abandonware games sorted by popularity

After publishing a plethora of Gold Box titles, SSI decided to release a fantasy RPG based on the Forgotten Realms scenarios of Dungeons & Dragons where the player could create...

Loopz, released in 1990, is the kind of puzzle game that looks innocent for about five seconds before it starts humbling you. The concept is simple: connect the pieces, form loops,...

Chicago, 1920s. You’ve got a tommy gun, a fedora, and a score to settle. Capone is part gangster sim, part shooting gallery, and part fever dream. The graphics are muddy, the...

Dragons of Flame (1989) was SSI’s continuation of the Dragonlance saga, following up on Heroes of the Lance. Like its predecessor, it was a side-scrolling action RPG that tes...

Borland Paradox 4.5 was a powerful relational database system aimed at users who needed more than a simple spreadsheet but did not necessarily want to become full-time database eng...

Thunderhawk AH-73M is a helicopter combat simulation that gives players control of a heavily armed attack helicopter and a collection of dangerous missions. Unlike a simple arcade ...

Battlecruiser 3000AD (1996) is less a game and more a test of faith. Ambitious beyond reason, it promised total control of a massive starship—crew management, planetary landi...

Murders in Space takes detective fiction beyond Earth, placing players in a futuristic setting where solving a murder requires investigating an environment with rather fewer conven...

Italicized title: J.R.R. Tolkien's Riders of Rohan. Rather than focusing on epic battles alone, this adaptation places players in the role of a member of Rohan during one of the mo...

With Gary Grigsby’s War in Russia, the scale somehow gets even bigger, and the margin for error even smaller. This is strategy at its most unforgiving, where moving a unit on...

S.T.U.N. Runner is a 1990 DOS conversion of Atari's futuristic arcade racer, throwing players into a high-speed world of twisting tracks, jumps, enemies, and spectacular obstacles....

Escape from Delirium feels like someone took a pulp adventure novel, dipped it in a bucket of chaos, and fed it to a DOS system. You wake up with amnesia (because of course you do)...

By 1996, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition on DOS felt like the veteran fighter returning for one last round. You could finally play as the bosses, which was a childhood dream...

Operation Getafix (1989) is what happens when you turn a beloved comic series into a game with the precision of a wild boar wearing gloves. You play as Asterix on a quest to help G...

No relation to Dune (except for being a total rip-off), Arrakis is a homebrew strategy game that feels like a tribute to the sandiest planet in sci-fi. You mine spice, fight vaguel...

Keef the Thief: A Boy and his Lockpick refuses to take fantasy role-playing too seriously, filling its world with eccentric characters, witty dialogue, and situations that regularl...

Expectations were understandably enormous for Master of Orion 3, a sequel to one of strategy gaming's most beloved series. The game introduces ambitious ideas, including highly aut...

Is it Breakout? Is it Arkanoid? No — it’s Bananoid, the fruitiest bat-and-ball clone you never asked for. With bananas, monkeys, and psychedelic colors, it feels like s...

Based on Anne McCaffrey’s novels, Dragonriders of Pern (1987) is an odd duck. It tries to blend diplomacy, strategy, and a dash of action into one package. You don’t ju...

Voodoo Island is a classic adventure that sends the player into a mysterious tropical setting filled with strange events, dangerous situations, and the obligatory feeling that stay...

Where in America's Past is Carmen Sandiego? turns history into a worldwide chase with one important difference: the criminals have the audacity to hide in the past. As the detectiv...

PrintMaster is a program that allows users to create a variety of print projects, such as greeting cards, banners, brochures, and more. It provides users with tools and templates t...

MiG-29 Fulcrum places players behind the controls of one of the most famous fighter aircraft of the Cold War, delivering a serious combat flight simulation filled with missions, ae...

Phantasie 1 is a 1987 role-playing game that helped establish many of the traditions later associated with computer fantasy adventures. Players create a party of heroes, explore da...

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 ...

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...

Little-known but oddly captivating, Kurtan (1990, DOS) feels like someone’s ambitious homebrew fantasy experiment gone right. You play a wandering warrior exploring a pixelat...

Released in 1985, Space Commanders 2 didn’t reinvent the wheel — it just made it spin faster. The sequel adds smoother animation, a few new enemy patterns, and a slight...

In Contraption Zack, you play as a kid with more mechanical gadgets than common sense. Your job? Fix a series of increasingly absurd machines in a puzzle platformer that’s eq...

Ford Simulator 2 (1990, DOS) refines the showroom-on-a-floppy concept with smoother presentation and a bit more driving confidence. The cars handle with reassuring steadiness, and ...