the Beholder series.

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 ...

RPGs from the 80s and the 90s

Dear DOS gamers, you seem to particularly like RPGs, so I started looking for old RPGs I missed in the past updates. It turns out that there's A LOT (and I mean A LOT) of lesser known (and often ugly, unplayable, forgettable) role playing games developed for DOS. Without further ...

Obscure RPGs (almost) no one ever heard of

The most loved RPGs from the PC era are known to everyone: the Ultima series, the Might & Magic series, Wizardry, etc. There were also a lot of minor and sometimes unsuccessful RPGs that made it on the shelves but almost never appeared on video games magazines. Have you every ...