abandonware games sorted by popularity

Silicon Dreams by Level 9 Computing is a trilogy of interactive fiction (text adventure) games released in the mid-1980s. The trilogy includes three separate games: Snowball, Retur...

Hard Hat Mack is the kind of game that proves construction work can be more dangerous in pixels than in real life, provided real life had ladders that seem determined to betray you...

Grand Prix Wizard sounds like it might involve spells, but sadly no one is casting fireballs at rival drivers. Instead, Grand Prix Wizard leans into management, asking you to handl...

Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O'Fun, released in 1989 for DOS, is a platformer that looks cheerful but hides a surprisingly mean streak. Set in a circus filled with traps, clowns, and ...

Ready to guess wildly about the cost of household objects from the comfort of a DOS screen? The Price is Right (1990, DOS) brings the TV game show to your keyboard with a mixture o...

Grand Slam Bridge is exactly what it says on the tin, which is both comforting and slightly intimidating if you are not already fluent in the mysterious language of card games. In ...

Captain Dynamo is what happens when a circus acrobat chugs ten cans of cola and decides to take on gravity itself. You’re bouncing, flipping, and springing through traps and ...

In 1991, DOS gamers were treated to the weirdest parenting simulator ever: Baby Joe in: Going Home. You play as Baby Joe, an infant inexplicably left to crawl through caves, forest...

Pharaoh is a city-building strategy game released in 1999 by Impressions Games and published by Sierra Studios. It is set in ancient Egypt and is heavily inspired by Caesar III, an...

Pac-in-Time is an abandoned action side-scrolling platformer game developed by Kalisto Entertainment and released by Mindscape in 1993 for DOS. Pac-in-time was but also published f...

Great Naval Battles vol. 2: Guadalcanal 1942-43 puts you in charge of naval warfare where every decision feels heavy and every mistake echoes across the ocean. In Great Naval Battl...

The 7th Guest is one of those games that defined the early CD-ROM era, proudly showing off its multimedia capabilities while quietly messing with your head. Set in a haunted mansio...

Dragon Lord (1990) is what happens when you let a fantasy novelist design a strategy game. You’re a would-be sorcerer trying to raise dragons, manage villages, and conquer la...

In Space Quest 5: The Next Mutation, Roger Wilco finally receives something resembling a promotion. Released in 1993, the game puts him in charge of a spaceship and a crew, which f...

If Tetris and a Rubik’s Cube had a weird love child, it’d be Brix. This 1992 brain-snapper is a tile-sliding puzzle game where every move counts and logic is your only ...

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...