abandonware games sorted by popularity

Super Hang-On is an abandoned motorcycle arcade racing game, developed by Sega, designed by Yu Suzuki and published by Data East for DOS in 1988 (the arcade was released in 1987). ...

Scavengers of the Mutant World (1988) takes you to a post-apocalyptic wasteland where radiation has turned most life forms into something between a potato and a death machine. Your...

Fast Food Dizzy, released in 1989 for DOS, is exactly as chaotic as the title suggests. Starring the famously round egg hero, the game drops Dizzy into a world where food falls fro...

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...

Based on the cult fantasy novels by Roger Zelazny, 9 Princes in Amber is a 1985 text adventure that assumes two things: you’ve read the books, and you enjoy typing things lik...

No, not that Battlestar. Battlestar (1996) is more obscure than a reboot that never happened. Set in deep space with a top-down view and UI only a Windows 3.x user could love, it m...

Space 1889 (1990, DOS) is steampunk before steampunk was cool. Based on the tabletop RPG, it sends you to an alternate Victorian era where the British Empire has expanded — t...

Gulf Strike places you in the cockpit during a very contemporary-for-1986 conflict, blending strategy and simulation with a dash of headline-inspired drama. You manage missions, al...

In 1991, DOS gamers were treated to the weirdest parenting simulator ever: Baby Joe in: Going Home. You play as Baby Joe, an infant inexplicably left to crawl through caves, forest...

Gnome Ranger feels like the kind of game that was designed by someone who really loved puzzles but maybe didn’t love explaining them. You control a gnome (clearly a recurring...

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...

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...

In the neon-lit corridors of cyberspace, you're a "decker," infiltrating corporate mainframes like a digital ninja. Released in 2002, this roguelike RPG offers a tile-based cyberpu...

Star General is a turn-based strategy game developed by Catware and published by SSI (Strategic Simulations, Inc.). It was released in 1996 for MS-DOS and later for Windows. The ga...

Hill Street Blues is an old DOS "driving" game developed by Krisalis in 1991. The gameplay it's similar to a Grand Theft Auto clone (we're talking about GTA 1 or 2) in which you ar...

As a prisoner of war, you must find a way to escape a prison in Germany in 1942. The prisoner has a daily routine which will follow if not controlled by the player for a certain am...

Fidelity Chessmaster 2100, released in 1989 for DOS, is chess with a very clear mission: beat you, patiently and without mercy. At the time, it was a serious achievement in compute...