abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Dark Heart of Uukrul is a challenging fantasy role-playing game that throws the player into a sprawling dungeon full of monsters, traps, secrets, and enough dark corridors to m...

Power Dolls is a 1994 tactical strategy game that places players in command of an elite female military unit equipped with powerful combat machines. The game combines turn-based pl...

Mortal Kombat 2 takes the original formula and turns the intensity up several notches with more fighters, new arenas, additional special moves, and an even greater supply of specta...

Before rhythm games took over, there was Moonwalker (1989), where you play as none other than Michael Jackson himself, saving kidnapped kids by dancing enemies into submission. Yes...

Grand Monster Slam takes tennis, removes anything resembling normal human athletes, and replaces them with creatures that look like they escaped a fever dream. In Grand Monster Sla...

Veil of Darkness is a gothic action adventure that mixes exploration, puzzles, combat, and a healthy supply of supernatural misery. You find yourself stranded in a remote region do...

Subtlety is not in Fire and Forget’s vocabulary. You drive. You shoot. Things explode. That’s the pitch, and the game sticks to it with admirable stubbornness. Released...

Silent Service 2 builds on the submarine simulation formula with a more detailed representation of underwater warfare. Players command a World War II submarine, navigating patrol a...

Dangerous Dave is the kind of platformer that defined the early ’90s shareware scene: simple, fast, and just tricky enough to make you shout at your monitor. You guide Dave t...

The Temple of Elemental Evil is a remarkably faithful computer adaptation of classic Dungeons & Dragons, based on the famous Greyhawk adventure. It offers turn-based combat, charac...

King's Quest 7: The Princeless Bride is one of the most colorful and playful entries in Sierra's long-running adventure series. The game follows Princess Rosella and her mother, Qu...

L'Empereur (1991) is one of those games that looks at Napoleon and says, “Yes, but what if we made it complicated?” This DOS strategy title drops you straight into the ...

In Bionic Commando, you're a soldier with no jumping ability—because who needs knees when you have a grappling arm? Swing through 1988 DOS architecture like a pixelated Tarza...

Stellar 7 takes the tank-combat formula and launches it into science fiction, giving you a futuristic armored vehicle and a whole galaxy of unpleasant things to shoot. Inspired by ...

Face Off! (1989) wastes no time telling you exactly what it wants to be: fast, noisy, and slightly unhinged. This DOS arcade sports game throws subtlety out of the window and repla...

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games (now known as LucasArts). It was first released in 1988 for various p...

Part action-RPG, part body-horror fairy tale, Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall (1995) is the game where you slowly transform into an insect and, somehow, that’s not even the...

In this 1987 DOS game, you delve into a dungeon filled with traps and monsters. Solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and uncover the secrets of the forge. It's like playing Dungeons &...

From 1987’s text adventure golden age, The Lurking Horror proves you don’t need graphics to be terrified. You’re a student trapped on a snowy university campus du...

Released in 1992, Barbie for DOS is what happens when someone asks, “What if pink could be a video game?” You play as Barbie on a quest to collect accessories and win K...

Crossfire is what happens when you throw a tank into a maze, give it infinite ammo, and tell it to go wild. Released in 1982, it’s all about twitch reflexes and precise shoot...

Pac-in-Time is a 1993 platform adventure that boldly takes the famous yellow hero out of his traditional maze and sends him jumping across imaginative levels instead. The change wo...

Released in 1991, Fantasy World Dizzy is a whimsical adventure that proves even an egg can carry the weight of an entire fantasy quest. The game blends puzzle-solving with explorat...

Darkstone tried to ride the Diablo wave in 1999, and honestly, it didn’t do a bad job. With 3D graphics (impressive for the time) and a soundtrack that takes itself way too s...

MicroProse Soccer takes the beautiful game and turns it into a fast, energetic arcade experience where spectacular goals matter more than elaborate tactics. The controls are simple...

Van Buren is the codename for the ambitious Fallout 3 project that Black Isle Studios was developing before Interplay cancelled it, leaving behind one of gaming's great “what if?...

Vette! is a driving game built around the unmistakable spectacle of cruising a high-performance Corvette through San Francisco. Instead of confining you to a neat racing circuit, t...

NetHack is one of the great survivors of computer gaming, a 1987 roguelike that has been challenging players for decades with randomly generated dungeons, brutal enemies, complex s...

Trying to describe Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1991) as a “normal” game is impossible—because nothing about it is normal. It’s a fever dream in pixe...

The title Alex Higgins World Snooker might imply world-class snooker. What it delivers is 1986 DOS ball physics that sometimes feel like they were modeled in an alternate dimension...