The Best 80s PC Games that are Still Fun to Play Today

The 1980s were a golden age for computer and console gaming alike. Some of the games that came out of that decade still hold up today, not as museum pieces, but as genuinely fun experiences. Here are ten from the era worth revisiting:

1. Elite (1984)

Elite dropped in 1984 as a space trading and combat simulator, and it's still cited as one of the most influential games ever made. There was no set path: you could trade, fight, or explore at your own pace, and the 3D graphics engine behind it was genuinely ahead of its time. Decades later, that open-ended structure still holds up better than most modern space games manage.

2. The Bard's Tale (1985)

The Bard's Tale, released a year later in 1985, is one of the earliest true dungeon crawlers, and it's aged remarkably well. Beyond the detailed-for-its-era graphics, the real hook was the magic system: instead of picking spells off a fixed list, players could build their own. That kind of freedom was rare for the genre at the time, and it's still an enjoyable game to sit down with today.

3. Wasteland (1988)

Wasteland (1988) dropped players into a world torn apart by nuclear war, with nothing but grit standing between them and survival. It ran on turn-based combat and a party system that let you control multiple characters at once, a structure that would later echo through an entire generation of role-playing games that followed in its footsteps.

4. Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985)

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, also from 1985, took a different swing at the fantasy role-playing game. Instead of measuring success by how many enemies you'd defeated, it built the whole game around morality and ethics, an unusual focus for the time. Players could roam an open world at their own pace, rendered in detailed graphics that pushed what the format could do.

5. The Legend of Zelda (1986)

The Legend of Zelda hit the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986 and is still routinely ranked among the greatest video games ever made, for good reason. Its non-linear design let players explore the world in whatever order made sense to them, paired with tight controls and puzzles that still challenge people picking it up for the first time.

6. Metroid (1986)

Metroid, also released in 1986 for the NES, followed bounty hunter Samus Aran through an alien planet crawling with dangerous creatures known as Metroids. Like Zelda, it broke from the straight-line level design most action games relied on, letting players explore in almost any order, an approach that would eventually give its name to an entire genre.

7. Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation (1988)

Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation (1988) followed three young heroes on a quest to save their kingdom from evil forces. It stuck with traditional turn-based combat but introduced a party system flexible enough to let players control multiple characters at once, a feature that helped define the role-playing template for years afterward.

8. Mega Man 2 (1988)

Mega Man 2, released the same year for the NES, sent its robot hero up against eight of Dr. Wily's Robot Masters. The controls were tight enough to make even the hardest platforming sections feel fair, and the pick-your-own-boss-order structure it popularized is still borrowed by action games today.

9. Final Fantasy (1987)

Final Fantasy (1987) followed four young heroes on their own quest to save a kingdom from evil forces, running on traditional turn-based combat with a magic system that let players cast spells by combining different elements. It was the first entry in a series that would go on to define an entire genre.

10. Super Mario Bros. (1985)

Super Mario Bros. (1985) followed an Italian plumber named Mario as he battled his way through eight worlds full of enemies and obstacles. Tight controls, creative level design, and a soundtrack players still hum decades later made it one of the highest-selling games of all time, and a blueprint the entire platforming genre has been building on ever since.