Welcome to Classic DOS Games. This is a very simple web site about a very simple time.

A long time ago, back in the 1980s and early 90s, the best games were for DOS, or a version of Windows that required DOS. Most of the best games were shareware or, more accurately, the first few levels were free and you had to pay for the rest. These were the games my friends and I spent our childhood playing, but lost track of after modern operating systems swept DOS into history.

This website is devoted to DOS and "Windows for DOS" (Win16) games. This particular DOS games site is a little more focused than most. Companies and individuals produced thousands of shareware games for DOS and, like movies and books and anything else, a lot of them weren't very good. Most sites aim for quantity. This site is almost exclusively dedicated to games that were distributed commercially, except for a select few games that were extremely good and achieved the same level of quality. Only the best games make it to this site.

This web site is unique. I am attempting to include every version of each listed game. A lot of research has gone into making sure that all of the information on this site is correct. You'll quickly notice that there is no other web site that has all of these files in one place. Classic DOS Games is quite possibly the most complete, and most accurate classic DOS games resource in the world.

The highest ideals of this site are to support the authors by providing links to their web sites and ordering information for the full versions of games that are still sold, and to encourage the authors of classic games to preserve their games for future generations by making them available for sale or as freeware. If you enjoy a shareware game, please consider buying it from the author.

All of the games on this site are freely distributable because they are shareware, freeware, or because the copyright holder has officially and legally released all rights to the public domain (abandonware).

Latest news:

15 November 2009

• Major Update III: Phase I. It's been about a year since the last Major Update, so it's time for another massive overhaul of the site. Added greatly improved screenshot software. Redesigned the webshrines to pop-up full-size images of the thumbnails in the level maps to make it easier to follow along as you're playing. Added Arcade genre. Added a thread for recommending games to add to the site. Oh, and since this is still a game site, I added some new games.
• Added a Slam! Webshrine.
• Added 4 games: Chomp for Windows, Hyperoid, Warheads for Windows, and Worm War.

31 October 2009

• Added 2 games: Robomaze II and Robomaze III.

26 September 2009

• Added 4 games: Amazing Learning Games With Rayman, Detroit, Rayman, and Zool.

29 August 2009

• Added 4 games: Strife, Super Worms, Tomb Raider, and WinTrek.
• Visitors of Classic DOS Games have used 1.5 TB of bandwidth so far this year. It seemed like a notable milestone.

16 July 2009

• Got permission from Escape Programming to distribute Thor's Hammer as freeware, our 26th liberated game.
• Please stop sending donations of $0.01! Some people are still contributing to the long-dead Have a Penny, Donate a Penny campaign, in which I encouraged visitors to donate a bit of pocket change, or even a single penny, to websites that they appreciate. If even a small fraction of visitors donated a single penny, small websites would earn enough revenue to cover their expenses. Unfortunately, PayPal charges a fee of 1.9% to 2.9% on all payments, and they round up to the nearest cent, so the fee on a donation of $0.01 is $0.01. 100% of all pennies donated are kept by PayPal, and I have to refund your pennies to prevent PayPal from keeping them. I appreciate your willingness to donate, but I'd rather you keep the pennies than give them to PayPal. Please put your pocket change in a Salvation Army donation globe, or a busker's guitar case, or to a homeless person. PayPal has enough pennies already!

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