abandonware games sorted by popularity

Xargon is a platformer that feels like it was built with equal parts creativity and cheerful chaos. Levels are packed with secrets, strange enemies, and mechanics that sometimes se...

Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic 1939-1943 sets the stage for the series with a focus on tense, strategic encounters. In Great Naval Battles, you are dealing with limited inform...

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...

Westwood Studios decided to take a break from commanding and conquering to give us Nox, a fast-paced action RPG with more personality than it has any right to. You can play as a wa...

Cossacks: European Wars is a real-time strategy epic that lets you command armies so big you’ll lose track of half your soldiers. Set in the 17th and 18th centuries, it&rsquo...

Think Dungeon Master, but in space, and your party is made of four remote-controlled robot prisoners. Welcome to Captive, where the only thing more confusing than the plot is the m...

Car Builder is less about speed and more about spreadsheets—just with axles. In this 1982 gem, you don’t race cars, you design them. From gear ratios to weight distribu...

In 1990, Dragon Wars tried to out-Bard’s Tale the Bard’s Tale series. With a gritty fantasy setting, brutal difficulty, and surprisingly deep lore, it succeeded in feel...

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption is an action role-playing game released in 2000 by Nihilistic Software and published by Activision. It is based on the "Vampire: The Masquerade...

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 ...

Executive Suite puts you in the shoes of a corporate leader and asks you to juggle ambition, ethics, and profit, usually with conflicting results. It’s a business simulation ...

Enclave is a dark fantasy action game that feels slightly out of time, in both good and bad ways. Its world is grim, its tone serious, and its combat intentionally weighty. You&rsq...

Before rhythm games took over, there was Moonwalker (1989), where you play as none other than Michael Jackson himself, saving kidnapped kids by dancing enemies into submission. Yes...

ATAC (1992) is what you get when someone says, “What if we made SimCity, but for waging the War on Drugs?” You play as the head of an anti-narcotics task force, deployi...

Azalta: Cult of the Raven is what happens when a lone developer says, “I can make an RPG better than Ultima!” and sort of does. Released in 1996, this DOS dungeon crawl...

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 ...

Ah, 1000 Miglia - the only racing game where you can almost smell the exhaust fumes and espresso. Based on the historic Italian road race, it’s less about speed and more abou...

Paint Shop Pro 3 is an early version of PaintShop Pro, which is a graphics editing program known for its user-friendly interface and a range of features that cater to both amateur ...

Released in 1989 for DOS and Mac, The Transinium Challenge is a classic TNG-era adventure game with a wholesome dose of techno-babble. You guide Picard and the crew through an inve...

The Lost Vale is the great “what if” of the Ultima series. Developed as an expansion to Pagan but never officially released, it became the stuff of legend. Players were...

Berlin 1948 throws you into post-war Germany as a secret agent on a noir-flavored mission through a city drenched in trench coats and suspicion. It’s one part spy thriller, o...

King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella is an adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1988. It is the fourth installment in the popular King's Quest series creat...

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...