abandonware games sorted by popularity

Few games from 1994 dared to ask the real question: “What if you gave an axe to someone with absolutely no training and dropped them into a dungeon with the reflexes of a slo...

Forbidden Quest (1983, DOS) belongs to that early era when imagination did most of the heavy lifting. Sparse visuals and text-driven cues invite you to picture grand dangers lurkin...

Based on the hit TV series, LA Law: The Computer Game (1992) lets you live out legal drama without needing a law degree—though it certainly helps. You manage cases, interview...

Kroz returns, and with it, your CRT monitor’s worst nightmare: ASCII graphics! Return to Kroz takes you back to a time when @ meant “you,” and everything else was...

Sports games in 1990 weren’t exactly realistic, but Double Dribble made a surprisingly good attempt. This Konami basketball title brought fast-paced, side-scrolling action to...

CyClones is a first-person shooter where you take on the role of a bio-engineered super-soldier fighting alien invaders. The controls are smooth, the weapons varied, and the level ...

A Dudley Dilemma (1988) sounds like the title of a children’s book, but it’s actually a very British text adventure for DOS where the stakes are politely quirky and mil...

Released in 2004, Lords of the Realm III is an interesting, sometimes controversial attempt to modernize a beloved strategy franchise. The move to full 3D and a more streamlined ap...

Conflict is a turn-based war game where you get to play Commander-in-Chief and yell at your virtual generals when things go wrong (which they often do). It's part military sim, par...

Fleet Command invites you to command modern naval forces with the calm authority of someone who definitely read the manual. This is strategy on a grand scale: radar screens glowing...

Saddle up, pardner. Billy The Kid puts you in the dusty boots of the infamous outlaw himself. This is the Wild West, DOS-style — pixel pistols, wanted posters, and dialogue t...

Ever wanted to design a roller coaster so terrifying it’d make your pixelated patrons vomit in joy? Coaster is your twisted playground. Build loops, dives, and stomach-churni...

Part racing game, part endurance test, African Trail Simulator dares you to hop on a pixel bike and brave the wild. You’ll encounter hostile terrain, wildlife, and the occasi...

Released in 1993, Fantasy Empires is a turn-based strategy game that politely assumes you enjoy spreadsheets as much as swords. Managing kingdoms, armies, and resources, it offers ...

No, not that Battlestar. Battlestar (1996) is more obscure than a reboot that never happened. Set in deep space with a top-down view and UI only a Windows 3.x user could love, it m...

Super Hang-On is an abandoned motorcycle arcade racing game, developed by Sega, designed by Yu Suzuki and published by Data East for DOS in 1988 (the arcade was released in 1987). ...

The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian is a title that feels like it was generated by rolling dice on a fantasy word table, and somehow that’s part of its ...

Superhero League of Hoboken is a humorous role-playing game (RPG) released in 1994, developed by Legend Entertainment. It's a quirky mix of a traditional RPG and an adventure game,...