abandonware games sorted by rating

Push-Push Penguin is an expanded version of the classic Sega's 1982 arcade game Pengo, incorporating features like power-ups, a combo system, and a more diverse array of enemies, b...

Before management sims became a genre unto themselves, RAPCON tried its hand at turning air-traffic control into entertainment. Surprisingly, it works—if you enjoy stress. Yo...

Safe Opening Simulator is a 1993 DOS simulation built around the surprisingly specialized art of cracking open a combination safe. Instead of blasting doors apart like an action he...

Satan is a 1989 DOS action game with a dark fantasy setting, placing players in a world filled with monsters, dangerous environments, and supernatural threats. The player takes con...

Shadow of the Comet is a 1993 adventure game steeped in cosmic horror, mystery, and the unsettling fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Players follow journalist John Parker as he investiga...

Slam! is a 1993 Windows 3.x game built around fast arcade-style action and competitive play. Its simple presentation reflects the period, but the gameplay aims to provide immediate...

Squarez Deluxe! is a 1993 puzzle game built around colored blocks, careful positioning, and the increasingly dangerous realization that your apparently brilliant move has just ruin...

If Star Trek Combat Arena had a motto, it would be “talk diplomacy later.” Released in 1989 for DOS, this game tossed Starfleet’s peaceful ideals right out the ai...

SWIV 3D takes the classic overhead shooting action of SWIV and throws it into a three-dimensional environment. Released in 1996, it gives you a heavily armed vehicle and a battlefi...

The Battle of the Bulge: Tigers in the Snow is a detailed World War II strategy game focused on the German offensive in the Ardennes during the winter of 1944. Released in 1982, it...

The Big Three is an unusual sports title centered on the three major American sports traditionally associated with the phrase: football, baseball, and basketball. Released in 1989,...

The Hound of Shadow is a dark interactive fiction adventure inspired by the atmosphere of supernatural detective stories and cosmic horror. The player investigates mysterious event...

The Light Corridor is a wonderfully strange puzzle game built around a deceptively simple idea: guide a ball through a corridor while dealing with obstacles and environmental hazar...

Trivial Pursuit Deluxe takes the familiar question-and-answer formula and gives it a more polished computer treatment. The goal remains pleasingly simple: answer questions across a...

Warp Rogue is a later revival of classic roguelike ideas, mixing turn-based exploration with procedural danger and a healthy disregard for the survival prospects of the player. Rel...

Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? turns American geography into a detective game, sending you from state to state while tracking down Carmen and her gang. Each investigation dep...

WitchavenRL takes the fantasy combat of Witchaven and gives it a modern roguelike treatment, creating an experience where exploration and fighting are mixed with unpredictable enco...

Wizard of Wor 98 revisits the classic maze-shooter concept and gives it a late-1990s computer makeover. Players move through labyrinthine arenas while hunting monsters, dodging att...

WWF European Rampage Tour brings professional wrestling to the computer with all the theatricality, enormous personalities and questionable physics you would expect. Players can ta...

Zyclunt is a side-scrolling action game developed and published by Phantagram in 1995. The game is set in a dystopian future where incurable diseases and a rise in criminal activit...

Hardball 4 arrives with the kind of confidence that suggests it has been paying attention to feedback, and it shows. The game offers more options, better visuals, and a deeper sens...

Released in 1994, Magic Carpet is one of those rare games that feels like someone mixed a fantasy novel with a flight simulator and then added enough explosions to keep everyone ha...

Borland Reflex was a relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by Borland International, a software company that was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Reflex was rele...

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...

As its title boldly suggests, Late Night Sexy TV Show arrived in 1994 as an adult-themed trivia and quiz game that relies more on playful humor than genuine scandal. Players answer...

Pac-in-Time is a 1993 platform adventure that boldly takes the famous yellow hero out of his traditional maze and sends him jumping across imaginative levels instead. The change wo...

Rawcopy is a straightforward DOS utility designed around copying data, with the sort of focused functionality that was common among command-line tools of the period. Rather than at...

Time Slaughter is a fighting game that embraces the wonderfully excessive attitude of 1990s arcade combat. Its roster of bizarre characters is more interested in beating each other...

Fast, colorful, and bursting with attitude, Jazz Jackrabbit became one of the most beloved shareware platformers of the 1990s. Released in 1994, it stars a green rabbit hero racing...

Beast is ASCII horror at its most gloriously minimal. You’re a brave soul (well, a smiley face) trapped in a dungeon with sentient blobs (the titular beasts) that want you ve...