abandonware games sorted by popularity

President Elect: 1988 Edition is a political simulation game developed by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) and released in the mid-1980s. The game simulates U.S. presidential elec...

Front Lines, released in 1994, is a straightforward DOS action game that wears its inspiration proudly. You’re thrown into military combat scenarios with minimal narrative fr...

Riven is the sequel to the highly successful and critically acclaimed adventure game, Myst. Developed by Cyan Worlds, Riven was released in 1997 and continues the narrative establi...

Part action-RPG, part body-horror fairy tale, Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall (1995) is the game where you slowly transform into an insect and, somehow, that’s not even the...

Star Trek: Starfleet Command (1999, Windows XP) is a dream come true for anyone who memorized warp core schematics. It’s a tactical space combat simulator that rewards patien...

CyClones is a first-person shooter where you take on the role of a bio-engineered super-soldier fighting alien invaders. The controls are smooth, the weapons varied, and the level ...

Motorcycle racing has never looked so… polygonal. Team Suzuki puts you in the leather suit of a professional racer hurtling around pixel-perfect tracks. The controls are twi...

The Settlers II: Veni, Vidi, Vici takes everything that worked in the original and polishes it until it shines like a freshly forged sword. The graphics are warmer, the maps are bi...

Dark Sun 2: Wake of the Ravager takes the harsh desert world of Athas and turns up the intensity. Building on its predecessor, it offers deeper role-playing, improved combat, and a...

Sink or Swim is basically what happens when someone asks, “What if we turned a rescue operation into a slapstick puzzle show?” You guide lifeboat-juggling hero S.S. Dav...

Wizardry 4: The Return of Werdna flips the script by letting you play the villain, which is as delightful as it is diabolical. You control Werdna, an evil wizard with a knack for c...

Commander Keen 3: Keen Must Die! is the kind of title that makes you wonder what this kid did to tick off an entire alien race. After foiling their plans twice, Keen takes the figh...

Inspired by the film, The Rocketeer (1991, DOS) lets you strap on a jetpack and soar—well, mostly hover—through an adventure packed with gangsters, Nazis, and mid-centu...

Noctis is less of a "game" and more of a meditative ritual performed through DOS interface, with fonts so pixelated they might just be ancient runes. You play as a silent explorer ...

Star General is a turn-based strategy game developed by Catware and published by SSI (Strategic Simulations, Inc.). It was released in 1996 for MS-DOS and later for Windows. The ga...

Released in 1994, Sensible Golf took the elegant sport of chasing a tiny ball and gave it the unmistakable Sensible Software treatment. Rather than drowning players in endless stat...

For those who got hopelessly addicted to the card game inside Final Fantasy VIII, Triple Triad Gold (2000) was like someone saying, “Here, now you can ruin your productivity ...

International Athletics from 1992 offers the classic sports-game formula of running, jumping, and furiously hammering keys as though your keyboard personally insulted you. Covering...

Step into the Korean War with Conflict: Korea, where you command UN forces and discover that even in strategy games, North Korea is a problem. It follows the same system as the res...

Italicized title: Jack in the Dark. Released as a small holiday-themed adventure, this game serves as a charming introduction to the style later made famous by Alone in the Dark. P...

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...

Crazy Nick’s Roger Wilco’s Spaced Out Games Pack hands the Space Quest janitor a stack of silly mini-games to keep him from accidentally saving the galaxy again. Expect...