Abandonware – Browse and search through hordes of old and outdated software

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Many people probably have not heard of the term “abandonware”. It is a term that refers to computer software that is now out of date and not sold on the markets or supported by developers. Therefore, the software is officially abandoned. It is not exactly public domain for most of it, but it really is abandoned software that nobody is worrying about anymore, so here's a good website to get you started - www.abandonwarering.com

Most of the abandonware out there now is games. If you don't remember Command and Conquer: Red Alert, then surely you at least remember Starcraft. Starcraft is considered abandonware, since it was released almost 10 years ago. That's really old in the computer software world. There are many abandonware titles that were even released after 2000. The list goes on and on when it comes to abandonware games.

A lot of the software is so old you will need emulators for your newer Windows operating system. A few of these tools that you may need are DOSBox, VDMSound, and WinFrotz. Those should take care of most problems you may encounter when you try to run extremely old DOS-based software.

You can also download all the music from these all games. Most of them are midi files or some kind of simple audio format. If there is any old game that is nagging you in the back of your mind, go get the music to refresh that nostalgic feeling (“Abandonia” seems to have a good section of music available - http://www.abandonia.com/main.php?nav=music_list ). There's also a lot of artwork for the games as well if you are into that.

One more category of games that must be mentioned are the old text based adventure games. One of the most famous is probably NetHack. Your character is the “@” symbol (though it looks cooler in the DOS font). You move around from room to room, with your pet dog, and battle against different monster such as 'a' for acid blob, or 'k' for kobold, 'V' for vampire, and the list goes on. It is probably one of the most difficult games ever created. So if you are up for a challenge run a search for that game.

That about wraps this up, hopefully you have discovered some of your favorite old games already and good luck beating them, because they don't make them like they used to!