The best abandonware strategy games

X-COM: Apocalypse takes the familiar alien invasion formula and tosses it into a sprawling futuristic city, where things feel both more chaotic and oddly more personal. Instead of ...

The original Command & Conquer (1995, DOS) is the game that launched a thousand LAN parties. It’s gritty, fast-paced RTS warfare with full-motion video cutscenes so chees...

It’s Colonel Mustard in the Study with the Lead Pipe—but on DOS. Clue Master Detective takes the classic board game and wraps it in moody music, pixelated crime scenes,...

Synidcate Wars takes everything its predecessor did and dials it up to an almost reckless degree, swapping the isometric restraint for full 3D chaos and giving you even more ways t...

Welcome to Z, the real-time strategy game where psychotic robots with British accents duke it out over territory in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Think Command & Conquer if the...

Mech War (1992) takes the concept of giant robot combat and turns it into a fast-paced tactical showdown. Instead of commanding from afar, you’re directly involved in the act...

Before Command & Conquer, there was Command HQ (1990, DOS/Mac)—an early RTS that said “what if we made World War III playable?” It’s global domination m...

Monopoly Deluxe is an abandoned turn-based top-down Monopoly adaptation  of the classic board game, developed by Parker Brothers and released by Virgin Interactive in 1992. Mo...

Before AI could annihilate grandmasters, Psion Chess was already humbling humans back in 1985. Available for DOS and Macintosh, this game wasn’t flashy, but it didn’t n...

Twilight 2000 drops you into a grim alternate future where global conflict has gone spectacularly wrong, and survival is less about heroics and more about scraping by. Released in ...

Ground Control throws you into real-time strategy without the safety net of base building, which is both refreshing and slightly terrifying. In Ground Control, every unit matters, ...

Warheads is a turn-based artillery game in the grand tradition of blowing your friends to pieces with ridiculous weapons. You control a team of tiny, heavily armed soldiers and tak...

Supremacy: You Will Be Done (also known simply as Overlord) is a rare example of mix between real-time strategy and science fiction themed 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploid, eXterm...

Imagine X-COM but with fewer excuses to blame the developers when you miss a 95% chance shot—because in UFO 2000 (2004), the chaos was entirely player-driven. A free, open-so...

Released in 1993 for DOS, Fields of Glory is a turn-based strategy game that focuses on historical warfare with a refreshingly thoughtful pace. Instead of rushing you into constant...

Heroes of Might and Magic offers a strategic playground where armies march, heroes grow stronger, and time seems to disappear without warning. It has that classic “just one more ...

Ever wanted to get chess lessons from a genius who could crush your soul with a bishop and a glare? Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess (1994, DOS) is your chance. Based on the classic boo...

Command & Conquer: Red Alert is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Interactive in 1996. It is part of the Command &...

Empire Deluxe is the kind of strategy game that politely pretends to be simple while quietly stealing entire weekends from your life. On the surface, it’s a turn-based war ga...

Nuclear War is an abandoned turn-based strategy game designed by Eric Hyman and Jon Van Caneghem. Nuclear War was developed and released by New World Computing in 1989 for Amiga an...

Stronghold, released in 1993, is a strategy simulation game developed by Stormfront Studios and published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI). Players assume the role of a lo...