abandonware games sorted by popularity

Crystal Caves is a bright, cheerful platformer starring Mylo Steamwitz, an entrepreneur whose business plan involves raiding dangerous alien caves for profit. The levels are full o...

You probably didn’t know you needed a game about a rapping, music-spinning dragon, but DJ Puff fills that oddly specific void. Released in 1993 for DOS, this platformer featu...

Few titles make a promise quite like Gamma Force in Pit of a Thousand Screams. You already know this won’t be a relaxing stroll through a meadow. Instead, it’s an energ...

Heroes of the 357th puts you in the cockpit with a seriousness that borders on intimidating, but in a good way. It leans heavily into simulation, asking you to think like a pilot r...

By the time Earthworm Jim hit DOS, its reputation already preceded it, and it largely lived up to the hype. This is a platformer that thrives on absurdity: a worm in a spacesuit, b...

Gateway to the Savage Frontier is a Dungeons & Dragons computer role-playing game released in 1991. It was developed by Beyond Software (later known as Stormfront Studios) and ...

In Tau Ceti, you’re the lone pilot of a heavily armed hoverbike trying to reboot a dying colony under an alien sun. It’s slow, moody, and brilliantly atmospheric. The v...

Stormlord is an abandoned DOS platform game set in a fantasy world, developed and published by Hewson Consultants in 1989 and designed by Raffaele Cecco. There was some controversy...

Ever wondered what would happen if The Phantom of the Opera got his hands on a time machine, a vengeful streak, and a point-and-click interface? In Return of the Phantom, you step ...

Black Friday (1983) isn’t about shopping mayhem—though you might wish it were after trying to figure out what’s going on. This early DOS title is part stock marke...

Hot on the heels of the first, Caverns of Kroz 2 (also 1989) doesn’t mess with the formula—it sharpens it. More puzzles, more monsters, more reasons to scream at fallin...

Ah, Bob Winner (1986, DOS), the game that asks: what if Indiana Jones had a cousin who got lost in a side-scroller? You play as the titular Bob, an adventurer who walks like he&rsq...

Fast Food Dizzy, released in 1989 for DOS, is exactly as chaotic as the title suggests. Starring the famously round egg hero, the game drops Dizzy into a world where food falls fro...

Tunnels of Armageddon is a video game developed by Logical Design Works and released in 1989 by California Dreams for various home computer systems, including DOS, the Commodore 64...

As a prisoner of war, you must find a way to escape a prison in Germany in 1942. The prisoner has a daily routine which will follow if not controlled by the player for a certain am...

Archon Ultra is what happens when you smash chess into an arcade cabinet and call it a day. This updated version of the original Archon throws in jazzed-up graphics and faster game...

If you’ve ever looked at a cave and thought, “Yes, this is where I’ll build my empire,” then Cave Wars is your jam. Released in 1996, this strategy game thr...

Based on the famously chaotic 1995 movie, Waterworld (1997, DOS) somehow manages to be more confusing than the film itself—and that’s saying something. This action-adve...

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier takes the least-loved movie in the franchise and turns it into a game — which is bold, maybe even illogical. Released in 1989 for DOS, it trie...