abandonware games sorted by popularity

Imagine X-COM but with fewer excuses to blame the developers when you miss a 95% chance shot—because in UFO 2000 (2004), the chaos was entirely player-driven. A free, open-so...

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...

Released in 1988, Legend of the Sword is a graphic adventure that tries to blend epic fantasy storytelling with the puzzle-solving spirit of early point-and-clicks. The result is a...

Blade Warrior (1991) is a side-scrolling beat 'em up that looks like it was illustrated entirely in heavy metal album covers. You’re a silhouette of rage, cutting through dem...

Russian Front 2: The Kursk Campaign is a 1990 DOS strategy game focused on one of the largest armored battles of World War II. Players command forces during the Battle of Kursk, ma...

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...

Alien Crucible is an ambitious science-fiction role-playing project built around exploration, combat and the discovery of a dangerous alien world. Developed during a period when co...

Ever wanted to read Car and Driver magazine and then actually drive the cars featured in it? Well, someone in 1992 said “why not both?” and Car and Driver the game was ...

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 ...

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...

Superman: The Man of Steel is an action game built around one of the most difficult tasks in gaming: making Superman feel appropriately powerful without making the entire game comp...

Fans of Dragonlance novels rejoiced at Dark Queen of Krynn, a Gold Box RPG where you battle alongside iconic heroes in a desperate fight against Takhisis, the dark goddess herself....

Alice in Wonderland is a whimsical adventure inspired by Lewis Carroll's famous journey down the rabbit hole. Rather than offering a conventional heroic quest, it places the player...

Video Casino is a straightforward casino simulation that brings several familiar gambling games to the computer screen. The idea is wonderfully simple: choose your game, place your...

Ocean Ranger is a 1988 simulation that places the player in command of an offshore oil platform, which sounds like a perfectly calm occupation until you remember that the ocean, ma...

Orbiter is a 1986 space simulation that gives players the opportunity to experience the challenges of operating a spacecraft in orbit. The game focuses on navigation, maneuvering, ...

With Gnome Ranger 2: Ingrid’s Back, things get a bit more polished, though not necessarily more sane. The puzzles return, along with the dreamlike environments and that pecul...

World Tour Golf is an early golf simulation built around the eternal challenge of sending a small white ball toward a hole while avoiding the temptation to blame the weather, the c...

Before Football Manager consumed the souls of soccer nerds everywhere, there was Club Football: The Manager. It’s all spreadsheets, transfers, and managing egos with egos. Th...

Stormlord is a colorful fantasy platform adventure in which the title character has the rather unpleasant job of rescuing magical creatures and confronting an assortment of hostile...

The original Crusader: No Remorse sets the tone for the series: brutal, explosive, and unapologetically action-focused. You’re a rogue operative taking on a dystopian corpora...

If System Shock was a warning, System Shock 2 is the full-blown nightmare that follows. This time, the horror seeps into every corner of the experience, blending RPG mechanics with...

Jazz Jackrabbit Holiday Hare takes the fast-paced action of the original game and wraps it in festive cheer. Released in 1994 as a seasonal special, it sends Jazz through winter-th...

In Contraption Zack, you play as a kid with more mechanical gadgets than common sense. Your job? Fix a series of increasingly absurd machines in a puzzle platformer that’s eq...

Aka Starglider 2 with an attitude, Revenge of Defender (or Defender of the Crown’s evil twin in name only) is a 3D space shooter where your main enemy is not the aliens&mdash...

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a cop who drifts around corners at 90 mph in a convertible, Cisco Heat is your kind of chaos. This arcade racer puts you in the shoes of a law...

Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 throws you into a gloriously over-the-top sci-fi world where guns, swords, aliens and scantily clad warriors somehow make perfect sense. You play as Julie, ...

Flying at incredible speed sounds glamorous until you realize mountains have absolutely no intention of moving out of the way. Mach 3 delivers fast-paced action by placing players ...

If Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon were a person, it would be that eccentric uncle who insists he once met a genie “for real.” This 1988 Arabian-fantasy adventure m...

Thexder 2: Firehawk expands the original transforming-robot formula with larger environments, new enemies and a greater emphasis on combat. The basic trick remains wonderfully simp...