abandonware games sorted by popularity

Is it Breakout? Is it Arkanoid? No — it’s Bananoid, the fruitiest bat-and-ball clone you never asked for. With bananas, monkeys, and psychedelic colors, it feels like s...

Imagine Doom and Ultima Underworld had a low-budget child who was homeschooled in a basement filled with Mountain Dew cans. That’s Amulets & Armor. A mix of first-person ...

Released in 1987, this is less of a simulator and more of a fever dream where you pilot a flying box over a grid pretending to be terrain. 3-D Helicopter Simulator was ambitious fo...

Gateway to the Savage Frontier is a Dungeons & Dragons computer role-playing game released in 1991. It was developed by Beyond Software (later known as Stormfront Studios) and ...

Mech War (1992) takes the concept of giant robot combat and turns it into a fast-paced tactical showdown. Instead of commanding from afar, you’re directly involved in the act...

Released in 1991, Free D.C.! is one of those games that feels like a time capsule of early PC experimentation. It mixes political satire with arcade-style action, letting you fight...

In The Tyrants of Thaine, the graphics get a modest upgrade, but the soul remains pure: this is RPG comfort food. You’re once again cast as the world's most overworked advent...

The Lost Vale is the great “what if” of the Ultima series. Developed as an expansion to Pagan but never officially released, it became the stuff of legend. Players were...

Arx Fatalis is basically what happens when someone takes “dungeons and dragons” way too literally. You start trapped in a gloomy underground world because—oops&md...

If you ever wanted to pilot a hovering tank while yelling at a computer screen, Nova 9 has you covered. A sequel to Stellar 7, it puts you in the cockpit against Gir Draxon’s...

Welcome to the Ys series, where you swing swords by running headfirst into enemies. The Vanished Omens introduces Adol Christin, red-haired hero extraordinaire, as he embarks on a ...

If Catacomb Abyss was “Doom for wizards,” then Catacomb Armageddon is “Doom with a Halloween costume budget.” Bigger levels, more enemies, and slightly more...

Acheton (1987, DOS) is one of those text adventures where the game cheerfully tries to kill you every five minutes — and does so with words. You're tossed into a sprawling, b...

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...

If your idea of excitement is waiting... and waiting... and maybe catching a giant digital tuna, Big Game Fishing is your dream come true. Simulate the thrill of casting a line wit...

In Bionic Commando, you're a soldier with no jumping ability—because who needs knees when you have a grappling arm? Swing through 1988 DOS architecture like a pixelated Tarza...

In Chicago 90, you either play as the cops or the crooks in a top-down, crime-infested, vaguely Windy City-esque setting. Think of it as a proto-GTA with more sirens and fewer mora...

Stormlord is an abandoned DOS platform game set in a fantasy world, developed and published by Hewson Consultants in 1989 and designed by Raffaele Cecco. There was some controversy...