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                Have you ever wanted to play a classic video game or use an older computer application but were not able to find it?  There are websites that specialize in what is known as ‘abandonware.’  The legality of abandonware is tricky, but this generally refers to games and software that and either no longer sold or no longer maintained or both.  Most abandonware is at least 10 years old, although there are many exceptions to this rule.  Below are some websites that offer abandonware and what they have to offer.

 

                I can’t run any of these games on Windows XP or Windows Vista; what do I do?  The easy solution is by downloading DOSBox (http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1), a full-scale emulator of the original x86 DOS operating system.  It handles virtually all legacy DOS programs in the manner that they would have run under, say, DOS 5.x or DOS 6.  Also, for a more user-friendly approach, use a GUI such as DOSShell (http://www.loonies.narod.ru/dosshell.htm) so you can simply double-click on applications instead of typing text commands.

 
A showing of some of the games at Abandonia.  Find all of your old favorites.

Recommended Free Software and Video Games Websites

 

  1. Abandonia – (http://www.abandonia.com/) This is a site devoted to old PC games that are now available for download.  Most of these games are from the DOS era, but there are some newer games as well.  Some good titles include Blood, Alien Trilogy, Cannon Fodder 2, Descent, and more.

  2. XTC Abandonware – (http://www.xtcabandonware.com/) 24 pages of old games and vintage applications.  Includes Warcraft, Wheel of Fortune, Wolfenstein 3D, the Space Quest series, the King’s Quest series, Monopoly, SimCity 2000, and even Wordperfect 1 in Dutch.

  3. VETUSWARE.COM – (http://vetusware.com/)  A repository of old DOS applications, primarily, and some games also.  Of note, you can download old operating systems such as DOS 6.22, Widows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 1.01, and even Windows 95.  Even Microsoft Office 4.

  4. C:DOS Abandonware – (http://www.cdosabandonware.com/)  Has some harder to download titles such as Sid Meier’s Civilization, The Amazon Trail, Caesar 2, and even has an Adult section.  The thing about this site is you have to click on an advertisement and browse through it until you find a string of text that the site requires you to type in to verify that you viewed the ad.  You will then receive a number of credits to download programs.  Don’t work, this doesn’t cost any money.

  5. Torrent Websites – torrent sites are those that contain small files known as torrents, which are basically directions for a P2P program as to where to find a particular file.  Many programs can handle .torrent files, the best being Limewire (http://www.limewire.com/).  If you want something that is harder to find or larger on size, whether it be a game or an application, check out one of these sites.  The best of these are The Pirate Bay (http://www.thepiratebay.org/) and ISOHunt (http://www.isohunt.com/).  Just for nostalgia’s sake, I wanted to download Microsoft Bob and Packard Bell Naviagator; I was able to find both using these two torrent sites.

 

 

 

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