abandonware games sorted by rating

What do you get when you mix Mad Max, Car Wars, and a fondness for vehicular homicide? You get Autoduel (1985, DOS), a top-down driving RPG where your car is your castle and your g...

A remake of the arcade classic, CHAMP Asteroids lets you relive the joy of spinning wildly in space and smashing rocks with a tiny triangle-shaped ship. It’s like cosmic road...

Galdregon's Domain drops players into a fantasy world that feels like it was stitched together from dungeon maps, spellbooks, and a suspiciously large number of monsters. The premi...

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 ...

Stormlord is a colorful fantasy platform adventure in which the title character has the rather unpleasant job of rescuing magical creatures and confronting an assortment of hostile...

The Shadows of Mordor is a dark fantasy adventure that feels like a lost chapter from an old-school Tolkien-inspired novel. You explore a grim and dangerous world filled with monst...

Back in 1999, Warzone 2100 felt like a glimpse into the future of strategy gaming. Forget endless waves of faceless soldiers; here you could actually design your own tanks and chop...

Robocop 3 is a 1992 DOS action game based on the third Robocop movie, expanding the familiar formula with shooting, platforming, and vehicle-based sequences. Players control the ar...

American Conquest is the kind of game that throws hundreds of little soldiers at you and says, "Good luck, General!" Set during the early colonization of the Americas, this RTS ble...

Fidelity Chessmaster 2100, released in 1989 for DOS, is chess with a very clear mission: beat you, patiently and without mercy. At the time, it was a serious achievement in compute...

Side Arms Hyper Dyne is a 1988 DOS shoot-'em-up adapted from Capcom's arcade game, putting players into a futuristic combat suit and sending them directly into a hostile alien batt...

Terminal Terror throws you into a first-person maze filled with enemies and confusion, delivering a raw and somewhat chaotic shooter experience. The corridors feel endless, and the...

The Ball Game is a simple sports-oriented title that demonstrates how much entertainment can be squeezed from a very basic premise. Released in 1991, it focuses on ball-based gamep...

The Cool Croc Twins is a colorful platform game starring two crocodile brothers who seem to have decided that saving the day is best accomplished while bouncing around, collecting ...

World Cricket brings the wonderfully peculiar rhythm of cricket to the computer, giving players a chance to discover that apparently standing around for ages can be a perfectly leg...

Need for Speed II: Special Edition is a 1997 racing game that takes the original formula and adds more cars, more tracks, and even more opportunities to discover that driving at te...

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 ...

War in Middle Earth brings Tolkien-inspired fantasy warfare to the computer, letting players influence the great struggle between the forces of good and evil. Released in 1989, the...

Hardball 3 builds on its predecessor with a noticeable sense of confidence, as if it knows it has already proven itself and now wants to show off a little. The graphics are improve...

Before Diablo made clicking on dungeons cool, DarkSpyre was already throwing players into labyrinths filled with monsters and puzzles. Released in 1990, it combines hack-and-slash ...

Few titles make a promise quite like Gamma Force in Pit of a Thousand Screams. You already know this won’t be a relaxing stroll through a meadow. Instead, it’s an energ...

International Soccer from 1994 delivers football in its most straightforward digital form: pass, shoot, and wonder why your defenders are wandering elsewhere. It captures the excit...

Jazz Jackrabbit Holiday Hare takes the fast-paced action of the original game and wraps it in festive cheer. Released in 1994 as a seasonal special, it sends Jazz through winter-th...

Klax takes the familiar tile-matching concept and adds speed, pressure, and just enough chaos to keep players constantly on edge. Colored tiles race toward the bottom of the screen...

Rings of Medusa is a 1990 DOS role-playing adventure that combines exploration, trading, combat, and strategy in a large fantasy world. Players travel across a map, gather resource...

Populous is a 1989 strategy game that allows players to become a god and shape the world according to their plans. Instead of controlling individual armies, players influence civil...

Boulder Dash is a classic action-puzzle video game that was first released in 1984 by First Star Software. In Boulder Dash, players control a character named Rockford as he di...

Floor 13 hands you the keys to a shadowy government office and suggests you protect national stability by any means necessary. It’s part strategy, part moral dilemma, and ent...

The sequel to Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch, Return to Ringworld throws you back into Larry Niven’s vast sci-fi universe—except this time, the puzzles are tougher...

With Icewind Dale II in 2002, the frozen north got even busier. This sequel sharpened the mechanics with Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rules, giving players more flexibility and f...