abandonware games sorted by year, newest first

WaxWorks (1992, DOS/Mac) is a horror game that doesn’t just want to scare you—it wants to traumatize you a little. Set in cursed wax museum exhibits, each scenario drop...

Crusaders of the Dark Savant is a sprawling saga with enough content to make your eyes bleed and your fingers cramp. The game blends strategy, exploration, and role-playing with a ...

Wolfenstein 3D is the first-person shooter that popularized the whole genre in the early 90s and is considered one of the greatest games ever made. Wolfenstein 3D was designed by J...

Xmas Lemmings takes the familiar formula of guiding tiny, clueless creatures to safety and wraps it in festive cheer. The levels are themed around the holiday season, complete with...

Forget Sonic. Forget Mario. Zool is a ninja from the Nth Dimension, which is apparently a place where hyperactive insects fight sentient sweets. Speed is the name of the game, and ...

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 ...

Ah, 3D-Maze. If you used Windows 3.x, you probably saw this lurking in the corner of your screen savers like a digital minotaur. Released in 1991, it’s not quite a game, but ...

Welcome to the squared circle of wireframe pain. Released in 1991 for DOS, this game puts you in the gloves of a boxer rendered entirely out of jagged geometry. The animation was r...

7 Colors is one of those puzzle games that sounds simple on paper but ends up consuming your entire afternoon before you even realize it. Released in 1991 for DOS, it throws you in...

A Night with Troi (1991) sounds like a fan fiction gone too far - and, well, that’s pretty much what it is. It’s a DOS-based “adventure” in the loosest sens...

Ah, Advantage Tennis—where the graphics are flat, the physics are questionable, and the grunts are blessedly absent. This DOS-era sports sim serves up matches that somehow fe...

Think of Aldo's Assault as what happens when Mario forgets his plumber license and joins a bootleg army. This 1991 DOS gem throws you into a side-scrolling frenzy of ladders, barre...

In Ancients 1: Deathwatch, you gather your pixelated party and set off to cleanse a city of evil, or at least try not to get mugged by slimes. It's a dungeon crawler in classic DOS...

Another World (1991) is a cinematic platformer with big ideas, minimal UI, and a shocking willingness to let you die within five seconds of starting. You play as a scientist who ge...

You don’t need to hate spiders to fear Arachnophobia (1991), but it helps. Based on the movie of the same name, it tasks you with exterminating wave after wave of creepy craw...

Arctic Adventure is the sequel nobody asked for to Pharaoh's Tomb, except this time you’re freezing your butt off. As Nevada Smith (not a typo, it’s his real name), you...

Armada 2525 is what happens when a spreadsheet decides it wants to conquer the galaxy. This is classic 4X strategy with all the bells, whistles, and menus your early '90s heart cou...

In Armor Alley, you command a helicopter in a warzone that looks like a side-scrolling office meeting gone wrong. It’s strategy meets action: you must manage resources, deplo...

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 ...

In 1991, DOS gamers were treated to the weirdest parenting simulator ever: Baby Joe in: Going Home. You play as Baby Joe, an infant inexplicably left to crawl through caves, forest...

Is it Breakout? Is it Arkanoid? No — it’s Bananoid, the fruitiest bat-and-ball clone you never asked for. With bananas, monkeys, and psychedelic colors, it feels like s...