abandonware games sorted by popularity

Time Bandit is a sprawling arcade adventure that throws the player into a collection of strange worlds filled with enemies, treasures and secret passages. Its maze-like environment...

Where in America's Past is Carmen Sandiego? turns history into a worldwide chase with one important difference: the criminals have the audacity to hide in the past. As the detectiv...

Gremlins 2: The New Batch leans into the chaos of its source material and then adds a layer of video game unpredictability on top. In Gremlins 2, you deal with enemies that are as ...

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...

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is an action-adventure game released in 1999, developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos Interactive. It’s the second game in the Legacy...

For those who got hopelessly addicted to the card game inside Final Fantasy VIII, Triple Triad Gold (2000) was like someone saying, “Here, now you can ruin your productivity ...

In Lost Adventures of Kroz, ASCII characters do all the heavy lifting. No sprites, no polygons — just your imagination and a fearless “@” symbol running for its l...

Twilight 2000 drops you into a grim alternate future where global conflict has gone spectacularly wrong, and survival is less about heroics and more about scraping by. Released in ...

Legend of the Red Dragon (1989) isn’t so much a traditional game as it is a slice of online history. This BBS door game allowed players to log in, fight monsters, flirt with ...

Moraff's Dungeon of the Unforgiven is a first-person dungeon crawler filled with monsters, exploration, treasure, and the sort of dark corridors that strongly suggest turning aroun...

Hardball 3 builds on its predecessor with a noticeable sense of confidence, as if it knows it has already proven itself and now wants to show off a little. The graphics are improve...

Civilization 3 expands the famous empire-building formula with a richer diplomatic system, improved graphics, expanded technology trees, and a more developed strategic model. Start...

In Conflict: Europe, the Cold War goes hot, and you’re in charge of keeping things cool—or launching World War III. It’s a strategy game with a doomsday timer, wh...

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...

Heavy Metal attempts to capture the spirit of its namesake with a blend of action and style that feels unapologetically bold. It leans into its aesthetic, offering a world that is ...

If you’ve ever wondered what Bill Gates was doing before becoming a household name, Donkey BAS holds the answer: programming a game about avoiding pixelated donkeys on a high...

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 ...

WinTrek brings the Star Trek-inspired space strategy tradition to Windows, placing players in command of a starship and asking them to navigate a hostile galaxy while managing reso...

Lancelot (1988) is an action-adventure that draws loosely from Arthurian legend and very tightly from the difficulty school of “good luck.” You guide the famous knight ...

International Soccer from 1994 delivers football in its most straightforward digital form: pass, shoot, and wonder why your defenders are wandering elsewhere. It captures the excit...

Arx Fatalis is basically what happens when someone takes “dungeons and dragons” way too literally. You start trapped in a gloomy underground world because—oops&md...

Released in 1996, Last Knight in Camelot revisits Arthurian legends with a blend of adventure, fantasy, and puzzle-solving. Players step into a kingdom filled with familiar myths w...

King's Quest 7: The Princeless Bride is one of the most colorful and playful entries in Sierra's long-running adventure series. The game follows Princess Rosella and her mother, Qu...

Also known as The Crypt, Castle Master 2 is like the goth sibling of the first game—darker, moodier, and with more corpses lying around. The gameplay’s pretty much the ...

Vampyr: Talisman of Invocation is an obscure fantasy adventure built around exploration, combat, and the hunt for magical objects. The setting has all the ingredients you might exp...

Arcade Pool (1994) is like playing a game of billiards in your best friend’s basement—if your best friend happened to be a DOS machine with a serious competitive streak...

More smoke-filled backrooms than a noir film and enough slot machines to trigger déjà vu—Caesars Palace is your low-res Vegas getaway. You're given a pile of ch...

This isn’t Disney’s musical fairytale—it’s a DOS game, which means Beauty and the Beast is way more "puzzle platformer" than "tale as old as time." You play...

Welcome to the skies of World War II, where dogfights are fast, fuel is low, and you probably forgot to raise your landing gear. Battlehawks 1942 (1988) is a flight sim with just e...

By the time Goblins 3 rolls around, the formula gets a shake-up, introducing a single controllable character who can summon others as needed. It’s a clever twist, though it t...