abandonware games sorted by popularity

Evasive Action is a space shooter that embraces speed and precision over spectacle. You pilot a small craft through dangerous environments, dodging obstacles and enemies with littl...

If Hamlet had a sequel directed by a DOS programmer, Castle Elsinore would be it. This interactive fiction game drops you right into Shakespearean drama with murder, betrayal, and ...

Seek and Destroy is a 1996 DOS action game centered on military missions involving vehicles, weapons, and enemy targets. Players control combat equipment and move through dangerous...

No relation to Dune (except for being a total rip-off), Arrakis is a homebrew strategy game that feels like a tribute to the sandiest planet in sci-fi. You mine spice, fight vaguel...

Hockey League Simulator takes the thrilling, bone-crunching sport of hockey and boldly asks: what if you never actually played it? Instead, you manage teams, tweak stats, and stare...

In Diggers 2: Extractors, released in 1995, the digging franchise doubled down on strategy while adding a dash of science fiction flair. This time, your miners aren’t just bu...

Deus is an ambitious science-fiction adventure that blends exploration, combat, puzzles, and role-playing elements into a sprawling futuristic journey. The game drops you into a my...

Ah, Death Knights of Krynn—a 1991 RPG where you fight hordes of undead in the Dragonlance universe. SSI’s Gold Box series wasn’t known for holding your hand, and ...

Step into the gray, morally ambiguous world of corporate domination with Big Business. It’s Monopoly with fewer dice and more spreadsheets. Crush your competitors, manipulate...

Holiday World Tycoon is the sort of game that feels like it was designed after someone spent a bit too long staring at a postcard rack in an airport gift shop and thought, &ld...

Ultimate Domain blends real-time strategy with space opera flair, inviting players to conquer the galaxy one cautious decision at a time. You manage fleets, resources, and diplomac...

Williams Arcade Classics is essentially a small time machine disguised as a computer game, collecting several classic arcade experiences in one package. Instead of asking players t...

Wizard's Crown is a classic fantasy role-playing game that gives players a party of adventurers, a dangerous world, and a generous supply of reasons to regret entering the nearest ...

In 1986, Hacker arrived with a premise that felt thrillingly dangerous at the time: you, alone, tapping into secret computer systems and uncovering conspiracies. No explosions, no ...

Vengeance of Excalibur is a fantasy role-playing adventure built around the legendary sword Excalibur and a suitably grand quest involving magic, monsters, and medieval intrigue. P...

A gentle adventure inspired by the animated film, Once Upon a Forest (1995, DOS) delivers an eco-friendly story wrapped in side-scrolling gameplay. You guide three tiny forest crea...

Solidarnosc is a 1991 DOS game built around the Polish political and social movement that became one of the defining forces in the country's modern history. Rather than offering co...

Originally released in 1986, Larn is a classic roguelike that wastes absolutely no time reminding players that dungeon exploration is a dangerous profession. Every descent into its...

Crime City is an isometric action game that throws you into the role of a lone enforcer cleaning up the streets. Armed with a trusty weapon and a questionable sense of self-preserv...

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 ...

In Captain Comic 2: Fractured Reality, our fearless spandex-wearing space explorer returns—but this time, he's bouncing between dimensions like a malfunctioning microwave. Th...

Deluxe Paint 1 is one of the landmark graphics programs of the early personal-computer era, particularly associated with the Amiga before its tools and ideas found wider influence....

The Lost Vale is the great “what if” of the Ultima series. Developed as an expansion to Pagan but never officially released, it became the stuff of legend. Players were...

Italicized title: Jack Nicklaus Golf & Course Design: Signature Edition. This expanded golf simulation delivers exactly what fans of the sport might hope for: realistic gamepla...

Borland Eureka: the Solver is an abandoned text-based application developed by Borland Software Corporation and released in 1987 for DOS. The product is designed to solve complex p...

Wing Commander: Armada takes the familiar space-combat formula and adds a strategic layer, turning the war against the Kilrathi into something considerably larger than a series of ...

Music Time Deluxe is a Windows-era music education and composition package designed to help users explore musical notation, theory, and basic composition. Instead of treating the c...

Shooting Gallery is a 1990 DOS action game built around the simple and immediately understandable pleasure of aiming at targets and trying to hit them. Players face a variety of sh...

Released back when computers still hummed ominously and monitors glowed like radioactive jellyfish, Epidemic! throws you into the grim business of stopping a deadly outbreak. The i...

Carriers at War is a detailed naval strategy game focused on aircraft carriers and the brutal arithmetic of Pacific warfare. Players command fleets, plan operations, launch aircraf...