Play Silpheed Online

Game Overview

Silpheed on MS-DOS blew my mind back in the day—it was one of those games that made you go, "Wait, how are they doing this on my beige box?" The 3D polygonal ships and that tilted overhead view felt like cheating physics, especially compared to other shooters at the time. Sierra’s port kept the weird charm of the original Japanese PC-8801 version, right down to the chunky, angular enemies swooping in from all sides.

You start off just trying to survive the first wave, but then the screen tilts as you dive into asteroid fields, and suddenly you’re weaving through geometry that shouldn’t have been possible on DOS. The controls take a minute to click—your ship handles like a brick with thrusters—but once you get the hang of it, dodging between those pixelated laser blasts feels oddly satisfying. It’s janky by today’s standards, but there’s something hypnotic about the way the whole world rotates around you.

Fun fact: I spent way too long as a kid trying to figure out if the "3D" was some kind of black magic. Turns out, it was just really clever programming.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".