abandonware games sorted by popularity

Metaltech: Earthsiege delivers a serious dose of giant-robot warfare, placing players in the cockpit of powerful Herc machines during a desperate conflict against overwhelming enem...

Think you're smart? Arcade Trivia Quiz (1993) is here to humble you with rapid-fire questions about pop culture, history, and whatever else the developers could fit on a floppy dis...

Alice: The Personal Pascal is an educational programming environment designed to make Pascal programming approachable for younger users and beginners. Instead of throwing a learner...

Crime Time blends point-and-click adventure with a murder mystery that’s as much about wit as it is about clues. You play an innocent man framed for murder, scrambling to gat...

The sequel nobody expected but everyone button-mashed through. Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 adds more characters, more chaos, and less coherence. This time you’re Lee (no relation to Bru...

Monuments of Mars (1991) is one of those puzzle-platformers where patience is less a virtue and more a survival tool. You’re stranded on Mars, exploring alien ruins filled wi...

Robinson's Requiem is a survival adventure that takes the traditional deserted-island scenario and removes most of the comforting assumptions about survival. You are stranded on an...

Royal Flush Pinball is a 1994 DOS pinball game that brings the familiar combination of flippers, bumpers, targets, ramps, and flashing lights to the PC screen. The goal is wonderfu...

ASCII art has never been so morbid. Classic Hangman is exactly what it says on the tin: guess the word or watch your little stick figure meet a tragic end. Letters become lifelines...

Released in 1983, Battle for Normandy plays less like a game and more like a history book that came alive, donned a helmet, and asked for a coffee. This is wargaming at its purest:...

Earthrise taps into late Cold War anxieties, presenting a future shaped by political tension and hard choices. Part strategy, part simulation, it tasks you with managing global sys...

Virtual Reality Studio is a DOS-era development tool aimed at creating interactive three-dimensional environments at a time when virtual reality was still surrounded by science-fic...

TheDraw 4 is a classic DOS text and ASCII-art editor, built for users who wanted their otherwise boring command-line screens to have a little personality. It provides tools for cre...

Compilation titles often feel like a random pile of games tossed together with minimal ceremony, but Future Classics Collection from 1990 tries to do something slightly more ambiti...

Tracon for Windows brings the air traffic control simulation into the Windows environment, preserving the central challenge of coordinating aircraft while presenting the experience...

Miniature golf is already a whimsical sport, but Fuzzy's World of Miniature Space Golf decides Earth simply isn’t strange enough. Released in 1995, this quirky DOS game sends...

Before Michael Bay got his hands on the franchise, Autobots (1989, DOS) offered a more... subtle approach to transforming robot mayhem. Well, not subtle exactly — more like c...

Jim Power: The Lost Dimension in 3D is a colorful action platformer built around fast movement, shooting, jumping, and an almost suspicious amount of danger. The player controls Ji...

Praetorians is a real-time strategy (RTS) game originally released in 2003 by Pyro Studios. Set in the Roman Empire during its peak, the game offers a blend of strategy and tactics...

By 1993, Dragon Force - Day 3 landed as an obscure tactical experiment on DOS. Despite the name, it’s not about a power metal band’s rehearsal schedule but rather a day...

Side Arms Hyper Dyne is a 1988 DOS shoot-'em-up adapted from Capcom's arcade game, putting players into a futuristic combat suit and sending them directly into a hostile alien batt...

Star Fleet 2: Krellan Commander builds on its predecessor with a larger and more ambitious space strategy experience. Players command a starship during a major interstellar conflic...

In Power Drive, rally racing comes with an extra dose of “don’t hit the tree.” It’s all about navigating winding tracks with a sense of timing that borders ...

Released in 1993, Eye of the Storm is an action-oriented game that embraces speed and spectacle. You’re thrust into fast-paced scenarios where reflexes matter more than long-...

Football Glory (1995, DOS) approaches the beautiful game with a playful smirk and a willingness to bend reality for entertainment’s sake. The players move with exaggerated fl...

In Armor Alley, you command a helicopter in a warzone that looks like a side-scrolling office meeting gone wrong. It’s strategy meets action: you must manage resources, deplo...

The classic television quiz show made its way to computers with Jeopardy! in 1987. Players compete by answering questions presented in the show's famous answer-and-question format,...

Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio is a 1988 DOS adaptation of the classic economic and political strategy game in which players attempt to rule a small Italian principality. The objective...

Legend of the Red Dragon (1989) isn’t so much a traditional game as it is a slice of online history. This BBS door game allowed players to log in, fight monsters, flirt with ...

Ah, Chessmaster 3000. The title alone sounds like it should have lasers and robot arms, but what you get is a thoughtful, elegant chess sim that finally brings charisma to the game...