abandonware games sorted by popularity

Fountain of Dreams is a post-apocalyptic RPG that feels like a distant, slightly sunburned cousin of more famous wasteland adventures. Set in a radioactive Florida, it sends you sc...

Hollywood Squares brings the classic TV game show to your computer, complete with trivia questions and a grid of personalities who may or may not be telling the truth. Released in ...

Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man is an abandoned text-based adventure game designed by Scott Adams, developed and released by Adventure International in 1986 for DOS but was also pu...

Subtlety is not in Fire and Forget’s vocabulary. You drive. You shoot. Things explode. That’s the pitch, and the game sticks to it with admirable stubbornness. Released...

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...

Dragons of Flame (1989) was SSI’s continuation of the Dragonlance saga, following up on Heroes of the Lance. Like its predecessor, it was a side-scrolling action RPG that tes...

Space Ace 2: Borf’s Revenge (1991, DOS) doubles down on everything that made the first one iconic — and maddening. Borf is back, still blue, still obnoxious, and once a...

Dive into Aquanox (2001), where post-apocalyptic submarines battle it out beneath the ocean in a world that’s half Waterworld, half neon rave. With moody lighting and dialogu...

Aldo Again (1989) is the platformer that dares to say, “Hey, what if Donkey Kong but with 100% more confusion?” You play as Aldo, a mustachioed man of mystery (and ques...

Released in 2004, Lords of the Realm III is an interesting, sometimes controversial attempt to modernize a beloved strategy franchise. The move to full 3D and a more streamlined ap...

Back in 1989, David Wolf: Secret Agent tried really hard to make you feel like James Bond. You get car chases, fistfights, and enough cheesy dialogue to fill an action movie marath...

No, it’s not about a guy who holds your groceries. Bagman is a retro-style indie throwback where you’re a pickaxe-wielding convict trying to steal bags of cash from a m...

If you thought Norse mythology needed more monochrome graphics, Caves of Thor (1989) has you covered. It’s an early Apogee game, meaning it’s tough, quirky, and uses le...

Rendezvous with Rama is an interactive fiction (text adventure) game released in 1984. Telarium, a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software, was known for producing narrative-driven games ...

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...

Teen Agent is a charming, tongue-in-cheek adventure about a teenager recruited to save the world because, well, why not? With its colorful art, witty dialogue, and delightfully abs...

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...

If Shakespeare wrote video games and then decided, “You know what this needs? A parser and some pixelated drama,” you'd get Avon. In this interactive fiction gem from 1...

Civil War buffs, rejoice. Battle of Antietam (1985) lets you relive one of the bloodiest days in American history... via pixelated dots and turn-based tension. There’s no fla...

Ah, Advantage Tennis—where the graphics are flat, the physics are questionable, and the grunts are blessedly absent. This DOS-era sports sim serves up matches that somehow fe...