abandonware games sorted by popularity

Ah, Dungeons of Kroz, the glorious mess of ASCII characters that somehow became addictive. Created by Apogee in 1989, it’s a fast-paced dungeon adventure where every symbol m...

If you’ve ever looked at Tetris and thought, “This needs to be in 3D and way harder,” then BlockOut 2 (2000) is your kind of punishment. This brain-melter takes f...

Inner Worlds is the kind of side-scroller that sneaks up on you. At first, it’s a fantasy action-platformer—monsters, dungeons, the usual—but then you discover th...

From the creators of Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace (1989, DOS) is a gloriously over-the-top animated adventure where timing is everything — literally. You play Ace, a muscle...

Released in 1982, Deadline is one of Infocom’s classic text adventures, and it doesn’t pull punches. You’re a detective with twelve in-game hours to solve a murde...

Welcome to a future where zooming through tunnels and dodging neon obstacles is considered heroic. Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom is a proto-3D arcade shooter that tries its best to i...

A direct sequel to Deathwatch, Ancients 2: Approaching Evil is like returning to your childhood neighborhood, except everyone’s still trying to kill you. Released in 1994, it...

The 2006 DOS revival of Ghostbusters tries to bottle the movie’s charm, with proton packs, traps, and a healthy dose of spectral chaos. The graphics may not make you scream, ...

Columbus Discovery (1992, DOS) is a history-flavored point-and-click adventure where you, as a pixelated Christopher Columbus, set sail to "discover" lands that are already very mu...

Borrowed Time is a graphic adventure video game developed and published by Interplay Productions. It was released in 1985 for various platforms, including the Apple Macintosh,...

Pyramid Power (1986) is what happens when archaeology meets abstract strategy. You’re not dodging mummies or solving hieroglyph puzzles—instead, you’re stacking t...

Galaxy is a relic from the early days of PC gaming, when the idea of exploring space could be conveyed with a handful of pixels and a lot of imagination. The gameplay is simple, re...

Released in 1994 (long after it originally debuted on other platforms), Ant Attack! is what you get when you mix isometric graphics, giant ants, and questionable urban planning. Yo...

Laser Squad is an abandoned turn-based strategy/tactical game designed by Julian Gollop (the mind behind the X-COM series). Laser Squad was developed by Target Games Limited and re...

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...