abandonware games sorted by popularity

Kaeon is one of those obscure role-playing adventures that quietly invites players into a fantasy world without relying on flashy presentation. Exploration, character growth, and t...

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...

Paint Shop Pro 3 is an early version of PaintShop Pro, which is a graphics editing program known for its user-friendly interface and a range of features that cater to both amateur ...

In Druglord, you’re back on the mean streets, older, wiser, and with slightly better ASCII. Think of it as Drug Wars’s bigger, nastier cousin. You start broke, deal wit...

With a name like Genocide (1996), you know you’re not in for a lighthearted romp. This DOS platformer is dark, moody, and filled with enemies that seem genetically engineered...

Imagine being the captain of a space freighter crewed entirely by neurotic aliens, each with a personality straight out of a sitcom. That’s Psi 5 Trading Company in a nutshel...

The title Dinosaur Balls might raise eyebrows today, but in 1992 it was just a quirky DOS puzzle game. Think of it as prehistoric Bubble Bobble: you fire colored spheres to match a...

Roll up, roll up! Circus Attractions turns your PC into a low-resolution big top full of minigames, each one zanier than the last. Think clown juggling, lion taming, and tightrope ...

The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Presto Studios, released in 1995 as a sequel to The Journeyman Project. The Journeyma...

Released in 1988, Serve & Volley transformed tennis into a surprisingly entertaining digital pastime. It captured the excitement of the sport without requiring players to understan...

DOSBox is an open-source emulator that allows you to run software and games designed for the MS-DOS operating system on modern computers. As you probably already know, MS-DOS was a...

You probably didn’t know you needed a game about a rapping, music-spinning dragon, but DJ Puff fills that oddly specific void. Released in 1993 for DOS, this platformer featu...

_Jewels of Darkness_ is a compilation of classic text adventures released in 1986, gathering several fantasy quests into one package. Rather than relying on graphics, the game asks...

Hardball 2 is baseball distilled into a form that manages to be both accessible and surprisingly tense. It does not overwhelm you with complexity, but it gives you enough control t...

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...

System Shock drops you into a space station run by an AI that has clearly read too many villain manuals and decided to try them all at once. SHODAN, the game’s iconic antagon...

Released in 1990, Dragon Strike dared to combine the wonder of Dungeons & Dragons with the thrill of first-person flight simulation. Yes, instead of piloting jets, you piloted ...

Fable (1996) is one of those DOS curiosities that feels like it was built late at night with equal parts ambition and caffeine. It presents itself as a fantasy role-playing experie...