abandonware games sorted by popularity

Doomdark's Revenge is a strategy and role-playing video game developed by Mike Singleton and originally released in 1985 for DOS and various home computer systems, including the ZX...

Space 1889 (1990, DOS) is steampunk before steampunk was cool. Based on the tabletop RPG, it sends you to an alternate Victorian era where the British Empire has expanded — t...

Italicized title: Jack the Ripper. Blending mystery, historical intrigue, and adventure gameplay, this title places players in Victorian London during one of history’s most i...

Fish or be fished could be the motto of Bass Duel (1993), a competitive angling game that pits you against a friend or an AI in a fight to the last splash. Strategy is key: where t...

Dino Crisis takes the survival-horror formula and makes one very important adjustment: instead of zombies, you get dinosaurs. Because apparently undead people were not terrifying e...

The Dame Was Loaded is a noir-flavored adventure that throws the player into a world of private investigators, suspicious characters, smoky atmospheres, and the sort of trouble tha...

Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999, Windows XP) is the kind of game that leans across the table and says, “What if we mashed every genre together and asked David Bowie to help?&rd...

Released in 1988, Decisive Battles of the American Civil War: Vol. 1 is as straightforward as its title. You get historical accuracy, a serious strategy engine, and about as many g...

Ninja Gaiden is a 1990 action-platform game starring Ryu Hayabusa, one of gaming’s most famous ninja heroes. The adventure combines fast combat, precise platforming, dramatic sto...

Harpoon II expands on the original with more content and a greater sense of scale, as if it decided the ocean was not quite big enough the first time around. The added depth makes ...

Seal Team (1993) drops you into the muddy waters of the Vietnam War as part of an elite Navy SEAL squad. It’s surprisingly realistic for its time—meticulously tactical,...

Step aside, arcade action—B-24 Combat Simulator (1987) is here to test your patience, eyesight, and possibly your sanity. It’s all about realism, baby. You’ll tak...

The Beverly Hillbillies turns the television comedy into a lighthearted computer adventure built around the Clampett family and their wonderfully strange arrival in Beverly Hills. ...

Part interactive novel, part point-and-click adventure, Daughter of Serpents (1992) is one of those games that makes you feel like you stumbled onto a forgotten pulp novel. Set in ...

The Blue & the Gray is a strategy game built around the American Civil War, giving players the chance to command forces on either side of the conflict. Released in 1993, it focuses...

Rayman Forever brings together Rayman's colorful platforming adventure and additional content in a package aimed at giving players a generous helping of Ubisoft's imaginative masco...

If you ever looked at regular Tetris and thought, “What this really needs is eye-melting colors and a possible migraine,” then Acid Tetris (1998, DOS) is your jam. It&r...

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...

Total Carnage is a wonderfully unsubtle top-down shooter in which the solution to almost every problem is to fire more ammunition. Lots more ammunition. You control heavily armed s...

Crusade in Europe is a detailed World War II strategy game that lets you take command of the Allied or Axis forces during some of the war’s most famous campaigns. It’s ...

Sirwood throws you into a fantasy kingdom where the trees are friendlier than some of the locals. Half strategy, half adventure, it's the kind of game that expects you to think, pl...

Superfrog is a cheerful platform adventure starring a frog who has somehow found himself in a world filled with enemies, obstacles, coins, and enough dangerous gaps to make amphibi...

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...

Teen Agent is a charming, tongue-in-cheek adventure about a teenager recruited to save the world because, well, why not? With its colorful art, witty dialogue, and delightfully abs...

Sonic Millennium Edition is a fan-oriented Sonic project that brings the famous blue hedgehog into a PC setting with a distinctly retro spirit. The game focuses on the familiar ing...

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...

Lyle in Cube Sector (2006, Windows) looks like it fell out of a lost NES cartridge and landed straight on your hard drive. This indie metroidvania has you tossing cubes, exploring ...

Risk is a 1991 Windows 3.x adaptation of the classic board game of global conquest, bringing armies, diplomacy, and questionable strategic decisions to the computer screen. Players...

By the time Earthworm Jim hit DOS, its reputation already preceded it, and it largely lived up to the hype. This is a platformer that thrives on absurdity: a worm in a spacesuit, b...

Tennis Cup 2 refines its predecessor with smoother controls and a broader range of shots, making rallies feel more dynamic and less predictable. Matches demand attention and strate...