abandonware games sorted by popularity

A remake with ambition and tragedy, Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded promised to bring the king back in modern glory. It looked great, played smooth, and... was never officially released. W...

The Curse of Monkey Island is one of the great comic adventure games of the late 1990s, combining pirates, absurd puzzles, memorable characters, and enough terrible puns to sink a ...

Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer is a comic adventure set in a swashbuckling version of seventeenth-century France, where swords, schemes, and bad decisions tend to a...

Released in 1989 for DOS, Baal is what happens when demons invade and the only thing standing between Earth and eternal damnation is a guy with a really big gun and absolutely no c...

SkyGlobe is an astronomy software that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a DOS-based planetarium program that allowed users to explore the night sky in real-tim...

Released in 1998, Sentinel Returns revived Geoff Crammond’s peculiar classic with updated visuals and an atmosphere that felt strangely hypnotic. Players wandered surreal landsca...

Grand Prix 500 2 throws you onto a motorcycle and politely suggests you try not to die at high speed. Unlike car racing games, this one reminds you that two wheels are inherently a...

The Oregon Trail Deluxe expands the classic wagon journey with improved presentation, additional options, and a more polished interface while preserving the wonderfully unforgiving...

Star Wars: Dark Forces is a 1995 first-person shooter that brought the Star Wars universe into a darker, more action-oriented setting. Players control Kyle Katarn, a mercenary work...

By 1992, Dragon’s Lair 3: The Curse of Mordread continued Dirk’s tradition of “failing spectacularly until you don’t.” Once again, you guide the world...

Troika is a strategy game with a distinctly old-school approach, asking players to think carefully about resources, movement, and long-term decisions rather than simply charging ah...

Blood Money (1990) answers the question: what if every level in a shoot-'em-up was a different kind of sci-fi fever dream? You fly through alien-infested caverns, collect cash, and...

Red Baron is a 1990 flight simulation that recreates the aerial combat of World War I, putting players behind the controls of early fighter aircraft. The game combines dogfighting,...

Total Annihilation is a landmark real-time strategy game that takes large-scale warfare and refuses to keep it small. Players gather resources, construct factories, build armies, a...

Super Huey II is a helicopter combat and flight simulation that gives you a cockpit, a collection of missions, and plenty of opportunities to discover that flying a helicopter is c...

Scorched 3D is a free and open-source artillery game that serves as a modern adaptation of the classic MS-DOS game Scorched Earth. Developed by Gavin Camp, it was first released in...

Ferrari Formula 1, released in 1989 for DOS, is a racing game that proudly wears its license like a badge of honor. You’re here to drive Ferraris, go fast, and pretend you un...

South Park: Cartman's Authoritah is a short action game built around the irreverent world of South Park and, naturally, the enormous personality of Eric Cartman. The gameplay throw...

In 1991, DOS gamers were treated to the weirdest parenting simulator ever: Baby Joe in: Going Home. You play as Baby Joe, an infant inexplicably left to crawl through caves, forest...

You thought running a government was hard? Try doing it with a smug civil servant and a budget crisis every five minutes. In Yes, Prime Minister, you play as Jim Hacker, the PM him...

If Saturday-morning cartoons and B-movies fused into a pixelated arcade blast, you’d get Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters. This action shooter throws you onto a d...

Archon Ultra is what happens when you smash chess into an arcade cabinet and call it a day. This updated version of the original Archon throws in jazzed-up graphics and faster game...

Midwinter creates a remarkable open-world survival adventure set across a vast frozen island, combining exploration, combat, strategy, and resource management. Players must recruit...

Dungeons of Kroz 2 didn’t reinvent the wheel—it sharpened it and rolled it over your face. Released the same year as the original, it’s tougher, faster, and even ...

Falcon 3.0 arrived in 1991 and decided that realism wasn’t enough: it wanted obsession. This sequel didn’t just improve graphics and sound, it doubled down on systems, ...

Port Royale is a 2002 trading and strategy game that lets players experience the life of a merchant in the Caribbean during the age of sailing ships. Instead of becoming a legendar...

Released in 1990, Imperium offers strategy fans a chance to rule, conquer, and inevitably mismanage resources on a grand scale. It combines empire-building with military planning, ...

In Archimedean Dynasty, humanity did the logical thing after wrecking the surface world: moved underwater and started shooting each other in submarines. It's part tactical sim, par...

Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor pushes the series into more ambitious territory. Released in 1991, it features a larger scope and a more complex narrative, set in ...

Welltris takes the familiar falling-block formula and turns it sideways, quite literally. Released in 1989, this Tetris-inspired puzzle game presents a three-dimensional well into ...