Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

Strategy games: Battle Bugs, Beyond Columns, Roadwar Europa and more

Lately I'm taking some time to update the info of some of the less popular games on Abandonware DOS. Here's a few:Beyond ColumnsFalling block puzzle - Released in 1989 for DOS. This blatant Columns clone is not much in terms of graphics, but it fills an empty spot in the ...

Chris Crawford: game designer

Chris Crawford is a computer game designer known for simulations and strategy games, including the popular Balance of Power. Among developers he became known for his passionate advocacy of game design as an art form, founding both The Journal of Computer Game Design and the Computer Game Developers Conference (now ...

Cards, tabletop and board games

Card games and board games are not the most popular games available on Abandonware DOS. After all, there are countless versions of Poker, Clue, Scarbble, Monopoly and many other board/card games you can play for free online or buy on Steam or GOG. That's not an excuse for not ...

PBEM: Play By E-Mail multiplayer mode

What is PBEM? PBEM stands for Play By E-Mail. PBEM games allow a peculiar multiplayer option; players can play turns in an asyncronous way and send the result of their completed turn via e-mail to all opponents. As the Internet evolved, PBEM in recent games ceased to exist and quickly ...

More strategy games: Battle Isle, Army Men, etc.

Looking back at the past Abandonware DOS content updates, I noticed a few missing games that deserved to be included in the Abandonware DOS database. Most notably: Army Men, one of the Battle Isle games and a few more I remember from a time when I played them, many years ...

Wargaming everywhere

As I add to Abandonware DOS every game I can think of, week after week, I get increasingly astonished by the sheer number of wargames available back in the day. I had no idea that wargaming was so popular in the 80s and the early 90s.With this update I ...

Strategy in the far east: Japan, China, the Pacific

I'm a fan of turn-based strategy games, but I have to admit I've never played KOEI games. KOEI was a Japanese company founded in 1978 (!) known for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition series. Romance of the Three Kingdoms wasn't the only game that deserve some praise. With ...

Solving murders and simulating detectives

Pure and simple detective stories are hard to find in video gaming today. Everyone goes for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, but the good old murder to solve is not so popular. Back in the 90s (or the 80s) you could play some adventure games based on a detective story. There was ...

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 ...

Memories from Populous: play god in your browser

I clearly remember the first time I heard about Populous. I was young and still living with my parents. It was a late sunday morning, the sun was high in the sky and the smell of roasted chicken was all around the house: lunch was almost ready, but I was ...

Strategy across the ages

It's time to update Abandonware DOS with a few more strategy games (you seem to like the genre). From the ancient past to the far future, not forgetting the fantasy genre, here are some turn-based strategy games to download and play. Fantasy EmpiresThe Great War: 1914 - 1918Pacific GeneralMech Brigade

Different kinds of strategy games

More games have been uploaded. Two turn-based tactics games, one wargame, one real time strategy, a real time tactics game and, the best of them all (probably) a turn based tactics game from Julian Gollop, the designer of one of the most loved PC games of all time: X-Com: Enemy ...

Board games!

Here's a few DOS board games to play with your family or friends (if you still have a PC with MSDOS installed). Monopoly, Othello and Backgammon are known to everyone from age 5 to age 99. Settlers of Catan is more recent, but pretty popular. Battle of Atlantis... I don't think anyone ...

Keyword: god games (it's good to be god)

In the so called god games, the player takes the role of a divine entity (or something similar). Gameplay involves controlling people, units or even the environment on a large scale. God games usually show some artificial intelligence in the form of autonomous NPCs.

Abandonware spotlight: Defender of the Crown

Lalallala, lalallala, la la la la la lallala. Well, that's how I remember the music of Defender of the Crown, one of the most peculiar games developed by Cinemaware (also their first one!). Set in medieval England, Defender of the Crown was a mix of strategy and action. You ...

Space Hulk: a board game classic

Space Hulk is a strategy game based on the board game of the same name designed by Games Workshop, the company behind the popular Warhammer 40000 franchise. Take your squad of Space Marines and go kill some alien scum!

20 years ago in retro gaming: Master of Magic

Master of Magic is a turn based 4x strategy game developed by SimTex and published by the well know Microprose, very similar to Civilization, with a fantasy twist. You play as a wizard and your objective is to evolve your race from a small settlement to a bursting empire. To ...

Spotlight: 4x strategy games

4x is a well known strategy genre acronym that stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate. The player controls a whole empire and is tasked with managing resources and technical developments (eXploit), expanding their domains with their military (eXplore and eXpand), and fight against computer A.I. factions or other ...