There’s nothing like a little geek nostalgia trip! We may consider ourselves salty veterans of the information age now, but sometimes we still hanker for those early pioneer days of computing. Many of us had these freeware and shareware classics as our first introduction to desktop computers, running on 286 and 386 systems.

The funny thing is, some of them still retain replay value after all these years. They are also a smart option to modern games that are too demanding for some systems. If you have a DOS emulator, a Unix-based system, or just a laptop with low memory and graphics capabilities, you might find yourself enjoying these again. As for the younger audience; give these a chance. Yes, the graphics and sound suck by today’s standards, but at that time they made up for it by putting more imagination and creativity into their design.

All of these are available for free download from many sites; one of the most complete is www.dosgames.com.

Whether you want to try these again yourself, or are just curious about how it used to be, sit back and enjoy the ride through the stars of the desktop gaming scene from two decades ago:

Brix - An absorbing puzzle game of pairing blocks while avoiding a menagerie of obstacles and beating a timer. Has something like 100 levels to it?

Captain Comic - If you played this the first time around, I bet you’ve missed it! All the way from 1988 - this game just shows how platform jump-n-run games really haven’t come that far after all.

Cosmo - Yes, the cute little green alien with the suckers on his hands! One of the earliest from Apogee.

Duke Nukem - So classic, they still talk about it today on Slashdot! This was the first in the series, and it pretty much single-handedly defined the action run-n-gun platformer.

Commander Keen - ID Software, makers of Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake, had this for their very first hit in the 1990’s. Still quite fun to play, with the bouncy physics and that crazy pogo stick you can find in the levels.

Xargon - Epic Megagames perhaps had their greatest win with Xargon, which still looks and sounds surprisingly good even today! This is a very original fantasy-themed action game, with many intriguing levels.

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