abandonware games sorted by popularity

It’s cyber. It’s puck. It’s… basically cyberpunk air hockey with attitude. 3D Cyberpuck is a futuristic sport simulation from 1992 that nobody asked for, y...

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...

Mean 18 (1986) is a golf game with more attitude than you’d expect from a sport usually associated with polite applause and quiet respect. This is arcade golf: fast, flashy, ...

This one's not for the faint of heart. Conflict in Vietnam tries to simulate the complexity and chaos of guerrilla warfare in a game where every click can cost lives. The graphics ...

Knights of Legend is a tactical role-playing game (RPG) released by Origin Systems in 1989 for MS-DOS, the Apple II, and the Commodore 64. Known for its complex gameplay and strate...

Dick Tracy (1990) tries to turn the classic comic-strip detective into a video game, and the result is equal parts charming and clunky. You’ll chase gangsters, dodge bullets,...

Step into feudal Japan with Bushido, a game that tries to simulate samurai life on a machine barely capable of rendering a convincing circle. Still, there’s something charmin...

If you’ve ever wondered what professional wrestling would look like if it were coded on a calculator from the 1980s, Tag Team Wrestling has your answer. Two beefy sprites&mda...

If medieval politics, giant fire-breathing monsters, and backstabbing your allies sound fun, then Gemfire will keep you busy. Released in 1992, this Koei strategy game throws you i...

Time to hit the lanes in 10th Frame, a bowling simulator so committed to realism it even simulates the wait between turns. You line up your shot, set your spin, and pray the ancien...

Noctis is less of a "game" and more of a meditative ritual performed through DOS interface, with fonts so pixelated they might just be ancient runes. You play as a silent explorer ...

Eye of Horus, released in 1989, is a puzzle-adventure that leans heavily into atmosphere and mystery. Drawing inspiration from ancient Egyptian mythology, the game challenges playe...

By the time Earthworm Jim hit DOS, its reputation already preceded it, and it largely lived up to the hype. This is a platformer that thrives on absurdity: a worm in a spacesuit, b...

From 1987’s text adventure golden age, The Lurking Horror proves you don’t need graphics to be terrified. You’re a student trapped on a snowy university campus du...

Martian Memorandum is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Access Software. It was released in 1991 and is the sequel to the game Mean Streets. The game is s...

If Tetris and a Rubik’s Cube had a weird love child, it’d be Brix. This 1992 brain-snapper is a tile-sliding puzzle game where every move counts and logic is your only ...

Oil Barons takes the glamorous world of oil speculation—yes, glamorous—and turns it into a strategy game that feels like Monopoly went through a midlife crisis. Release...

Encounter drops you into a minimalist sci-fi scenario and wastes no time explaining itself. You’re alone, surrounded by enemies, and expected to survive using quick reflexes ...

Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in The Spinal Frontier is the most ambitious—and arguably strangest—entry in the series. Released in 1995, it blends traditional adventure ga...

From the mind of Michael Crichton comes Amazon, a game that lets you live out your jungle explorer fantasies—without the bugs or dysentery. You’re off to the Amazon to ...

MDK (1997) is one of those games that feels like it came from another dimension — a dimension where sniper rifles, parachutes, and absurd humor coexist peacefully. You play a...

Azalta: Cult of the Raven is what happens when a lone developer says, “I can make an RPG better than Ultima!” and sort of does. Released in 1996, this DOS dungeon crawl...