The most popular abandonware strategy games

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 BASIC programming language. QBasic was commonly bundled with MS-DOS and early versions of Windows during the early 1990s. The goal of "Gorillas" is to hit the ...

War in Middle-earth is a real-time strategy game developed by Synergistic Software and published by Melbourne House. It was released in 1988 for various platforms including the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC.The game is based on J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy world of Middle-earth, specifically focusing on the events depicted in "The Lor...

In Air Force Commander (1992), you don’t just fly planes - you run the whole air force. Think of it as being a general with a spreadsheet addiction. Assign squadrons, manage budgets, and try not to start World War III. It's dry in places, but the micromanagement will scratch an itch you didn’t know you had. A game where you’ll spe...

Ground Control is a strategy game developed by Massive Entertainment and released by Sierra On-Line in 2000. More precisely Ground Control is a real time tactical game with a sci-fi setting.

A Line in the Sand (1992) is what happens when a board game about modern Middle Eastern warfare gets turned into a DOS strategy title with all the subtlety of a cold war memo. You command military forces in a region that is perpetually on fire, and your job is to somehow make that worse - or better, depending on your alignment and ability to read p...

In Ambush at Sorinor, tactics meet fantasy in a land where ambushing people is apparently the national sport. You’re a mercenary commander picking the right team to win missions and not get horribly skewered. Battles play out in real-time, and positioning is everything - unless your units decide they’d rather walk into a tree than follo...

Populous 2: Trials of the Olympian Gods is a classic sandbox strategy god game. As the title suggests, its setting is loosely based on ancient Greek mythology, and you play as a deity (hence the "god game" label). Populous 2 is the sequel to the highly acclaimed Populous, designed by Peter Molyneux. It was developed by Bullfrog Productions and publ...

The Perfect General is a turn-based strategy military game developed by White Wolf Productions and released in 1991 by Quantun Quality Production. The Perfect General gameplay is quite simple compared to other wargames, but it's based on a solid set of rules and let the players progress at their own pace through missions and scenarios. The Perfect ...