The best abandonware strategy games

Star General is a turn-based strategy game developed by Catware and published by SSI (Strategic Simulations, Inc.). It was released in 1996 for MS-DOS and later for Windows. The game is set in a science fiction universe where players take command of one of five different factions, each vying for control of the galaxy.In Star General, players comman...

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 & Conquer series and is set in an alternate history where World War II never occurred, leading to a different global conflict.The success of Red Alert led to several seque...

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is a science fiction real-time strategy game set in the Star Wars universe, focused both on the first and the second Star Wars trilogy. Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds was developed by LucasArts Entertainment in 2001. SWGB was developed using the Genie engine, the same used for Age of Empires.

Z is a real-time strategy game developed by The Bitmap Brothers and originally released in 1996 for MS-DOS. It's known for its fast-paced gameplay, humorous style, and distinctive art design.In Z, players control a robot army across various battlefields, aiming to conquer territories and defeat enemy forces. The game features a tongue-in-cheek narr...

Cannon Fodder, released by Sensible Software in 1993, is a military-themed action game that cleverly blends strategy with real-time tactics. Players control a small squad of soldiers through various missions, facing enemies and obstacles in a top-down perspective. The game's distinctive style is marked by its dark humor and satirical take on war, m...

BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge is a turn-based strategy game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom in 1990. It is the sequel to "Crescent Hawk's Inception" and is set in the BattleTech universe, a fictional universe where noble houses and mercenary groups vie for power using giant robotic vehicles known as BattleMe...

Gorillas, also known as "Gorillas.bas," is a turn-based artillery game that was included as a sample program with Microsoft QBasic, an IDE and interpreter for a variant of the BASIC programming language. QBasic was commonly bundled with MS-DOS and early versions of Windows during the early 1990s. The goal of "Gorillas" is to hit the ...

Syndicate Wars is the sequel to the much acclaimed Syndicate developed by Bullfrog in its golden years. Like its predecessor, Syndicate Wars is a real-time tactics strategy game set in a cyberpunk dystopian world involving excessive violence, mega-corporations, bleak urban environment. Syndicate Wars also supports a multi-player co-op mode via LAN.

Command HQ was developed by Microplay Software. It was one of the early real-time strategy (RTS) games and focused on global warfare, allowing players to control armies, fleets, and economies in various historical and futuristic scenarios.

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 and, later, for DOS, and it's loosely based on a card game of the same name. Nuclear War took a satirical approach to the grim possibility of a global nuclear war and succe...