abandonware games sorted by popularity

In Black Crown (1995), you play as a prince with a very punchable name, trying to reclaim his rightful throne by solving puzzles and dying a lot. It's one of those DOS-era games wh...

In Tau Ceti, you’re the lone pilot of a heavily armed hoverbike trying to reboot a dying colony under an alien sun. It’s slow, moody, and brilliantly atmospheric. The v...

In Scapeghost (1989), you’re not just dead—you’re also on the clock. As police officer Alan Chance, recently murdered and newly spectral, you’ve got one las...

Hot on the heels of the first, Caverns of Kroz 2 (also 1989) doesn’t mess with the formula—it sharpens it. More puzzles, more monsters, more reasons to scream at fallin...

When Strider (1989, DOS) hit PCs, gamers suddenly felt like ninjas who’d been dropped into a Cold War fever dream. You play as Hiryu, a futuristic assassin slicing through me...

Ah, Apache Strike (1989), the game where you're the lone helicopter pilot flying through blocky cities that look like they were made of leftover Lego bricks. Your mission? Blow up ...

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...

Dark Sun 2: Wake of the Ravager takes the harsh desert world of Athas and turns up the intensity. Building on its predecessor, it offers deeper role-playing, improved combat, and a...

In Battle Chess 2: Chinese Chess (1990), the classic formula gets an eastern makeover—complete with new rules, a new board, and a fresh batch of animated fatalities. If you t...

Karnov is a classic side-scrolling action arcade game developed by Data East in 1987. The game features a unique protagonist named Jinborov Karnovski, or "Karnov", a fire-breathing...

Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor is a fantasy role-playing game (RPG) developed by New World Computing and released in 1999. It is the seventh installment in the long-runni...

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...

If you’ve ever wondered what the world of finance might look like as a video game—minus the existential dread—Inside Trader has you covered. This quirky DOS title...

Top Gun is an abandoned flight combat simulation game developed by Ocean Software and released by Thunder Mountain in 1987 for DOS and a number of other 8 bit platforms. As the tit...

NetWars, developed by Novell, is a 3D space shooter video game originally released in 1993 for DOS. NetWars was designed primarily as a promotional tool to demonstrate the networki...