abandonware games sorted by rating

International Ninja Rabbits sounds like a fever dream, and in many ways it plays like one too. Released in 1991, this platformer combines martial arts, oversized vegetables, and he...

The Shadows of Mordor is a dark fantasy adventure that feels like a lost chapter from an old-school Tolkien-inspired novel. You explore a grim and dangerous world filled with monst...

Up Periscope! from 1988 lets you take command of a submarine, which sounds exciting until you realize just how much responsibility that entails. Managing depth, speed, and position...

1990’s Back to the Future Part 2 for DOS is a game that tries very hard to be as confusing as time travel itself. You’re Marty McFly, zipping between timelines, avoidin...

Escape from Delirium feels like someone took a pulp adventure novel, dipped it in a bucket of chaos, and fed it to a DOS system. You wake up with amnesia (because of course you do)...

In Curse of Enchantia, a young boy is whisked away to a magical world full of bizarre creatures, tricky puzzles, and an alarming number of ways to die. The game’s whimsical a...

Forbidden Quest (1983, DOS) belongs to that early era when imagination did most of the heavy lifting. Sparse visuals and text-driven cues invite you to picture grand dangers lurkin...

In the Dead of Night is one of those mid-90s DOS oddities that feels like it crawled straight out of a programmer’s personal nightmares. Part adventure, part horror, and part...

NetHack is an open-source roguelike game that's been around since the early 1980s. It's a single-player dungeon exploration game where you navigate your character through a randoml...

Car Builder is less about speed and more about spreadsheets—just with axles. In this 1982 gem, you don’t race cars, you design them. From gear ratios to weight distribu...

Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999, Windows XP) is the kind of game that leans across the table and says, “What if we mashed every genre together and asked David Bowie to help?&rd...

Checkers for Windows is exactly what it says on the tin—checkers. But somehow, it turns this rainy-afternoon classic into a digital duel of patience and spite. No explosions,...

Released in 1994, Iron Seed is a DOS space sim that tried to be both philosophical and technical. You’re leading a fledgling human colony across the stars, tinkering with dip...

Forget Freddy’s razor glove for a second - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1989) for DOS is terrifying in its own way. Mostly because of the controls. You play as a teen trying to...

Released in 2003 for Windows XP, Babylon 5: I've Found Her is the kind of fan-made game that makes you question whether it’s actually fan-made or secretly a pilot for a new s...

Released in 1989, Ghostbusters 2 gives you another shot at wrangling ectoplasm with the world’s most overqualified exterminators. Inspired by the movie sequel, it’s equ...

Released in 1987, this is less of a simulator and more of a fever dream where you pilot a flying box over a grid pretending to be terrain. 3-D Helicopter Simulator was ambitious fo...

Back in 1987, Crazy Cars asked the eternal question: how fast can you go before the road becomes an abstract blur? Armed with a sleek sports car and the confidence of someone who&r...

Released in 1992, 3D World Boxing tried its best to bring the sweet science into the third dimension. The result is less Rocky and more “two mannequins in pajamas slap each o...

Part racing game, part endurance test, African Trail Simulator dares you to hop on a pixel bike and brave the wild. You’ll encounter hostile terrain, wildlife, and the occasi...

Armchair Quarterback lets you live the dream of yelling at your TV — but on your DOS machine, and with even less control. It’s part simulator, part quiz show, and all w...