abandonware games sorted by popularity

It’s Pac-Man, except it’s… not. Cap Man is a low-budget clone with just enough charm to avoid immediate deletion. You’ve got the dots, the ghosts, the powe...

The Simpsons: Bart’s House of Weirdness is what happens when a platform game decides to take a holiday inside a surreal cartoon fever dream. You control Bart through two wild...

Before realistic fighting games, there was Boxer Rebellion—a 1982 title so primitive, it makes Pong look flashy. It’s boxing with fewer rules and more pixels per punch....

Great Naval Battles vol. 3: Fury in the Pacific expands the scope and the intensity, throwing you into larger conflicts with even more to manage. In Great Naval Battles vol. 3, the...

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...

Galleons of Glory invites players to sail the high seas in search of fame, fortune, and possibly a few cannonballs heading directly toward their ship. Naval combat games from this ...

Based on the blockbuster film, Last Action Hero arrived on DOS in 1993 with all the over-the-top action one would expect from a movie starring an unstoppable cinematic hero. Player...

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...

Don’t let the cartoony name fool you: Skullduggery: Adventures in Horror wants to unsettle you, and it’s surprisingly good at it. This early horror adventure mixes clas...

Titans of Steel: Warring Suns is a tactical role-playing game where enormous machines settle arguments in the least environmentally friendly way possible. Players command teams of ...

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...

If you thought Norse mythology needed more monochrome graphics, Caves of Thor (1989) has you covered. It’s an early Apogee game, meaning it’s tough, quirky, and uses le...

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...

In Reunion, you return to a solar system that’s moved on without you—like showing up to your own birthday party two centuries late. Your mission? Rebuild civilization, ...

Outpost is a 1994 science-fiction strategy and management game that asks players to establish a human colony far from Earth, which immediately raises several questions about transp...

A Dudley Dilemma (1988) sounds like the title of a children’s book, but it’s actually a very British text adventure for DOS where the stakes are politely quirky and mil...

By 1999, Liero had become a cult favorite thanks to its frantic real-time battles between heavily armed worms. Unlike turn-based competitors, the action never pauses, creating chao...

The Light Corridor is a wonderfully strange puzzle game built around a deceptively simple idea: guide a ball through a corridor while dealing with obstacles and environmental hazar...

The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is a science-fiction adventure built around time travel, investigation, and the slightly alarming realization that history can be ruined by...

Black Friday (1983) isn’t about shopping mayhem—though you might wish it were after trying to figure out what’s going on. This early DOS title is part stock marke...

Space Quest: The Lost Chapter is a curious artifact released in 2001 by dedicated fans who decided Roger Wilco deserved one more misadventure. Essentially a remake and expansion of...

If Doom and Laser Tag had a baby raised by dial-up modems, it would be 3D Cyber Blaster. Released in 1992, this shooter has you blasting neon enemies in a world that looks like a T...

World Darts takes the humble pub game of darts and gives it a suitably digital makeover. The objective sounds simple enough: throw little pointed objects at a circular board and tr...

Omnicron Conspiracy (1989, DOS) is a detective adventure wrapped in a cozy sci-fi blanket. You play as a Galactic Patrol agent solving crimes across alien worlds, all rendered in c...

Dangerous Streets is a fighting game that clearly wanted to be the next Street Fighter—and instead became a cult oddity. The character roster is bizarre, the animations oddly...

The Patcher 6.1 (1993, DOS) is one of those utilities-turned-experiences that makes you feel like a digital surgeon. Instead of saving lives, you’re poking around system file...

The Invaders is a straightforward arcade-style shooter built around one of gaming's oldest and most reliable ideas: things are flying toward you, so shoot them before they become y...

Mech Commander: Gold (1999) is tactical perfection for fans of giant robots and careful planning. Set in the BattleTech universe, the game puts you in command of a mercenary squad ...

This 1992 DOS version of Scrabble takes the world’s most civilized word battle and turns it into a duel between man and silicon. The AI opponent doesn’t cheat (much), b...

Columbus Discovery (1992, DOS) is a history-flavored point-and-click adventure where you, as a pixelated Christopher Columbus, set sail to "discover" lands that are already very mu...