abandonware games sorted by rating

Before Worms made artillery games cute, Bang! Bang! let you and a friend lob cartoonish shells at each other using nothing but angles, wind speed, and pure spite. It's a math lesso...

Back in 1990, Legend of Faerghail was what you played if you wanted a role-playing experience both grand and slightly unforgiving. A German-developed RPG, it combined dungeon crawl...

Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur is a text adventure with occasional graphics, in which you, the not-yet-king, bumble your way through Camelot trying to prove you’re not just ...

Beneath Apple Manor is a pioneering game in the roguelike genre, originally developed and released in 1978 by Don Worth for the Apple II and later re-released for DOS as a "Special...

Colorado (1990, DOS) drops you into the buckskin boots of a rugged frontiersman navigating the Wild West with guns, canoes, and questionable hygiene. Equal parts action and explora...

In Dark Designs 1: Grelminar’s Staff, you’re thrust into a classic fantasy dungeon crawler with an emphasis on text-driven menus and turn-based combat. It’s like ...

Exile: Escape from the Pit, released in 1995, is where the whole strange, subterranean saga begins. You’re exiled—literally—thrown into an underground world and t...

Released in 1997, Extreme Assault is a bold and ambitious hybrid that blends flight simulation with ground combat in a futuristic setting. You pilot advanced military hardware acro...

Blade of Destiny is old-school RPGing at its most unapologetic. Based on the German tabletop system Das Schwarze Auge, it throws you into a world where character creation alone fee...

Tapper is what happens when someone gamifies bartending and gives you the reflexes of a caffeinated octopus. You’re a mustachioed bartender juggling multiple counters, pourin...

Ultimate Soccer Manager taps into the irresistible fantasy of running a football club without ever leaving your chair. Instead of flashy graphics, it offers spreadsheets, statistic...

Based on the fantasy novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Death Gate (1994) throws you into an epic, puzzle-heavy adventure. Imagine Myst, but with more dragons and a script ...

Flight of the Amazon Queen is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Interactive Binary Illusions and originally released in 1995. The game is heavily inspired by the likes ...

In Cosmic Soldier: Psychic War, you’re not just fighting enemies—you’re reading their minds while doing it. This RPG mixes sci-fi exploration with telepathic abil...

By 1992, Dragon’s Lair 3: The Curse of Mordread continued Dirk’s tradition of “failing spectacularly until you don’t.” Once again, you guide the world...

Questron II is a role-playing game (RPG) developed by Westwood Associates and published by Strategic Simulations Inc. (SSI) in 1988. It serves as the sequel to the original Questro...

Uridium is a classic shoot 'em up video game that was originally developed by Andrew Braybrook and published by Hewson Consultants in 1986 for various home computer platforms (incl...

In Annals of Rome, you don’t just play history — you command it, badly. This 1988 strategy title lets you take control of the Roman Empire and try to keep it from falli...