abandonware games sorted by popularity

Extreme Pinball from 1995 takes a classic pastime and injects it with a generous dose of digital attitude. This isn’t a calm, gentlemanly pinball experience—it’s ...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Feud is a wonderfully weird strategy game about two rival wizards who absolutely refuse to get along. Each turn, you gather resources, cast spells, and tr...

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...

If you’ve ever thought, “What if Pac-Man got lost in a modernist art gallery?”, then A-Maze is your oddly specific dream come true. Released in 1989 for DOS, this...

Football Manager 3 (1993, DOS) trades grass stains for spreadsheets and proves that tension can thrive in numbers. You’re not scoring goals; you’re negotiating contract...

Released in 1990, Disc feels like a relic from a parallel universe where Frisbee is the most important sport in history. The game is minimalist to a fault: you throw discs, catch d...

Rastan is Conan-the-Barbarian energy distilled into a side-scrolling adventure where your primary verb is “destroy.” The DOS port lacks a bit of arcade sparkle, but the...

If you ever wanted to explore endless, procedurally generated tunnels filled with monsters, traps, and the occasional existential crisis, Dungeon Crawl is your kind of misery. Rele...

In Airball (1987), you don’t play a knight, a space marine, or a plumber - you play a literal ball of air. Trapped in an isometric nightmare of spikes, fans, and poison gas, ...

Aldo Again (1989) is the platformer that dares to say, “Hey, what if Donkey Kong but with 100% more confusion?” You play as Aldo, a mustachioed man of mystery (and ques...

In Captain Comic 2: Fractured Reality, our fearless spandex-wearing space explorer returns—but this time, he's bouncing between dimensions like a malfunctioning microwave. Th...

Released in 2003 for Windows XP, Babylon 5: I've Found Her is the kind of fan-made game that makes you question whether it’s actually fan-made or secretly a pilot for a new s...

Dungeons & Dragons meets Disney on a sugar rush. Tangled Tales is a bright, humorous RPG that cheerfully pokes fun at fantasy clichés while still serving a solid adventu...

NetHack is an open-source roguelike game that's been around since the early 1980s. It's a single-player dungeon exploration game where you navigate your character through a randoml...

Praetorians is a real-time strategy (RTS) game originally released in 2003 by Pyro Studios. Set in the Roman Empire during its peak, the game offers a blend of strategy and tactics...

In Taipan for Windows, you’re not a hero, you’re a 19th-century capitalist trying to get rich trading tea, silk, and the occasional bit of opium in the South China Sea....

Dominium (1992) is an ambitious mix of real-time strategy and empire management, though perhaps “ambitious” is just another word for “slightly overwhelming.&rdquo...

If you’ve ever wondered what baseball would look like if someone crammed the entire sport into a DOS machine and sprinkled a bit of 90s attitude on top, Epic Baseball has you...

Released in 1994, All New World of Lemmings gives our suicidal little friends a new lease on life... and new outfits! The puzzles are tougher, the graphics are cleaner, and the fru...

In this 1986 DOS game, you're piloting a spacecraft in the year 2123, defending the United Planets from the Andromedan Hegemony. It's like being the captain of a starship, but with...

Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire is the second installment in Sierra On-Line's Quest for Glory series, blending classic adventure gameplay with RPG elements in a world inspired by...

You’re a teenage wizard in college. There are spells, parties, potions, and more double entendres than a ‘90s teen comedy. Spellcasting 101 doesn’t take itself se...

Released in 1997, Extreme Assault is a bold and ambitious hybrid that blends flight simulation with ground combat in a futuristic setting. You pilot advanced military hardware acro...

Great Naval Battles vol. 3: Fury in the Pacific expands the scope and the intensity, throwing you into larger conflicts with even more to manage. In Great Naval Battles vol. 3, the...

Take the tactical seriousness of Championship Manager and sprinkle on some espresso. Championship Manager Italia gives you control over Italy’s finest (and most temperamental...