Abandonware links

Remember the good old days? You thought your top of the range PC would live forever and still be able to run the latest games, 3D graphics cards didn't exist and you never needed to check the minimum specifications before purchasing a game. You could have a day out at the cinema and still have change left over from half a sixpence for your bus ride home... I've gone too far, haven't I? OK, I'll shut up.

Well anyway, these sites will help you to re-live those magical days of your lost youth with a spot of retro-gaming.

Abandon Games Abandonia Abandonware Ring Classic Games DOS Games Archive DOS Games              Full Games

Good Old Days Lost Treasures Fr Moby Games Replacement Docs Video Game Museum VOGONS XTC Abandonware

Sites which deserve a special mention...

Fate of Atlantis 2 - The unofficial, fan-developed sequel to one of my all-time favourite games. The following is an extract from the Amberfish Arts home page which succinctly sums up this intriguing forthcoming project...

"Founded in 1998, IndyProject set out to create a sequel to the 1992 LucasArts adventure Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. FoA2 will resume where the original game ended, and tell its story to the end. It will be a faithful recreation of the feel and atmosphere of the original. While embracing modern features such as 3D animation and light sourcing, FoA2 is primarily designed as a retro-gaming project. That means trusty low-res graphics, 2D backgrounds, and an outdated interface. We want players to be able to play FoA2 just like they experienced FoA. However, there will be a bunch of optional features, such as improved graphics (smoothing and higher resolutions), as well as a more modern interface. Quintessentially, FoA2 will become the product that LucasArts would have released in 1993 or 1994, had they ever produced a sequel to FoA."

King's Quest remakes - When the original King's Quest game first saw the light of day I was dabbling in the fine art of making Plasticine aliens and learning how to spell complicated words such as dog and cat... and at 36 years old I was considered a fast learner amongst my trailer trash community *tee hee*.

But seriously, I was born in the wrong era so missed out on this series completely. Even so, having compared past and present embodiments I can't fail to be impressed by the breathtaking beauty of these carefully crafted overhauls. The lure of old-school gameplay coupled with modern graphics and sound is more than enough to convince me to acquaint myself with this genre-moulding classic. Check out Tierra Entertainment's links page for more Sierra remakes.

Return of the Tentacle - If my German wasn't so dire I'd be able to tell you more about this project. From the title I gather it's the proposed (unofficial) sequel to Day of the Tentacle, another LucasArts adventure game to have achieved legendary status. One to watch! (and translate).

ScummVM - Scumm (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) is the name of the engine used to bring to life classic LucasArts adventure games such as the Monkey Island series, The Dig, Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle. VM is an acronym for virtual machine. Put the two together and we have an emulator specifically designed to cater for LucasArts (and now Adventuresoft's Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2) adventure games.

If you've ever tried to run old DOS games using a modern operating system you'll know that it's not quite as straight forward as running the game's main executable file for reasons explained in the gaming section of my FAQ. VDMSound makes it feasible to flawlessly recreate the look and feel of these original games, while ScummVM takes the joy of rediscovering classic PC games of yesteryear a step further by actually improving the originals by offering better sound support, various levels of anti-aliasing and higher resolutions.

Zak McKracken 2 - I haven't yet had the pleasure of playing the original so I'm not in the best position to sell this one to you, although based on the fact that it's made by LucasArts and LucasArts make the best adventure games the world has ever seen I'd say it's worth a look. Again this is a fan creation though by no means is it an amateurish effort - check out those screenshots! This is what 2D adventures would look like if the big players hadn't abandoned the genre many moons ago.