abandonware games sorted by popularity

StarBlade is a 1990 DOS space shooter built around fast action, enemy waves, and the familiar challenge of keeping a small spacecraft alive against a very large number of things tr...

Berlin 1948 throws you into post-war Germany as a secret agent on a noir-flavored mission through a city drenched in trench coats and suspicion. It’s one part spy thriller, o...

In The Tyrants of Thaine, the graphics get a modest upgrade, but the soul remains pure: this is RPG comfort food. You’re once again cast as the world's most overworked advent...

Ninja Gaiden 2: The Dark Sword of Chaos continues the adventures of Ryu Hayabusa with even more enemies, more danger, and a title that makes it very clear that the sword situation ...

When Two Worlds War is a strategy game built around the uncomfortable proposition that diplomacy has failed and the only remaining argument involves fleets, armies, and industrial ...

Baseball Mogul (1997) was the original release that kicked off the whole franchise. Developed by Clay Dreslough and published by Infinite Monkey Systems, this was a pioneer in the ...

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...

A moody sci-fi adventure drenched in neon gloom, The Orion Conspiracy (1995, DOS) tosses you into a futuristic murder mystery where everyone seems to be hiding something—ofte...

Bolo Ball is a DOS game from the mid-1990s. It features a physics-based gameplay where the objective is to knock opponent balls out of an arena. When you start the game, you find y...

Menace is a fast-paced side-scrolling shooter from the creators of DMA Design, throwing players into a hostile alien world where everything seems determined to explode. Armed with ...

Released in 1989 for DOS and Mac, The Transinium Challenge is a classic TNG-era adventure game with a wholesome dose of techno-babble. You guide Picard and the crew through an inve...

Ikari Warriors 2: Victory Road in 1988 continued the tradition of heroic soldiers storming impossible odds while carrying enough ammunition to challenge basic physics. This sequel ...

The Fourth Protocol turns Frederick Forsyth's Cold War thriller into a computer strategy and espionage experience where information can be considerably more dangerous than bullets....

Joust VGA updates the classic arcade formula with improved visuals while preserving the frantic gameplay that made the original memorable. Released in 1990, the game challenges pla...

Night Mission Pinball is a 1982 pinball simulation that proves the basic appeal of pinball is remarkably difficult to ruin. The game recreates the essential ingredients of the real...

Nobunaga's Ambition 6 continues the long-running historical strategy series with an even broader and more sophisticated take on Japan’s Sengoku era. Released in 1994, it places p...

Gremlins 2: The New Batch leans into the chaos of its source material and then adds a layer of video game unpredictability on top. In Gremlins 2, you deal with enemies that are as ...

ELIZA, created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT, was one of the first computer programs to simulate human conversation. Designed as a natural language processing demons...

Grand Monster Slam takes tennis, removes anything resembling normal human athletes, and replaces them with creatures that look like they escaped a fever dream. In Grand Monster Sla...

Nitemare 3D is a 1994 first-person shooter that takes the basic idea of exploring dark corridors and adds monsters, weapons, magic, and enough supernatural unpleasantness to make t...

By 1992, Vol. 3 wrapped up the trilogy with even more complex scenarios. At this point, the series had become less of a game and more of an interactive textbook—though that&r...

With a title like Game Over, you almost expect the game to greet you with a shrug and a polite apology. Instead, it throws players into a strange sci-fi action adventure filled wit...

Shadow of the Comet is a 1993 adventure game steeped in cosmic horror, mystery, and the unsettling fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Players follow journalist John Parker as he investiga...

Wolfsbane is a dark fantasy action game that sends the player into a hostile world filled with monsters, dangerous environments, and the usual medieval assortment of things that re...

Captain Blood is a space exploration video game released in 1988. It was developed by the French company ERE Informatique, and it was designed by Philippe Ulrich and Didier Bouchon...

Few games from 1994 dared to ask the real question: “What if you gave an axe to someone with absolutely no training and dropped them into a dungeon with the reflexes of a slo...

Temple of Kroz blends puzzle-solving with arcade reflexes, creating a strange but compelling hybrid. You navigate traps, monsters, and bizarre hazards while collecting gems and try...

If Saturday-morning cartoons and B-movies fused into a pixelated arcade blast, you’d get Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters. This action shooter throws you onto a d...

Paint Shop Pro 3 is an early version of PaintShop Pro, which is a graphics editing program known for its user-friendly interface and a range of features that cater to both amateur ...

Sanitarium is a 1998 psychological horror adventure that follows a mysterious protagonist who awakens in an asylum with no memory of how he got there. As the story unfolds, players...