When it debuted in 1981, MS-DOS probably didn't seem like a promising platform for gaming. But from roughly 1981 to 1997, publishers released thousands of games in every genre for the PC and its text-based OS.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of MS-DOS, I've selected what I consider to be the ten greatest games ever to grace Microsoft's first operating system. These games were innovative and influential while being, of course, fun to play over and over.

If you missed the DOS era, or if this list makes you nostalgic, don't weep. You can legally purchase and download many of these games online. Typically such games come with DOS emulator software called DOSBox so that you can run them on a modern Windows (or even Macintosh) operating system. In some instances the games are free, in which case you'll have to download and set up DOSBox yourself.