abandonware games sorted by popularity

In Black Gold (1989), you're in the cutthroat world of oil barons. It’s like Dallas, but with more charts and fewer cowboy hats. You build rigs, negotiate deals, and try to o...

Remember those endless, hypnotic tile-matching games before Candy Crush hijacked your aunt’s phone? Cascade was already there, dropping blocks and breaking combos like it inv...

Impulse Tracker was a popular music tracker software developed by Jeffrey Lim in the late 1990s. Impulse Tracker utilized a tracker-style user interface, which was common in t...

High Command: Europe 1939-45 is a strategy game that does not shy away from complexity, asking players to engage with history on a grand scale. The mechanics are detailed, sometime...

Frankenstein (1994) leans into its gothic inspiration with an earnest devotion to atmosphere. Drawing from Mary Shelley’s tale, it combines adventure elements with a somber m...

Fox Ranger is a side-scrolling shooter that wastes no time explaining itself—because lasers are self-explanatory. You pilot a sleek craft through swarms of enemies with the s...

In this 1989 DOS game, you survive in a post-apocalyptic world where demons have taken over. Scavenge for resources, fight off demonic creatures, and try to rebuild civilization. I...

Xenophage: Alien BloodSport is a fighting game that leans heavily into its bizarre premise, featuring grotesque alien combatants battling it out in brutal arenas. It is unapologeti...

Trivial Pursuit is a popular trivia board game that was adapted into a computer game for various platforms, including DOS. In the game, players answer trivia questions from va...

The first Ishar (1992, DOS) introduced players to a fantasy world where every decision could backfire spectacularly. You’re tasked with toppling a tyrant, but first you&rsquo...

Welcome to the skies of World War II, where dogfights are fast, fuel is low, and you probably forgot to raise your landing gear. Battlehawks 1942 (1988) is a flight sim with just e...

Part interactive fiction, part “how far can curiosity push you,” Essex places you aboard a massive starship filled with secrets. As you explore its dim corridors and ma...

If classic fantasy ever needed a designated clown, Eric the Unready would proudly volunteer. This 1993 adventure from Legend Entertainment gleefully demolishes every heroic trope i...

Captain Blood is a space exploration video game released in 1988. It was developed by the French company ERE Informatique, and it was designed by Philippe Ulrich and Didier Bouchon...

There’s something charmingly ruthless about TV Mogul, a game that hands you a television network and basically says, “Don’t mess it up.” Released in 1988, it throws you int...

Cartooners lets you live out your childhood dream of being a one-person animation studio… minus the caffeine addiction. It’s a charming sandbox where you can draw your...

Superhero League of Hoboken is a humorous role-playing game (RPG) released in 1994, developed by Legend Entertainment. It's a quirky mix of a traditional RPG and an adventure game,...

Great Naval Battles vol. 3: Fury in the Pacific expands the scope and the intensity, throwing you into larger conflicts with even more to manage. In Great Naval Battles vol. 3, the...

Despite its title, Endless Horror doesn’t go for cheap jump scares—it prefers the slow, creeping kind of dread that seeps in while you stare at murky DOS graphics and w...

You don’t need a joystick the size of a tree to enjoy Konami’s Ping Pong (1996, DOS). Simple, fast, and maddeningly addictive, this digital table tennis game nails the ...

Obitus is a role-playing video game developed by Psygnosis and released in 1991 for various platforms including the Amiga, Atari ST, and DOS. It combines elements of role-playing g...