Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac
Author: Tasha - Published: 11 February 2017, 5:12 pm
Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty is a real-time strategy game created by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Games in 1992.
The game, also known as Dune II: Battle for Arrakis, is the second entry in the Dune series and it's one of the most influential video games of all time. Dune II is thought of by many as the first real-time strategy game, since for the first time a player was able to control and micromanage several units and resources without a turn-based time structure.
Despite the name, Dune II is not the sequel of the first Dune. The two games were developed independently by two different studios. In fact the adventure game by Cryo Interactive was planned to be canceled by Virgin, to release Westwood Studio's strategy game instead. But in the end they decided to keep both games and one of them was renamed Dune II: The Battle For Arrakis.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 10 February 2017, 7:51 pm
Katakis is a sci-fi shooter inspired to R-Type, developed by Factor 5 and released in 1988 for the Commodore 64 and Amiga. The C64 version was created by Manfred Trenz and Andreas Escher, the two friends that will become famous for Turrican.
Katakis was so similar to R-Type that Activision, that had acquired from Irem the rights to port R-Type to home computers, sued Factor 5 and forced them to stop selling the game. Ironically, Activision was so impressed by the quality of Katakis that decided to ask Factor 5 to develop R-Type for them, in exchange for the permission to restart selling their game. Therefore Factor 5 created R-Type and one year later Katakis was re-released with a new name (Denaris) and a few modified levels.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 10 February 2017, 2:42 am
Return to Zork is a graphic adventure designed by Doug Barnett for Activision and released in 1993 for MS-DOS and Macintosh.
The game is one of the official sequels to the famous interactive fiction Zork: The Great Underground Empire, released in 1980. The two adventures anyway have very different gameplays, since Return to Zork is a fist person adventure that makes use of videos and real actors, just like Myst (which was released the same year). The creators of the game didn't even play any of the previous Zork games before they started working on this new chapter.
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Author: Tasha - Published: 8 February 2017, 12:21 pm
King’s Quest VII: The Princess Bride is the seventh installment in Roberta Williams’ King’s Quest series. It was developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1994.
Like the previous episodes in the series, The Princess Bride is an adventure game primarily based on solving inventory puzzles. However, it sheds the icon-based interface of the two previous games in favor of a more simplified ‘smart cursor’ used for general interaction.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 8 February 2017, 2:42 am
Championship Manager 93 is the second chapter of Sports Interactive's popular football management sim series. Designed by Paul and Oliver Collyer, it was released by Domark for PC and Amiga.
Compared to the first version published in 1992, CM93 introduced many improvements, including using real player names, injury time, and more in-match commentary. The game was also wholly developed from scratch since the previous version written in BASIC was too slow. Championship Manager 93 was much faster and feature-rich.
Despite the very simple user interface, the game was the first one to show the series' real potential.
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Author: Tasha - Published: 6 February 2017, 7:34 pm
The first game in the popular Rayman series is a 2D side-scrolling adventure developed and published by Ubisoft. It was released in 1995 for PC MS-DOS, Playstation, Sega Saturn, and other platforms.
It was the first game in the Rayman series and my first computer game. Don’t judge me too harshly; we didn’t have a home computer until I was in the 7th grade. I remember it being so hard because I was more used to console controls. Playing as Rayman himself, the no-limb-having hero, you must save your colorful world from the evil Mr. Dark. Mr. Dark has kidnapped the great Protoon and his smaller electoons and plunged your world into darkness. Out of the darkness flow evil minions, making the world a dangerous place. Starting out, Rayman’s strongest abilities are jumping, crawling, and making silly faces. Don’t worry, he gets much stronger later one and learns new abilities. He will learn to fight, grapple, and even hover with his hair (think Earthworm Jim). You must jump, climb, and fight your way through the levels to free the electoons, restoring light to your world.
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