abandonware games sorted by popularity

Released in 1989, Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs is pure old-school sports gaming: simple to learn, hard to master, and endlessly competitive. The presentation is minimal,...

In Gauntlet, four brave souls (or just you with an overworked space bar) hack, slash, and gobble food like medieval Pac-Men. This 1986 dungeon crawler is basically a family reunion...

Board game night went digital in 1998 with Axis and Allies, a strategy title that lets you rewrite WWII—assuming you don’t forget where you left your infantry. Fans of ...

Deluxe Paint, often abbreviated as DPaint, was a popular bitmap graphics editor and animation software package. It was developed by Electronic Arts (EA) and released in the mid-198...

Tetris 2.0 attempts to spice up the classic formula with a few twists, like a chef adding unexpected ingredients to a beloved recipe. Sometimes it works, sometimes you miss the ori...

Before Football Manager devoured your social life, there was Championship Manager. With graphics as bare as a locker room and stats as detailed as a tax form, it’s a numbers ...

Before Ultima 1 came along, role-playing games on PC were about as sophisticated as a pocket calculator. Then Richard Garriott threw players into a digital world full of space trav...

GW-BASIC (short for Gee Whiz BASIC) is a dialect of the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. It's one of the early implementations of BASIC and was included ...

Rise of the Dragon is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Dynamix in 1990. It was originally released for MS-DOS and later ported to other platforms such as...

Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons takes everything its predecessor attempted and refines it into something richer and more engaging. Released in 1995, it expands the scope with mult...

Dune, released in 1992, is a game developed by Cryo Interactive and published by Virgin Games. It's based on the iconic science fiction novel of the same name by Frank Herbert. In ...

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is a critically acclaimed open-world action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios. It was released in 2002 and is the third in...

Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is a turn-based strategy video game set in the Star Trek universe. The game was developed by MicroProse Software and published by Infogrames for ...

Pushover is a puzzle platformer video game developed by Red Rat Software and released by Ocean Software in 1992. It was initially available for the Commodore Amiga and later ported...

Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, also released in 1991, takes everything that worked in the original and expands it thoughtfully. The dungeon design is more varied, ...

From the creators of Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace (1989, DOS) is a gloriously over-the-top animated adventure where timing is everything — literally. You play Ace, a muscle...

Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight is an action-RPG and strategy game developed by Rob Anderson and published by Mindscape in 1991 for the Amiga and later for MS-DOS. The game is famous...

Before Worms made artillery games cute, Bang! Bang! let you and a friend lob cartoonish shells at each other using nothing but angles, wind speed, and pure spite. It's a math lesso...

Shawl (1986, DOS) is a lesser-known title that carries the unmistakable spirit of mid-80s experimentation. With simple graphics and straightforward mechanics, it focuses on tight g...

Grim Fandango is an adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1998 and is known for its unique setting and distinctive art style. The game was directe...