abandonware games sorted by popularity

Star Wars: X-Wing is a 1993 space combat simulator that finally allowed PC players to experience the Star Wars universe from the cockpit of its famous starfighters. Players begin a...

Double Dragon II: The Revenge (1988) takes everything that made the first game fun and cranks it up a notch. The story begins with tragedy—Marian, the damsel from the first g...

If Doom was the apocalypse, Doom II: Hell on Earth was the encore nobody asked for but everyone wanted. Released in 1994, it doubled down on everything: bigger maps, nastier monste...

Polished to a shine worthy of a senator’s sandals, Caesar 3 finally gets it right. Gorgeous 2D visuals, elegant gameplay, and voiceovers that say “No more workers!&rdqu...

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...

Before Doom and Wolfenstein 3D turned PC gaming into a pixelated bloodbath, there was Castle Wolfenstein. A stealth game in 1984? Believe it. You sneak around a Nazi fortress, stea...

Runaway City is a 1995 DOS game that combines exploration, action, and urban adventure in a setting where simply getting from one place to another can become an unexpectedly compli...

The Simpsons Arcade Game, developed and published by Konami, is a classic side-scrolling beat-'em-up that became highly popular in arcades during the early '90s. Players take ...

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 ...

Space Hulk is a 1993 tactical game based on the Warhammer 40,000 board game, placing squads of Space Marines inside enormous abandoned spacecraft known as hulks. These dark corrido...

Gal Pani X is the sort of arcade puzzle game that looks innocent for about five seconds before revealing its true nature: a frantic test of nerves where drawing lines is somehow mo...

Starflight is a 1986 science-fiction role-playing and exploration game that gives players an entire galaxy to investigate. You command a starship, travel between planets, land on a...

Knights of Xentar (1994, DOS) is what happens when anime meets adult humor and forgets to use its filter. This cheeky RPG follows a perverted hero on a quest filled with ridiculous...

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...

Bigger, bolder, and with more statues of yourself than ever, Caesar 2 builds on its predecessor like Rome after a good tax season. Now you get to manage both cities and provinces, ...

Arkanoid is a classic arcade video game that was first released in 1986 by Taito. It is a breakout-style game, which means that the primary objective is to break a wall of bricks o...

Police Quest: Open Season is a 1993 adventure game that takes the series into a darker and more serious direction, following detectives investigating a disturbing criminal case. Th...

Originally released in 1983, Lode Runner became one of the defining puzzle-platform games thanks to its brilliant combination of action and strategy. Players collect treasure while...

In 1989, Sex Vixens from Space mixed adventure gameplay with tongue-in-cheek humor and science-fiction themes. Rather than aiming for seriousness, it embraced campy situations and ...

Stunts is one of those racing games where the track designer can be more dangerous than the opponent. Rather than concentrating solely on realistic circuits, it lets players create...

The spiritual sequel to SimTower, Yoot Tower asks the important question: what if you were god, but only over elevators, sushi bars, and the occasional alien invasion? It’s a...

LadyLove (1990) is infamous, misunderstood, and often misremembered. Marketed as erotic, it’s actually a text-heavy life simulation about relationships, choices, and social n...

The adventures of Willy Beamish is a point-and-click adventure that perfectly captures the chaos of being a kid with too much imagination and not enough discipline. Willy is consta...

If Lorna were a comic book, it would be the kind your parents warned you about. Based on the Spanish sci-fi heroine by Alfonso Azpiri, this 1990 action-platformer on DOS is a cockt...

Dungeon Master is a classic computer role-playing game (CRPG) developed by FTL Games and released in 1987. It's considered one of the pioneering titles in the dungeon crawler genre...

Rodent's Revenge is a 1991 Windows 3.x puzzle game that turns the humble mouse into an unlikely arcade hero. Players control a small rodent navigating a maze while attempting to co...

Mega Man Legends takes Capcom's famous blue hero in a very different direction from his traditional side-scrolling adventures. Instead of running through neatly arranged platforms,...

Empire: Wargame of the Century feels like a military textbook that accidentally became entertaining. Spanning centuries of warfare, it combines grand strategy with a surprisingly a...

The Games: Winter Challenge takes the multi-event sports formula onto snow and ice, offering a collection of winter competitions where timing and control are considerably more impo...

Let’s be honest: Cobra Mission is remembered less for its RPG mechanics and more for its... risqué content. The first “eroge” RPG translated into English, ...