abandonware games sorted by popularity

Donkey Kong is a landmark video game franchise created by Shigeru Miyamoto and first released by Nintendo in 1981. The original arcade game introduced players to a narrative where ...

Season of the Sakura (1997) is what happens when a high school dating sim meets anime melodrama. You play a student navigating the treacherous waters of friendship, love, and quest...

Microsoft FreeCell takes the deceptively simple card game and turns it into one of the most enduring forms of digital procrastination ever invented. The rules are easy to understan...

If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be a skyscraper-sized menace with a grudge against architecture, Rampage gives you the keys to that very peculiar dream. You pic...

SimSafari takes the familiar Maxis simulation formula and moves it from cities and farms to the African savannah. Players create and manage a wildlife park, balancing animal popula...

Strip Poker Professional gives the familiar poker-and-strip concept a more serious-sounding title, although “professional” may be doing some heavy lifting here. The game revolv...

Interactive Girls Club Games is one of those early ’90s curiosities that tried to blend interactivity with, let’s say, “adult-themed social simulation.” The...

You’ve never really lived until you’ve watched a rook pick up a pawn and slam dunk it into the floor. Battle Chess (1988) turns the world’s most intellectual boar...

Phantasmagoria is a 1995 interactive horror adventure that pushed the boundaries of computer gaming with its use of live-action video, cinematic presentation, and a disturbing supe...

The Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate takes the dungeon-crawling formula of its predecessors and gives it a considerably larger stage. Released in 1990, it offers a sprawling fantasy ad...

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...

Ultimate Soccer Manager 98 puts the player on the other side of the touchline, where the biggest challenge is discovering that managing a football club is considerably more complic...

Italicized title: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I. Bringing Tolkien’s legendary novel to computers was never going to be an easy task, but this role-playing ad...

Alien Syndrome (1989) is a top-down shooter where you save hostages, shoot aliens, and scream internally because you’re always out of time. It’s frantic arcade action a...

Italicized title: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. II: The Two Towers. Continuing the ambitious adaptation of Tolkien’s saga, this sequel expands both the scope a...

The Bard's Tale is one of the great early computer RPGs, taking players into a dangerous fantasy world where creating a party is only the beginning of the trouble. Released in 1987...

With FIFA Soccer 97, EA decided indoor soccer was exactly what the world had been waiting for, and honestly, they weren’t entirely wrong. The pace is frantic, the rebounds ar...

Weird Dreams is exactly the sort of title that does not bother pretending to be normal. Released in 1988, it sends the player through a bizarre nightmare world filled with surreal ...

Blackthorne (1994) is what happens when a '90s action hero gets lost in a side-scrolling alien world and decides to shoot everything until it makes sense. You’re Kyle, a shot...

Strip Poker 3 continues the long-running tradition of taking a perfectly respectable card game and giving it an entirely different reason to attract attention. The core gameplay is...

Time travel is confusing enough, but Lost in Time (1993, DOS) makes it gloriously absurd. You wake up in a ship’s hold in the 19th century, trying to figure out how you got t...

Hoosier City is an unusual sports-themed simulation that captures the atmosphere of basketball culture through management and strategic decisions. Rather than focusing entirely on ...

Before Wake of the Ravager, there was Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, the first CRPG to bring Athas to life. It was a bold departure from the usual Gold Box formula, with more freedom i...

Environmental doom simulator? Check. Grim statistics? Double check. Balance of the Planet lets you tinker with carbon emissions, wildlife extinction, and deforestation until you ei...

Skyroads is a brilliantly simple 1993 DOS arcade game in which the player pilots a small futuristic craft across suspended roads floating above strange alien landscapes. The object...

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...

Rick Dangerous is a 1989 platform adventure starring an explorer who seems to have taken Indiana Jones' job description and removed the health-and-safety section. Players guide Ric...

MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients is the sequel to MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy. It is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1991, developed by Par...

Released in 1992, Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 abandons pure text in favor of colorful point-and-click adventure gameplay while preserving the outrageous humor that made its prede...

Elite isn’t just a game; it’s a lifestyle choice. This 1987 DOS version throws you into a vast, uncaring galaxy and says, “Good luck.” There’s trading...