Games are essential to proper computer use: they promote hand-eye coordination and keyboard skills; they relieve stress; and most importantly, they provide the necessary means of avoiding work. (Writing web pages on Retrocomputing is another good way.) OK, so you're not gonna play Mortal Kombat on your 8088. That doesn't mean you can't play other cool games for hours on end. Here's a small list of games I've managed to run on the 8088 and/or 286. (As with all the programs listed on these pages, no mouse is required for these games.)

(NB: I'll update this page more soon, I swear. Please, no more hate mail....)

MahJongg: When I set out to maximize my friend's enjoyment of her office 8088 -- and got drawn into the whirlpool of Retrocomputing in the process -- I had two goals in particular before me: to find a way of keeping the time and date on her unenclocked computer, and to find a MahJongg game for her that would run on an 8088 with Hercules monochrome graphics. It took me two and a half months of archive cruising, but I finally found the MahJongg game -- in a software repository in Thailand. Here it is:

Puzzle Thing: Know those frustrating sliding-tile puzzles, with one square missing so you can slide the tiles around and get them in the right order (eventually)? Bet you thought you could never enjoy them on your 8088, eh? And yet here's Puzzle Thing, which even lets you choose the size of the puzzle -- from 4-by-4 to 9-by-9 -- and hence the size of the ensuing frustration as well. Let the good times roll.

Uno: The classic card game you probably played as a kid. You play against the computer, and a monochrome (no-color) screen is no problem because the cards have their colors written on them. Warning: highly addictive.

Gin Rummy & Cribbage: A cool pair of card games that I've had running even on an 8088 with a monochrome screen; features impressive graphics, "boss screen," and all.