Abandon Monday

Do you remember the old games? No, I don't ask for games, which have been released 2 or 3 years ago. I talk about 10 and 15 year old games. This was the time I started to take some interest in computers. At that time I mainly focused on games. Even I had no own computer, I bought computer game magazines. Every month photo-realistic in-game graphic was newly defined. They also showed us the appropriate hardware to run these games. Graphic and audio boards with the size of pizza boxes (the big ones), 14inch monitors and 8 MBytes of RAM were considered to be the high-end. My turn came when I got my 486DX33… I bought some of the games I ever wanted to have – but most of them I never played...

About one year ago I wondered whether it is possible to emulate the good old DOS and to play these old games. I found a lot of emulators but I stuck with a great program called DOSBox. Back in that days it was a lot of typing to set up memory, drives and start a game. And so it is with the DOSBox.
For that case there are also some nice Wizards with which you can easily configure DOSBox and organize the settings for your old games. Most of them can be freely downloaded in web. The tool which I prefer is called D-Fend. Unfortunately its not maintained anymore.
But how to get the games when you not own them? Old games which are no longer available for legitimate purchase are called abandonware. Since this term has no legal meaning, you should inform yourself before downloading and using abandonware. There are a lot of websites in the web where you can find abandonware. This is no demand to download and use copyright protected software and the desicion is up to you.

Now you have everything you need to go back in time and check out all the games you ever wanted to play.
But I know its hard to remember what games were the most treasured in the good old days. To jog your memory a little bit, I want to establish the Abandon Monday! At every Monday I will recall an old game. And the choice which game will be highlighted is up to you! Use the poll on the right side to select the game you like most. The first Abandon Monday will take place at September 2nd. In the meantime (while I wait for your numerous votes) I'm going to post some hints how to bring up the old games.

So lets start going back in time. But be careful: the old games can be even more addictive than the current ones...