Toying with Abandonware
Posted on June 15, 2008
3 Comments
I spent some time this morning dabbling with some old computer games – stuff from the 80’s and 90’s that is now classified as “abandonware.” The neat thing about abandonware is that, if you can find it, it’s pretty much free.
The downside to abandonware is that technology has changed a lot over the last 20 (or more) years so getting some of these to run can be a challenge.
Here are two useful links if you fondly remember games from the “olden days” like I do:
- Abandonia.com – I just found this site this weekend and it triggered some new game downloading.
- DOSBox – it makes playing the old games so much easier.
Now if I could just remember more of the games I spent so much time with way back then… here’s what I got so far:
- Eight Ball Deluxe – My favorite pinball machine both at the bar and on the PC.
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – I was so hooked on this game when it first came out. I caught just a bit of the movie on TV the other day and that triggered my searching for the game.
- Supaplex – a quirky puzzle/strategy game that used to keep me entertained for hours at a time.
- The Incredible Machine – Speaking of quirky puzzle games, this one is a great way to keep the mind nimble in a Rube Goldberg-esque sort of way.
- Battle Chess – I’m not sure how it will hold up (haven’t played it yet) but I fondly recall all the funny animations and decent chess play.
- Ringworld — Revenge of the Patriarch and Return to Ringworld — As a huge Larry Niven fan, I was so excited to find these games back in the 90’s. I can’t recall if I ever finished either of ‘em though… I lent them to someone with my early edition copy of Ringworld never to be seen again. *sigh*
- Wing Commander — Everyone I knew had this game. Don’t recall anyone finishing it… I might give it another go though.
I’d love to find the old D&D “gold box” games. Who published those? SSI? I guess they’re not considered abandoned yet (?). I’d also love to find the Leisure Suit Larry series some day, those were pretty fun. What else am I missing? What are some of the classic computer games from days gone by?
Tags: abandonware, dosbox, games
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Haven’t tried it with SP3 here. My...
Another useful piece of software is ScummVM, it can play certain games such as the Indy game you posted.
A site I’ve checked in with previously while looking for ancient games is Home of the Underdogs (http://www.the-underdogs.info/)
As for good old game recommendations:
A-10 Tank Killer - Not sure it would be as much fun these days but at the time I loved that thing.
Front Page Sports Football - Took about a decade or so for Madden to catch up with the depth of FPSF.
Wasteland - Post-apocalyptic RPG. Apparently the Fallout series is the spiritual successor to this old game. Though I’ve never played any Fallout games, I loved Wasteland at the time.
Darkside of Xeen - A Might & Magic RPG that my friends and I were hooked on in high school. If you got Clouds of Xeen and installed it along with Darkside it would make “World of Xeen” but at the time we had enough fun with Darkside that getting the other piece wasn’t a priority.
Wing Commander Privateer was the best of the series as far as I’m concerned. There’s a remake project out there for it (runs on linux too) but for reasons that escape me at the moment I never got too into it.
Nice find with those Gold Box games. I love RPGs :).
IMHO the best old games RPG is Betrayal at Krondor. I love Feist so imho the best old RPG.
The new Might and Magic series are better, but the MaM are not that old.
The most classic is the Dungeon Master. I like it too, but it is way too old for me.
Anyway Might and Magic rules ;-).
Betrayal at Krondor and Dungeon Master are copyrighted free btw, so you can download them without problem.
The sites you mentioned are good, but a little bit too complex for me. I found both the games at World of old games or at the BOG.
Btw nice blog :).