abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Godfather is a strategy and management game inspired by the world of organized crime, putting the player in charge of a criminal empire where loyalty, money, territory, and inf...

The Oregon Trail Deluxe expands the classic wagon journey with improved presentation, additional options, and a more polished interface while preserving the wonderfully unforgiving...

Strip Poker 2 plus is an expanded take on the same basic formula, combining conventional poker rules with the deliberately risqué presentation that made strip-poker games a curiou...

Tennis Cup 2 refines its predecessor with smoother controls and a broader range of shots, making rallies feel more dynamic and less predictable. Matches demand attention and strate...

If you’ve ever dreamed of commanding a WWII convoy while cold, stressed, and staring at a pixelated radar screen, Action in the North Atlantic (1989, DOS) has you covered. It...

In APB (1989), you’re a cop in a little squad car with a huge attitude problem. Your job? Pull over criminals, avoid donuts, and try not to smash into every tree, wall, and p...

If you’ve ever wondered what Bill Gates was doing before becoming a household name, Donkey BAS holds the answer: programming a game about avoiding pixelated donkeys on a high...

The Cardinal of the Kremlin turns Tom Clancy's Cold War thriller into a strategy and management experience where international politics are considerably more dangerous than forgett...

Total Annihilation Kingdoms takes the large-scale real-time strategy formula of its predecessor and moves it into a fantasy setting. Instead of armies of machines, players command ...

Few games embrace confusion quite as enthusiastically as M Labyrinth. Released in 1993, it throws players into a maze that seems to have been designed by someone who firmly believe...

Win, Lose or Draw transforms the popular drawing-and-guessing game show into a computer party game. The concept is immediately recognizable: one player gets a word or phrase and at...

Ever wanted to be on a game show without leaving your CRT-lit basement? The $100,000 Pyramid brings you that chance. You guess words. Your partner gives clues. Sometimes you wonder...

ZZT (1991, DOS) looks like it was drawn by an enthusiastic ASCII artist with too much time and not enough colors. And yet, it’s brilliant. Part action game, part puzzle adven...

Roadwar Europa is a 1987 DOS strategy game that moves the post-apocalyptic road adventure into a devastated European landscape. Players command a convoy through a continent where r...

This 1992 DOS version of Scrabble takes the world’s most civilized word battle and turns it into a duel between man and silicon. The AI opponent doesn’t cheat (much), b...

The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a stylish first-person shooter that mixes espionage, comedy, and action with the confidence of a secret agent who has absolutely no intention...

X-Men: Madness in Murderworld sends Marvel's mutant heroes into the bizarre and dangerous amusement park created by the villain Arcade. Rather than offering a conventional superher...

Dark Legions is a 1994 strategy gem that asks: what if Archon got a DOS makeover with bloodier battles? You command armies of fantastical creatures, from vampires to trolls, across...

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...

Simon the Sorcerer is a wonderfully irreverent 1993 adventure that follows Simon, a sarcastic teenager who is transported to a fantasy world and promptly discovers that becoming a ...

Rayman Forever brings together Rayman's colorful platforming adventure and additional content in a package aimed at giving players a generous helping of Ubisoft's imaginative masco...

The Light Corridor is a wonderfully strange puzzle game built around a deceptively simple idea: guide a ball through a corridor while dealing with obstacles and environmental hazar...

Imagine Doom and Ultima Underworld had a low-budget child who was homeschooled in a basement filled with Mountain Dew cans. That’s Amulets & Armor. A mix of first-person ...

Released in 1984, Zyll is what happens when a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master learns to code and decides to build a text adventure inside a coffee machine. There are no graph...

Ikari III: The Rescue takes the military action of its predecessors and adds one crucial ingredient: punching. Released in 1990 for DOS, it shifts from run-and-gun chaos toward bea...

Released in 1986, James Bond 007: Goldfinger adapted one of the most beloved Bond stories into a text-heavy adventure experience. Rather than relying on fast reflexes, players must...

Sirwood throws you into a fantasy kingdom where the trees are friendlier than some of the locals. Half strategy, half adventure, it's the kind of game that expects you to think, pl...

Syberia is a beautifully atmospheric adventure game that follows Kate Walker, a New York lawyer whose ordinary business trip turns into an extraordinary journey across a strange an...

Mario Bros VGA brings Nintendo's famous plumbers to DOS with colorful VGA graphics and an experience that faithfully recreates the frantic arcade original. The objective remains wo...

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...