abandonware games sorted by popularity

Fast, colorful, and gloriously over-the-top, Major Stryker delivers classic vertical scrolling shooter action with enough explosions to satisfy even the most demanding arcade pilot...

Captain Dynamo is what happens when a circus acrobat chugs ten cans of cola and decides to take on gravity itself. You’re bouncing, flipping, and springing through traps and ...

By 1994, RPG fans were spoiled with titles like Might and Magic and Ultima. Then along came Disciples of Steel, a brutally complex, turn-based fantasy epic for DOS. It drops you in...

Faces Tris 3 (1990) takes a familiar concept and gives it a slightly unsettling twist. Yes, it’s a falling-blocks puzzle game, but instead of abstract shapes, you’re st...

The Basket Manager is a basketball management simulation for players who would rather control the team from the bench than personally chase the ball around the court. Released in 1...

Compilation titles often feel like a random pile of games tossed together with minimal ceremony, but Future Classics Collection from 1990 tries to do something slightly more ambiti...

Simon the Sorcerer is a wonderfully irreverent 1993 adventure that follows Simon, a sarcastic teenager who is transported to a fantasy world and promptly discovers that becoming a ...

PKzip is one of the most recognizable compression utilities from the DOS era and became almost unavoidable in the world of downloadable software. Its main job is simple: compress f...

The 1989 Scrabble release feels a bit like playing the board game on an old typewriter. It’s clunky, monochrome, and oddly charming. The computer AI is less of a challenge an...

Commando Enhanced revisits the classic commando-style action formula with a more polished presentation and the same basic ingredients: dangerous missions, hostile soldiers, weapons...

Operation Europe: Path to Victory 1939-45 is a 1994 strategy game that covers the enormous scope of the Second World War and somehow expects the player to make sense of it all. The...

By 1999, Liero had become a cult favorite thanks to its frantic real-time battles between heavily armed worms. Unlike turn-based competitors, the action never pauses, creating chao...

Released in 1988, Alien Fires 2199 AD looks and plays like someone tried to translate a fever dream into a sci-fi RPG. You control some dude with a chin of steel and a crew that se...

A direct sequel to Deathwatch, Ancients 2: Approaching Evil is like returning to your childhood neighborhood, except everyone’s still trying to kill you. Released in 1994, it...

Don’t let the cartoony name fool you: Skullduggery: Adventures in Horror wants to unsettle you, and it’s surprisingly good at it. This early horror adventure mixes clas...

Daffy Duck PI: The Case of the Missing Letters is a Looney Tunes spin on the classic edutainment formula. As Daffy, you’re on the trail of a nefarious plot to steal the alpha...

If Dungeons of Kairn were a person, it’d be that quiet D&D player who never smiles and always plays lawful evil. Released in 1989, this obscure DOS crawler delivers all t...

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...

Darkstone tried to ride the Diablo wave in 1999, and honestly, it didn’t do a bad job. With 3D graphics (impressive for the time) and a soundtrack that takes itself way too s...

Sarge is a 1989 DOS military action game that puts players in the boots of a tough soldier facing enemy forces across a series of combat situations. The gameplay emphasizes movemen...

Impulse Tracker was a popular music tracker software developed by Jeffrey Lim in the late 1990s. Impulse Tracker utilized a tracker-style user interface, which was common in t...

Andromeda Conquest is an early space strategy game that gives players a galaxy to explore, planets to colonize and rival civilizations to worry about. Long before enormous modern 4...

Rack 'em is a 1988 DOS pool game that brings the classic billiards experience to the computer with a focus on careful aiming, positioning, and tactical play. Players line up shots,...

On The Ball is a soccer management game that puts the player on the touchline rather than directly on the pitch. Success depends on decisions involving tactics, lineups, transfers,...

In Ack-Ack Attack! (1995, DOS), you operate an anti-aircraft gun and do your best to shoot down waves of enemy planes with what appears to be a potato cannon. The game is loud, fra...

The Great War: 1914 - 1918 is a historical strategy game focused on the First World War, a conflict where “just move forward” was famously not an especially successful tactical...

Sango Fighter 2 expands the fighting formula of its predecessor with more characters, moves, and opportunities for chaotic martial-arts action. The game once again turns warriors f...

Paintshow is a DOS graphics program from an era when creating pictures on a computer still felt like a minor act of wizardry. It provides tools for drawing, editing, and manipulati...

Where Time Stood Still is an adventure set in a strange, dangerous land where getting lost is considerably easier than finding the exit. You guide a small group of characters throu...

Power Dolls is a 1994 tactical strategy game that places players in command of an elite female military unit equipped with powerful combat machines. The game combines turn-based pl...