The first post: Donald Duck's Playground

First published: 1986
Developed by: Sierra On-line, inc.

I'm not going to be reviewing these games in any particular order - it's more interesting for me this way. Hopefully more interesting for you as well, Constant Reader. And so we start here, with Donald and Sierra.

Donald Duck, is, of course, Mickey Mouse's cranky friend. originally created by Disney Studios in 1934, Donald has appeared in hundreds of cartoons, animated movies and video games. This is the first game to star Donald, and an early hit for Sierra. It features Donald performing various odd jobs in order to buy goods to build a new playground.

While this game might have been great for 1986, it's now, well, pretty lousy. The controls are confusing, the directions are unclear, and the plot is nonexistent. I've played a lot of old games, but this is one of the worst. Still, it's interesting as a piece of history, and as an example of how far games have come. Play the game here.

An Introduction.

Well hello there. Welcome to my little corner of the Internet.

This will be a different sort of blog. If you've been around the Internet for any length of time you may have heard of the database known as archive.org. The Internet Archive is a repository for long-abandoned websites, public-domain ebooks, and all manner of 'obsolete' information. Recently, Archive.org has added 2,400 DOS-based games. These games, known as 'abandonware', are games that have been essentially abandoned by their creators. Maybe the developing company no longer exists, or maybe they have chosen to allow their games to essentially move into the public domain. Whatever the case, they are now legally available to play for free.

Games like Hugo, available for free!

While most of these games could be found scattered around the Internet, Archive.org has made them all playable in nearly any modern browser - no downloading or messing with drivers or emulators required.

This event gave me a brilliant idea - an idea which became this blog. Every post here will feature a game from archive.org. I will provide a link, and a review. Along the way I will play each and every game I write about. Some reviews will be short; others will be long and detailed, winding their way through video game history. If this is entertaining to you, let me know in the comments. Let's keep these old games alive.