abandonware games sorted by popularity

Strategy fans, sharpen your wits: The Perfect General (1991, DOS) marches onto the battlefield with hex-based tactics, satisfyingly crunchy mechanics, and a strict “no button...

Master Ninja: Shadow Warrior of Death is a martial-arts action game that embraces the classic fantasy of becoming an unstoppable ninja warrior. The premise is refreshingly uncompli...

The Global Dilemma: Guns or Butter is a strategy game built around one of humanity's oldest political questions: should you spend your resources on military power or on keeping eve...

Ah, Black Sect (1993), where the puzzles are cryptic, the villagers are creepy, and the atmosphere is so thick you could spread it on toast. A classic first-person point-and-click ...

Uplink: Hacker Elite drops you into a digital underworld where your keyboard is your most powerful weapon. Released in 2001, it blends strategy and simulation, tasking you with bre...

Commander Keen 3: Keen Must Die! is the kind of title that makes you wonder what this kid did to tick off an entire alien race. After foiling their plans twice, Keen takes the figh...

Dangerous Streets is a fighting game that clearly wanted to be the next Street Fighter—and instead became a cult oddity. The character roster is bizarre, the animations oddly...

Infiltrator 2 basically asks: “What if we took everything from the first game and doubled down?” The result is a sequel that’s larger, louder, and just as gleeful...

Cannon Fodder 2 continues the gleefully irreverent military mayhem of its predecessor, sending tiny soldiers into missions where survival is never guaranteed and common sense is ap...

The Dark Heart of Uukrul is a challenging fantasy role-playing game that throws the player into a sprawling dungeon full of monsters, traps, secrets, and enough dark corridors to m...

Unnecessary Roughness takes American football and gives it a slightly rougher, more arcade-like edge. Released in 1993, it doesn’t aim for pure simulation, instead focusing on fa...

Prophecy of the Shadow is a 1992 role-playing game that takes players on a traditional fantasy adventure filled with exploration, combat, and magical mysteries. Players create a ch...

Steel Panthers 3: Brigade Command expands the series into larger-scale warfare, putting you in charge of formations where the number of units on the map can become rather intimidat...

Released in 2003, Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader blends classic role-playing mechanics with a richly imagined alternate history where magic and mythology reshape medieval Europe...

By the time Exile III: Ruined World arrived in 1997, the series knew exactly what it wanted to be—and it delivered with confidence. This installment expands the scope dramati...

Dragonflight (1991) was a German RPG that dared to think big—party-based adventuring, sprawling maps, and a proper fantasy plot. It played like a love letter to Ultima with i...

Titus the Fox is a colorful platform game starring Titus, a determined fox who must travel through hazardous environments to rescue his girlfriend. The game throws obstacles, enemi...

StarBlade is a 1990 DOS space shooter built around fast action, enemy waves, and the familiar challenge of keeping a small spacecraft alive against a very large number of things tr...

Worlds of Legend: Son of the Empire is an ambitious fantasy role-playing adventure that drops the player into a world of magic, danger and the usual assortment of people who urgent...

Project: Space Station is a 1987 simulation game that challenges players to design, manage, and operate a futuristic space station. Players must handle construction, resources, and...

Dark Ages Volume III: Dungeons of Doom closes out the trilogy with—you guessed it—more doom, dungeons, and ways to fall off platforms you swear you landed on. The serie...

Released in 1994, Alien Olympics answers the age-old question: “What if the Olympics were hosted by Martians on acid?” This wacky collection of mini-games has you compe...

Industrial machinery might not sound thrilling, yet Magnetic Crane transforms operating a giant crane into a surprisingly engaging puzzle experience. Your task is to move cargo eff...

Zyclunt is a side-scrolling action game developed and published by Phantagram in 1995. The game is set in a dystopian future where incurable diseases and a rise in criminal activit...

You don’t need a joystick the size of a tree to enjoy Konami’s Ping Pong (1996, DOS). Simple, fast, and maddeningly addictive, this digital table tennis game nails the ...

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...

Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone (1992) is what happens when a simple beat-’em-up decides to go globetrotting. Instead of just brawling through alleys, Billy and Jimmy trav...

Racter is one of the more unusual pieces of software from the early home-computer era: an experimental text-generation program designed to produce apparently original prose. Rather...

Pyramid Power (1986) is what happens when archaeology meets abstract strategy. You’re not dodging mummies or solving hieroglyph puzzles—instead, you’re stacking t...

John Madden Football was the first of a series of american football sports games sponsored by the coach of the same name. The first John Madden Football is an abandoned game develo...