abandonware games sorted by popularity

Turns out war is a lot tidier when it’s turn-based. Battle Isle (1991) gives you neat little hexagons to move your units on, like a very angry board game. It’s got stra...

Visual Basic 3 (VB3) is a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) released by Microsoft in 1993. It is part of the Visual Basic (VB) series, which is know...

1990’s Back to the Future Part 2 for DOS is a game that tries very hard to be as confusing as time travel itself. You’re Marty McFly, zipping between timelines, avoidin...

In 1986, Hacker arrived with a premise that felt thrillingly dangerous at the time: you, alone, tapping into secret computer systems and uncovering conspiracies. No explosions, no ...

Imagine Tetris went on a sugar binge and had an identity crisis. That’s Zyconix (1992, DOS) in a nutshell. It’s a tile-matching puzzle game where nothing quite behaves ...

The Terminator: Future Shock is an abandoned science fiction first-person shooter game based on the popular Terminator movies franchise, set in a dystopian world where machines has...

Game Over is an abandoned side scrolling shooter/platform game designed by Ignacio Ruiz Tejedor, Pedro Sudón Aguilar, developed and released by Dinamic Multimedia in 1988 fo...

Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans is one of gaming’s most famous “what could have been” stories. Designed as a point-and-click adventure set in the Warcraft ...

Jet Set Willy is a classic platform video game released for various home computers in the 1980s. It was developed by Matthew Smith and published by Software Projects for the ZX Spe...

In Arcade Volleyball (1987), two pixelated figures smack a ball over a net with all the grace of caffeinated stick figures. It's simple, it's bizarre, and it somehow manages to be ...

Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone (1992) is what happens when a simple beat-’em-up decides to go globetrotting. Instead of just brawling through alleys, Billy and Jimmy trav...

Street Rod (1989, DOS) isn’t just a racing game—it’s a love letter to greasy hands, loud engines, and California sunsets. You start with a beat-up car and a pocke...

Released in 1988, Alien Fires 2199 AD looks and plays like someone tried to translate a fever dream into a sci-fi RPG. You control some dude with a chin of steel and a crew that se...

Simon the Sorcerer is adventure game designed by Simon Woodroffe, developed and published by Adventure Soft and released in 1993. Often overlooked, Simon The Sorcerer is one of the...

In Star Trek: The Rebel Universe (1988, DOS), the Enterprise is stranded in a dangerous sector where the Federation has gone rogue. You command the crew in an open-world style adve...

Welcome to the most stressful job in the world - rendered in glorious 1985 DOS graphics! Air Traffic Controller lets you experience the thrill of herding aircraft without the luxur...

The last entry in Infocom’s Enchanter trilogy, Spellbreaker is where the training wheels come off. It’s unforgiving, cryptic, and expects you to understand spellcraft l...

Ultrabots pits customizable robots against each other in tactical, turn-based combat that rewards planning over reflexes. Before battles even begin, you tinker endlessly with your ...

Lords of the Realm II is a medieval-themed real-time strategy (RTS) and turn-based strategy game developed by Impressions Games and published by Sierra On-Line. Released in 1996, i...

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...

Gnome Ranger is an abandoned fantasy adventure game, developed and published by Level 9 Computing in 1987 for DOS. Gnome Ranger was designed by Peter Austin who also designed the s...