abandonware games sorted by popularity

Beats of Rage is what happens when fans of Streets of Rage decide to stop waiting for Sega and just build their own game—with a side of King of Fighters for flavor. This DOS ...

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...

Forget modern physics—Caverns of Kroz lets you destroy walls with whips. Yes, whips. This 1989 ASCII masterpiece from Apogee is part puzzle, part action, and all danger. You ...

Better known as Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior in some regions, Death Sword (1988) is remembered less for its deep gameplay and more for its infamous decapitation move. Swing your...

Long before indie developers made “roguelike” a buzzword, someone decided to fuse Doom with permadeath and ASCII graphics. The result: Doom: The Roguelike (2005). On pa...

Step right up to At the Carnival (1990), a puzzle game that mixes traditional brain-teasers with the kind of carnival theming that makes you question whether the developers had eve...

Uplink is a computer hacking simulation game released in 2001 by Introversion Software. The game allows players to take on the role of a hacker for hire and engage in various hacki...

Emperor of the Fading Suns is a grand strategy game that looks at you and assumes you’ve cleared your schedule. Politics, religion, warfare, economics—it’s all he...

When Strider (1989, DOS) hit PCs, gamers suddenly felt like ninjas who’d been dropped into a Cold War fever dream. You play as Hiryu, a futuristic assassin slicing through me...

Before Indiana Jones had a whip, Chagunitzu had block puzzles. Released in 1990 by Softdisk (and developed by a young John Romero), this game is a precursor to God of Thunder and p...

Starquake is a weird DOS science fiction platform game developed by Bubble Bus Software in 1988 and designed by Stephen Crow and Dave Collins. The Commodore 64 version bo...

If you thought childhood was all about sunshine and puppies, Monster Bash begs to differ. This 1993 side-scroller throws you into the shoes of Johnny Dash, a slingshot-toting kid w...

Wizball is a  shoot 'em up video game developed by Sensible Software and originally released for various home computer platforms in 1987. The game was published by Ocean ...

Just like the movie, Batman Returns (1992) is dark, gritty, and full of dudes in clown makeup getting punched in the face. You play as the Caped Crusader in a beat-‘em-up sid...

In Bunny Bricks, you play as a rabbit in sunglasses who decides that breaking bricks with a paddle and ball is the most logical response to a kidnapped pet. It's Arkanoid meets Sat...

Ready to guess wildly about the cost of household objects from the comfort of a DOS screen? The Price is Right (1990, DOS) brings the TV game show to your keyboard with a mixture o...

Dalek Attack is the digital embodiment of Doctor Who’s “run for your life” mantra—except here, you can also shoot back. Playing as the Doctor or one of his ...

Blake Stone: Planet Strike picks up where the first left off — more aliens, more guns, and more corridors that all look suspiciously alike. Released in 1994 for DOS, it&rsquo...

Fidelity Chessmaster 2100, released in 1989 for DOS, is chess with a very clear mission: beat you, patiently and without mercy. At the time, it was a serious achievement in compute...

X-Men: Children of the Atom is a fighting video game developed by Capcom and released in arcades in 1994. The game features characters from Marvel Comics' X-Men series, including p...

Snake Logan is back, and this time the lab is... hidden! The Hidden Lab cranks up the challenge with more grotesque mutants, more lethal traps, and slightly improved sarcasm. It&rs...