abandonware games sorted by popularity

Arachne is a graphical web browser for DOS. Arachne was developed by Michal Polák and released in the early 1990s as a text-mode web browser with limited graphical capabilit...

Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain is an abandoned historical combat flight simulation game set in Great Britain (obviously) during World War 2. Their Finest Hour was designe...

No, not that Battlestar. Battlestar (1996) is more obscure than a reboot that never happened. Set in deep space with a top-down view and UI only a Windows 3.x user could love, it m...

The Cardinal of the Kremlin is an abandoned simulation game involving espionage, politics and govern management set in the cold war years. It was designed by Kenneth Rothschil...

The last entry in Infocom’s Enchanter trilogy, Spellbreaker is where the training wheels come off. It’s unforgiving, cryptic, and expects you to understand spellcraft l...

Remember when being radical meant wearing neon shorts and dodging killer squirrels on a skateboard? No? Well, Awesome Earl in SkateRock is here to educate you. Released in 1988, th...

Think you're smart? Arcade Trivia Quiz (1993) is here to humble you with rapid-fire questions about pop culture, history, and whatever else the developers could fit on a floppy dis...

Twilight 2000 drops you into a grim alternate future where global conflict has gone spectacularly wrong, and survival is less about heroics and more about scraping by. Released in ...

This game is either a delightful brain teaser or a slow descent into madness, depending on how patient you are. 15x15 Picture Puzzle gives you a scrambled mess of tiny square tiles...

Before rhythm games took over, there was Moonwalker (1989), where you play as none other than Michael Jackson himself, saving kidnapped kids by dancing enemies into submission. Yes...

You don’t need a joystick the size of a tree to enjoy Konami’s Ping Pong (1996, DOS). Simple, fast, and maddeningly addictive, this digital table tennis game nails the ...

Darkstone tried to ride the Diablo wave in 1999, and honestly, it didn’t do a bad job. With 3D graphics (impressive for the time) and a soundtrack that takes itself way too s...

If you’ve ever stared at a Monopoly board and thought, “This needs more spreadsheets,” then Oligopoly is basically your spiritual home. Released in 1987 for DOS, ...

Fleet Defender places you in the cockpit of a carrier-based fighter and politely suggests you try not to embarrass yourself in front of the entire navy. This flight sim balances ac...

In the Dead of Night is one of those mid-90s DOS oddities that feels like it crawled straight out of a programmer’s personal nightmares. Part adventure, part horror, and part...

Aspar GP Master is a 1989 motorcycle racing game that invites you to tear up the track with the same grace and control as a caffeinated squirrel on rollerblades. Loosely inspired b...

Race Drivin' is a 1990 arcade racing game developed and published by Atari Games.  It's the sequel to Hard Drivin' (1989) and retains the same stunt-based driving mechanics wh...

Ever wondered what The Flintstones would look like if they got into illegal street racing? BC Racers is exactly that, with stone-age muscle cars, power-ups that make zero sense, an...

In Diggers 2: Extractors, released in 1995, the digging franchise doubled down on strategy while adding a dash of science fiction flair. This time, your miners aren’t just bu...