abandonware games sorted by popularity

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 ...

Fantasy General is a hex-based turn-based strategy fantasy wargame. The player can duel either against a computer or a human opponent or even take part in a longer campaign. There ...

Step right up to At the Carnival (1990), a puzzle game that mixes traditional brain-teasers with the kind of carnival theming that makes you question whether the developers had eve...

Pools of Darkness is a computer role-playing game (CRPG) developed and published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI). It is the fourth entry in the "Gold Box" series of Dungeons &...

Menace is a classic shoot 'em up video game that was developed by DMA Design, a company later known as Rockstar North, and initially released in 1988. The game was originally relea...

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 se...

Imagine if Tetris, Columns, and a pack of highlighters had a baby. That’s Zoop. You’re in the center of the screen, and colorful shapes are marching toward you from all...

Manic Miner is a quintessential platformer game that emerged in the early 1980s, developed by Matthew Smith for the ZX Spectrum. It stands as a hallmark of the 8-bit gaming era, ce...

The saga continues in Dark Ages Volume II: The Undead Kingdom, where your “Prince of Destiny” status doesn’t earn you a vacation, but instead throws you into a ki...

Aquanoid (1992) takes the classic Breakout formula and throws it underwater, because bricks are apparently much more intimidating when they're wet. You control a paddle, you bounce...

Impulse Tracker was a popular music tracker software developed by Jeffrey Lim in the late 1990s. Impulse Tracker utilized a tracker-style user interface, which was common in t...

Ever wanted to shoot a giant caterpillar in the face? CHAMP Centipede is your chance. It brings back that bizarre arcade energy where bugs, mushrooms, and bullets coexist in perfec...

Based on Piers Anthony’s pun-filled fantasy world, Companions of Xanth is like walking into a joke book that got lost in a spellbook. You play a guy from the "real world" suc...

If you’ve ever stared at a Monopoly board and thought, “This needs more spreadsheets,” then Oligopoly is basically your spiritual home. Released in 1987 for DOS, ...

For those who think snooker is too posh and billiards too French, there's Archer Maclean's Pool, the most ‘90s way to simulate the timeless art of arguing over whether that s...