Once I learned about the Archive.org MS-DOS games collection on a recent episode of Mike’s Weekly Geek News Show, I knew what I had to do. I now present to you an idiosyncratic anthology of DOS games from my youth, mostly played on our trusty Tandy 1000 and Wyse computers. For each game, click on the image and you will be taken to an Archive.org page where the game can be played within your browser.

Bouncing Babies

Let’s begin where we ought to, with Bouncing Babies. A hospital is on fire and you must save babies being thrown out the windows. Such an outrageous premise for a game.

David’s Kong

Being already familiar with Donkey Kong, I was deeply disappointed with this game. But it was named after my brother, which was cool.

Empire: Wargame of the Century

Many hours of my childhood were dedicated to world conquest in the form of “Empire”. The requisite manual can be downloaded here.

Frogger

I could get past the cars, but not the logs.

Hard Hat Mack

OSHA lawyers are your foes!

Janitor Joe

janitor battles space robots!

Lemonade Stand

I actually only ever played this at school, and perhaps not even in DOS, but I remember loving it so I include it here. You start with $2 and a supply of sugar, and you try to run a lemonade stand at a profit. Each day you get a weather forecast and must make inventory and marketing decisions on that basis. A basic lesson in microeconomics.

Mickey’s Jigsaw Puzzles

Playing this again brought back strangely poignant feelings for some reason. Based on how familiar the little animations were to me, I must have spent many hours playing this, though now it’s hard to understand why.

Midnight Rescue

Learn to read while battling evil robots!

Moon Bugs

Defend a moon base against the titular moon bugs. Weird, weird game, but one I spent a lot of time on.

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Crashing into the Chicago skyline was never more fun. Which is good, because that’s how it always ended.

Pitfall

You fall. Into a pit. Try not to die.

Qbert

Iconic.

Scorched Earth

A game and an introductory ballistics course.

Sopwith

Soar like Snoopy in a trusty Sopwith biplane. Or just let it sit on the ground like in this screenshot.

Space Invaders

Kill the little bugs before they hit the bottom.

Spacewar

Endless battles between David and me.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego Deluxe

I learned the name “Tegucigalpa” here and never forgot it.