abandonware games sorted by popularity

Front Lines, released in 1994, is a straightforward DOS action game that wears its inspiration proudly. You’re thrown into military combat scenarios with minimal narrative fr...

Released in 1984 for DOS, Sorcerer is Infocom at its most mischievous. You play an apprentice wizard who wakes up from a hangover only to find your mentor missing and reality sligh...

If you’ve ever looked at a cave and thought, “Yes, this is where I’ll build my empire,” then Cave Wars is your jam. Released in 1996, this strategy game thr...

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...

Motorcycle racing has never looked so… polygonal. Team Suzuki puts you in the leather suit of a professional racer hurtling around pixel-perfect tracks. The controls are twi...

Conqueror is what happens when a tank simulator and an arcade game go on a date and forget their purpose. You drive a tank in a pseudo-3D landscape, blow up stuff, and command squa...

Enchanter is interactive fiction with teeth. As a text adventure, it relies entirely on imagination, yet it manages to feel richer than many graphical games of its era. You play as...

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...

For those who think snooker is too posh and billiards too French, there's Archer Maclean's Pool, the most ‘90s way to simulate the timeless art of arguing over whether that s...

Back in 1986, when most PC users were still figuring out floppy disks, along came Dr. Ruth Computer Game of Good Sex, a title that promised to educate while entertaining. Imagine t...

Part interactive novel, part point-and-click adventure, Daughter of Serpents (1992) is one of those games that makes you feel like you stumbled onto a forgotten pulp novel. Set in ...

Before the term “VR” existed, Knightmare (1986, DOS) gave you a taste of immersive peril. Inspired by the UK TV show, you guide a blindfolded knight through deadly dung...

Math was never supposed to be this exciting. In Number Munchers, you’re a green blob with an appetite for multiplication tables, gobbling up correct answers while dodging &ld...

International Athletics from 1992 offers the classic sports-game formula of running, jumping, and furiously hammering keys as though your keyboard personally insulted you. Covering...

Part action-RPG, part body-horror fairy tale, Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall (1995) is the game where you slowly transform into an insect and, somehow, that’s not even the...

Cyberpunk meets click-and-point in Computer Underground, a game that looks like it was programmed in someone's garage—and probably was. You’re a hacker navigating a pix...

For those who got hopelessly addicted to the card game inside Final Fantasy VIII, Triple Triad Gold (2000) was like someone saying, “Here, now you can ruin your productivity ...

Often hailed as the best of the trilogy, Star Trail doubles down on everything its predecessor attempted—and somehow makes it all smoother. The world feels richer, the quests...

Fans of Dragonlance novels rejoiced at Dark Queen of Krynn, a Gold Box RPG where you battle alongside iconic heroes in a desperate fight against Takhisis, the dark goddess herself....

Fairy Tale Adventure 2: Halls of the Dead (1997) continues its predecessor’s tradition of sprawling fantasy exploration with a darker, more dangerous edge. Available on DOS a...

With a title like Pray for Death, you know you’re not signing up for a cheerful platformer. This is a fighting game with a gothic, heavy-metal aesthetic that screams 1996. It...