abandonware games sorted by popularity

In this 1992 DOS RPG, you play as an agent of the Faunus Foundation, protecting the world from cosmic horrors. Set in 1921, the game combines detective work with Lovecraftian eleme...

Kroz returns, and with it, your CRT monitor’s worst nightmare: ASCII graphics! Return to Kroz takes you back to a time when @ meant “you,” and everything else was...

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...

Galaxian is one of those early arcade classics that proved space shooters didn’t need complicated rules to be thrilling. Instead of aliens politely marching in formation, the...

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 ...

X-Fighter feels like one of those early experiments where developers were still figuring out what “space combat” should even look like. It is simple, direct, and unapologetical...

Turbo Assembler and Tools 5.0, often referred to as TASM, is an x86 assembler for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. As a key component of Borland's suite of development tools...

Before Command & Conquer, there was Command HQ (1990, DOS/Mac)—an early RTS that said “what if we made World War III playable?” It’s global domination m...

Artura is a hack-and-slash side-scroller that looks like someone tried to draw Gauntlet from memory after a power outage. You’re some kind of Celtic warrior on a mystical mis...

In Jones in the Fast Lane, success is measured not by defeating monsters or saving kingdoms, but by surviving everyday life. Released in 1991, this unusual board game simulation ha...

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...

Zangband is a variant of the popular roguelike game Angband. Zangband, short for Zelazny Angband, was developed by Chris Weisiger and first released in 1994. The game features...

Night Breed is a 1990 action game based on the dark, unsettling world of Clive Barker, which means players should not expect a cheerful stroll through a particularly friendly neigh...

Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is a turn-based strategy video game set in the Star Trek universe. The game was developed by MicroProse Software and published by Infogrames for ...

In Countdown, the clock is always ticking—literally. This spy thriller adventure drops you into a web of international intrigue, shady characters, and puzzles that don’...

Sierra Championship Boxing is an abandoned sports boxing game, developed by Evryware and released by Sierra On-Line in 1985. You can issue instructions to the boxer between rounds,...

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, ...

Despite the name, Aquaphobia (1992) doesn’t help you overcome your fear of water. In fact, it might just make it worse. This is an action-platformer where you try not to drow...

Dungeon Explorer takes the term “dungeon” very seriously—there’s a lot of it, and not much else. Released in 1990, this top-down adventure is part RPG, part...

Archipelagos is like a fever dream after watching too much Myst. You’re dropped onto strange, floating islands inhabited by stone monoliths and evil terrain-infecting sludge....

The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall is an old school first-person 3D RPG developed by Bethesda Softworks and released in 1996 for DOS. Daggerfall is the second chapter in popular The E...

Released in 2000, Dark Reign 2 took the futuristic RTS series into full 3D territory. While other games were content with flashy visuals, this one focused on tactical depth and res...

Fidelity Chessmaster 2100, released in 1989 for DOS, is chess with a very clear mission: beat you, patiently and without mercy. At the time, it was a serious achievement in compute...

What happens when a basketball game forgets about realism and goes full cartoon? Basket Master (1990), that’s what. This Spanish-developed DOS gem pits two oddly animated bal...