abandonware games sorted by popularity

If you ever looked at regular Tetris and thought, “What this really needs is eye-melting colors and a possible migraine,” then Acid Tetris (1998, DOS) is your jam. It’s the classic block-dropper, now with a palette that screams “I licked a glow stick at a rave.” Gameplay is mostly the same, but the visuals turn every l...

From the mind of Michael Crichton comes Amazon, a game that lets you live out your jungle explorer fantasies—without the bugs or dysentery. You’re off to the Amazon to recover a missing expedition and probably get into mortal peril along the way. Think Indiana Jones if he had access to 16 colors and floppy disks. Packed with weird humor...

Take Eddie Murphy’s swagger, remove the charm, add some DOS chiptunes, and you get Beverly Hills Cop—a game adaptation that asks: “What if being a wisecracking detective meant stiff animations and random driving segments?” It’s a mash-up of shooting, driving, and wondering what just happened, loosely held together by t...

Ghostbusters is a abandoned action game based on the 80s hit movie Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters was released in 2006 as a remake of the game of the same name developed by Activision in 1984 for a number of platforms including C64, Atari 2600, ZX Spectrum.

Step aside, arcade action—B-24 Combat Simulator (1987) is here to test your patience, eyesight, and possibly your sanity. It’s all about realism, baby. You’ll take off, navigate, bomb targets, and hopefully land, all while squinting at an interface that looks like your uncle’s ham radio setup. The game is so committed to sim...

Boulder Dash II is the sequel to the original Boulder Dash game. It was released in 1985 and follows the same basic gameplay mechanics as its predecessor while introducing new levels and features. In Boulder Dash II, players once again control the character Rockford as he explores caves, collects diamonds, and avoids various hazards such as falling...

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 falling apart, which it will, probably because you let Gaul get too uppity. It’s part turn-based strategy, part “HR simulator,” as you shuffle around senator...

Pit Fighter is an arcade-style fighting game that was originally released in arcades in 1990 by Atari Games. It was later ported to various home gaming platforms, including DOS, the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and others. It was one of the first arcade games to feature digitized live-action charactersThe game is a...

Pools of Darkness is a computer role-playing game (CRPG) developed and published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI). It is the fourth entry in the "Gold Box" series of Dungeons & Dragons games, which are based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) ruleset. The game was released in 1991 for MS-DOS and later ported to other platform...

Pyjamarama is an abandoned action adventure game released in 2004 for Windows; it's a remake of the original Pyjamarama. The original is a classic video game developed by Mikro-Gen and first released in 1984 for 8-bit computers such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC. It is the second game in the Wally Week series, following Aut...

Based on the film that made air guitar cool (briefly), Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is a time-traveling puzzler where history class meets stoner logic. Gather historical figures, survive bizarre puzzles, and pray that your keyboard shortcuts are more righteous than bogus. Totally excellent if you're into 8-bit Plato and medieval mini-games.