abandonware games sorted by popularity

With a name like Blort!, you'd expect a fart joke or a kids’ cartoon gone wrong, but no—it’s a 1987 arcade-style blaster for DOS. You play as a cosmic defender sh...

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...

Do you enjoy betrayal, backstabbing, and pretending to be a global power while actually being terrible at geography? Computer Diplomacy is the digital version of the classic board ...

Knights of the Sky (1990, DOS) throws you into the cockpit of a biplane during WWI, where every dogfight is a dance of death and machine oil. With dynamic campaigns and customizabl...

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...

Meantime is one of those fascinating lost adventures that has become more interesting precisely because players never got the chance to experience the finished game. Designed by th...

The Untouchables brings the Prohibition-era world of Eliot Ness and his team to the computer, mixing shootouts, driving sequences and other action set pieces inspired by the famous...

18th Airborne is what happens when a military recruitment pamphlet and a tactical shooter have a baby. You’re thrown into the boots of a paratrooper with a mission, a gun, an...

Italicized title: Jackal. Fast-paced and unapologetically action-oriented, this military shooter places players behind the wheel of an armed jeep on a mission to rescue prisoners o...

Uridium is a fast-paced shooter from 1988 that wastes no time getting you into the action. You’ll be piloting a sleek craft across massive enemy ships, blasting anything that get...

Jump 'n Bump proves that rabbits can be surprisingly competitive. Released in 1998, this multiplayer-focused platform game pits adorable bunnies against one another in frantic matc...

In Knight Games (1988, DOS), the Middle Ages meet joystick warfare. Think of it as a digital renaissance fair with fewer turkey legs and more sword clashing. You can joust, fence, ...

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...

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 ...

Dark Sun 2: Wake of the Ravager takes the harsh desert world of Athas and turns up the intensity. Building on its predecessor, it offers deeper role-playing, improved combat, and a...

Nitemare 3D is a 1994 first-person shooter that takes the basic idea of exploring dark corridors and adds monsters, weapons, magic, and enough supernatural unpleasantness to make t...

The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is a science-fiction adventure built around time travel, investigation, and the slightly alarming realization that history can be ruined by...

In Core War Plus, programming isn’t just for making spreadsheets—it’s for virtual combat. You write tiny programs that battle for control of computer memory, turn...

Night Mission Pinball is a 1982 pinball simulation that proves the basic appeal of pinball is remarkably difficult to ruin. The game recreates the essential ingredients of the real...

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...

Space Harrier is a 1989 DOS version of Sega's famous arcade shooter, placing the player in a surreal fantasy landscape filled with giant creatures, strange enemies, obstacles, and ...

Back in 1999, Warzone 2100 felt like a glimpse into the future of strategy gaming. Forget endless waves of faceless soldiers; here you could actually design your own tanks and chop...

Operation Bodycount sounds subtle, doesn’t it? Released in 1994, this shooter wastes no time letting you know exactly what it’s about: running around and, well, increas...

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)...

Xatax is a no-nonsense arcade shooter that focuses on delivering fast, straightforward action without unnecessary distractions. You pilot your ship through waves of enemies, dodgin...

Golden Oldies: Volume 1 - Computer Software Classics is less a single game and more a time capsule, offering a collection of early titles that remind you just how far gaming has co...

Sports games in 1990 weren’t exactly realistic, but Double Dribble made a surprisingly good attempt. This Konami basketball title brought fast-paced, side-scrolling action to...

Mike Ditka Ultimate Football brings American football to the computer with a focus on strategy, play selection, and the hard-hitting action that makes the sport so distinctive. Pla...

Star Wars Rebellion is a grand strategy game that turns the original trilogy into a massive galactic campaign. Released in 1998, it lets players command either the Rebel Alliance o...

Motorcycle racing has never looked so… polygonal. Team Suzuki puts you in the leather suit of a professional racer hurtling around pixel-perfect tracks. The controls are twi...