abandonware games sorted by popularity

Boulder Dash II is the sequel to the original Boulder Dash game. It was released in 1985 and follows the same basic gameplay mechanics as its predecessor while introducing new leve...

Murders in Space takes detective fiction beyond Earth, placing players in a futuristic setting where solving a murder requires investigating an environment with rather fewer conven...

The Colony is a first-person science-fiction adventure that combines exploration, combat, puzzles, and a surprisingly lonely atmosphere. Set on an alien world, it gives the player ...

V for Victory: Market-Garden tackles Operation Market Garden, the ambitious 1944 Allied attempt to seize a chain of bridges in the Netherlands. The game translates this complicated...

Donald’s Alphabet Chase is the video game equivalent of hiding fridge magnets and watching a duck hunt them down. In this 1988 edutainment title, the mischievous alphabet let...

Time to hit the lanes in 10th Frame, a bowling simulator so committed to realism it even simulates the wait between turns. You line up your shot, set your spin, and pray the ancien...

Imagine a game where minesweeper meets viral chaos—Chain Reaction (1996) isn’t quite that, but it is a fast-paced puzzle-action hybrid where things blow up in neat litt...

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...

Ever wondered what would happen if The Phantom of the Opera got his hands on a time machine, a vengeful streak, and a point-and-click interface? In Return of the Phantom, you step ...

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...

X-COM: Apocalypse takes the familiar alien invasion formula and tosses it into a sprawling futuristic city, where things feel both more chaotic and oddly more personal. Instead of ...

Published in 1989, Livingstone 2 continues the adventurous exploits of explorer Henry Livingstone through jungles packed with traps, hostile wildlife, and demanding platform challe...

Dylan Dog: Through the Looking Glass takes the surrealism of the comics and dives headfirst into nightmare territory. Imagine Carroll’s Wonderland rewritten by Lovecraft and ...

Pools of Darkness is a 1991 role-playing adventure that continues the Forgotten Realms saga with an epic journey against powerful enemies and dangerous magical forces. Players lead...

In Amnesia, you wake up in a hotel room with no idea who you are, where you are, or why someone wants you dead. And no, this isn’t a gritty FPS—it’s a text advent...

Strip Poker 2 plus is an expanded take on the same basic formula, combining conventional poker rules with the deliberately risqué presentation that made strip-poker games a curiou...

Sherlock: The Game of Logic is a 1991 DOS puzzle game that puts deductive reasoning firmly in the spotlight. Rather than chasing villains through dark streets, players tackle a col...

Blades of Steel is hockey the way it was meant to be. Fast, brutal, and occasionally resembling a bar fight on ice. The game lets you punch other players mid-match and the announce...

If Dizzy was an egg on an adventure, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk turns that concept up a notch with a proper fairytale plot. Released in 1993 for DOS, the game sees Dizzy set out...

Released in 1994, Jagged Alliance helped define tactical turn-based strategy long before every game wanted to be an open-world crafting survival experience. Set on the troubled isl...

If you thought childhood was all about sunshine and puppies, Monster Bash begs to differ. This 1993 side-scroller throws you into the shoes of Johnny Dash, a slingshot-toting kid w...

CyClones is a first-person shooter where you take on the role of a bio-engineered super-soldier fighting alien invaders. The controls are smooth, the weapons varied, and the level ...

Holiday World Tycoon is the sort of game that feels like it was designed after someone spent a bit too long staring at a postcard rack in an airport gift shop and thought, &ld...

Siege is a 1992 DOS strategy game centered on medieval warfare and the difficult business of taking fortified positions. Players command armies and must consider troop placement, a...

In Archimedean Dynasty, humanity did the logical thing after wrecking the surface world: moved underwater and started shooting each other in submarines. It's part tactical sim, par...

Hill Street Blues translates the atmosphere of its source material into a game that emphasizes management and decision-making. It places you in a role where every choice matters, o...

The Guild of Thieves is a classic interactive fiction adventure in which exploration, puzzles, and carefully written descriptions do most of the heavy lifting. Set in a world of my...

In Atomino (1991), you’re not blowing things up — you’re building atoms. That’s right: this puzzle game puts you in charge of creating molecular structures ...

Jonny Quest: Curse of the Mayan Warriors turns the familiar animated-adventure setting into a computer game filled with exploration, danger, puzzles, and ancient mysteries. Jonny a...

Solo Flight is a classic 1985 flight simulation that puts the player in the cockpit of a small aircraft and focuses on the practical side of flying rather than cinematic dogfights....