abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

Infiltrator 2 basically asks: “What if we took everything from the first game and doubled down?” The result is a sequel that’s larger, louder, and just as gleeful...

Before Madden became a household name, 1988 gave us this DOS football classic, where plays are drawn like cave paintings and players move like molasses in January. Yet, for its tim...

In Space Quest 5: The Next Mutation, Roger Wilco finally receives something resembling a promotion. Released in 1993, the game puts him in charge of a spaceship and a crew, which f...

Fish or be fished could be the motto of Bass Duel (1993), a competitive angling game that pits you against a friend or an AI in a fight to the last splash. Strategy is key: where t...

In Auf Wiedersehen Monty, our favorite marsupial is back, and this time he's taking a very pixelated Eurotrip. Released for Windows XP in 2001, it's a nostalgia-fueled platformer t...

Guilty from 1995 is a moody point-and-click adventure that seems to have majored in brooding. You step into a murder investigation drenched in rain-soaked atmosphere and existentia...

Before Tetris conquered the world, Nyet gave DOS users their own block-stacking fix. It’s essentially a clone, but with its own quirks and rough edges — the kind of thi...

Maupiti Island (1991) is what happens when classic detective fiction meets tropical paranoia. You arrive on a peaceful-looking island for a relaxing vacation, only to discover that...

Cirque de Zale is a point-and-click adventure game released in 2004, developed by Rebecca Clements as a freeware title. Created using the Adventure Game Studio (AGS) engine, the ga...

Crystal Caves is a bright, cheerful platformer starring Mylo Steamwitz, an entrepreneur whose business plan involves raiding dangerous alien caves for profit. The levels are full o...

As the name suggests, EGA-Roids is a colorful take on the classic Asteroids formula, adapted for the EGA era. You pilot a ship through space, blasting rocks and dodging debris in f...

In 1998, Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War decided the world needed fewer corridors and more cosmic dogfights. Instead of bumping into walls like a drunken astronaut, you&rs...

Slipstream 5000 is a futuristic racing video game that was released in 1995 for MS-DOS. It was developed by The Software Refinery and published by Gremlin Interactive. The game is ...

A year earlier, the other Omega (1988) hit DOS and Linux, and no, it’s not the same game wearing a disguise. This one blends sci-fi exploration with tactical decision-making,...

Infocom really went off the rails with Nord and Bert, and bless them for it. This is a text adventure not about dragons or spaceships, but about puns. Yes, literal wordplay puzzles...

The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a first-person shooter with stealth gameplay elements, developed by Monolith Productions and released by Fox Interactive in 2000 for Windows,...

Space 1889 (1990, DOS) is steampunk before steampunk was cool. Based on the tabletop RPG, it sends you to an alternate Victorian era where the British Empire has expanded — 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...