abandonware games sorted by popularity

By the time Exile III: Ruined World arrived in 1997, the series knew exactly what it wanted to be—and it delivered with confidence. This installment expands the scope dramati...

If you've ever stared at a camel and thought, "What if it shot lasers and had a personal grudge against humanity?", Attack of the Mutant Camels is the fever dream you've been waiti...

Rings of Medusa is a 1990 DOS role-playing adventure that combines exploration, trading, combat, and strategy in a large fantasy world. Players travel across a map, gather resource...

Red Baron is a 1990 flight simulation that recreates the aerial combat of World War I, putting players behind the controls of early fighter aircraft. The game combines dogfighting,...

Romantic Encounters at the Dome is a 1988 DOS title with a decidedly unusual focus, placing romance and social interaction at the center of its gameplay. Rather than commanding arm...

The Fool's Errand is an unusually imaginative puzzle adventure that wraps dozens of logic challenges inside a strange, interconnected storybook world. Instead of simply presenting ...

In Crime and Punishment, you’re not the criminal—you’re the detective, judge, and executioner rolled into one. Presented as a legal simulation, it tasks you with ...

The Temple of Elemental Evil is a remarkably faithful computer adaptation of classic Dungeons & Dragons, based on the famous Greyhawk adventure. It offers turn-based combat, charac...

No relation to Dune (except for being a total rip-off), Arrakis is a homebrew strategy game that feels like a tribute to the sandiest planet in sci-fi. You mine spice, fight vaguel...

ATAC (1992) is what you get when someone says, “What if we made SimCity, but for waging the War on Drugs?” You play as the head of an anti-narcotics task force, deployi...

Tiny Skweeks is a cheerful puzzle-platform game built around cute little creatures and a collection of environments designed to test your timing and problem-solving skills. The Skw...

Released in 1990, Joe Montana Football attempts to capture the excitement of American football while making the sport accessible to computer players. Featuring the legendary quarte...

ELIZA, created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT, was one of the first computer programs to simulate human conversation. Designed as a natural language processing demons...

Solar Hockey League is a 1992 DOS sports game that takes the basic idea of hockey and sends it into a futuristic setting. Instead of conventional ice rinks, players compete in a sc...

Obitus is a 1991 action-adventure game that throws the player into a dangerous fantasy world where exploration, combat, and survival are all part of the daily schedule. The game co...

Into the Eagle's Nest from 1987 is a top-down action game where stealth and gunfire coexist in uneasy partnership. Players infiltrate enemy territory, rescue prisoners, and survive...

You don’t need a joystick the size of a tree to enjoy Konami’s Ping Pong (1996, DOS). Simple, fast, and maddeningly addictive, this digital table tennis game nails the ...

With a name like Dink Smallwood, you’d expect something ridiculous—and you’d be right. Released in 1998 for Windows XP, this action RPG follows a pig farmer with ...

Rise of the Triad: Dark War is a 1994 first-person shooter famous for its fast action, outrageous weapons, and gleefully excessive violence. Built on an enhanced version of the Wol...

Screamer 2 is an arcade racing game that aims for speed, spectacle, and the satisfying sensation of making a computer-generated car do things that would probably upset an insurance...

Ninja is a 1986 action game that wastes very little time explaining the job description. You are a ninja, there are enemies, and they would prefer that you stop being quite so succ...

Theatre of War is a strategy game that puts the player in command of military forces while recreating the tension of battlefield decisions. Rather than simply moving units toward t...

Super Solvers: Spellbound! turns spelling practice into a colorful adventure where correct answers are the difference between progressing and getting stuck. Rather than presenting ...

Crime City is an isometric action game that throws you into the role of a lone enforcer cleaning up the streets. Armed with a trusty weapon and a questionable sense of self-preserv...

Doubling down on chaos, Fire and Forget 2 turns the volume up and asks questions later. The concept remains deliciously simple: speed forward, blast everything, try not to explode ...

Fleet Command invites you to command modern naval forces with the calm authority of someone who definitely read the manual. This is strategy on a grand scale: radar screens glowing...

Designed by sci-fi author Syd Mead, CyberRace combines futuristic vehicle design with high-speed competition. The result is a visually striking racer that feels like it came straig...

If gravity had a sense of humor, it would look like Bounce Zone. This 1990 DOS oddball is part platformer, part physics experiment, and part unintentional comedy. You bounce. A lot...

African Adventure is one of those games that feels like it was made during a two-hour layover at the airport - but somehow, it works. Set in the savannah, it combines survival, exp...

Cossacks: Back to War expands the large-scale real-time strategy formula of the Cossacks series with additional factions, campaigns, and battles inspired by European warfare. Huge ...