abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Train Escape to Normandy is a wartime strategy game built around one of history's most dangerous occupations: trying to survive military operations while trains, soldiers and e...

Blitz Runner is a fast-moving action game built around speed, reflexes and the increasingly difficult task of staying alive while everything around you seems determined to get in t...

Part racing game, part endurance test, African Trail Simulator dares you to hop on a pixel bike and brave the wild. You’ll encounter hostile terrain, wildlife, and the occasi...

Released in 1990, Kick Off 2 is one of those football games that politely refuses to hold your hand. The ball does not magically stick to your player, meaning every sprint becomes ...

In Ambush at Sorinor, tactics meet fantasy in a land where ambushing people is apparently the national sport. You’re a mercenary commander picking the right team to win missi...

European Championship 1992 captures football in a raw, almost scrappy form. This isn’t about realism or presentation; it’s about getting the ball forward and hoping for...

The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants puts Bart Simpson in the middle of an extraterrestrial invasion and gives him a surprisingly unpleasant afternoon. The aliens are preparing...

Great Napoleonic Battles is the kind of game that assumes you are ready to command armies and possibly rewrite history before breakfast. In Great Napoleonic Battles, strategy is ev...

Shanghai is a digital adaptation of the classic mahjong solitaire format, transforming a traditional tile-matching puzzle into a remarkably addictive computer pastime. The objectiv...

American Conquest is the kind of game that throws hundreds of little soldiers at you and says, "Good luck, General!" Set during the early colonization of the Americas, this RTS ble...

Squarez Deluxe! is a 1993 puzzle game built around colored blocks, careful positioning, and the increasingly dangerous realization that your apparently brilliant move has just ruin...

Released in 1990, Dawn Raider is one of those obscure DOS shooters that probably spent more time in floppy disk boxes than in actual computers. It’s a vertical shoot-’e...

MicroProse Soccer takes the beautiful game and turns it into a fast, energetic arcade experience where spectacular goals matter more than elaborate tactics. The controls are simple...

Based on the cult fantasy novels by Roger Zelazny, 9 Princes in Amber is a 1985 text adventure that assumes two things: you’ve read the books, and you enjoy typing things lik...

Laxius Power is a traditional Japanese-style role-playing game with a generous helping of exploration, battles, character development, and fantasy melodrama. Its story follows youn...

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...

Darkstone tried to ride the Diablo wave in 1999, and honestly, it didn’t do a bad job. With 3D graphics (impressive for the time) and a soundtrack that takes itself way too s...

Wizard of Wor 98 revisits the classic maze-shooter concept and gives it a late-1990s computer makeover. Players move through labyrinthine arenas while hunting monsters, dodging att...

If Krazy Ivan (1996, Windows XP) had a motto, it’d be “Blow it up first, ask later.” You pilot a massive mech across post-apocalyptic battlefields, obliterating a...

Word Perfect 5 is one of the defining DOS word processors of its generation, offering a remarkably powerful writing environment while remaining firmly rooted in keyboard-driven com...

HTML Tads is a development tool aimed at creating interactive fiction for the web, bringing the wonderfully old-fashioned pleasure of text adventures into a more modern environment...

In the late 80s, when gamebooks were trying to escape paper and sneak into floppy disks, GrailQuest shows up wearing Monty Python armor and refusing to be taken seriously. In Grail...

In Dragon’s Lair 2: Time Warp (1990), Dirk doesn’t just fight dragons—he bungles his way through time itself. Want to rescue your wife Daphne? Prepare to stumble ...

Golden Eagle is a platformer that feels like it’s constantly testing your reflexes—and your patience. You navigate traps, enemies, and environmental hazards in a quest ...

Rastan is Conan-the-Barbarian energy distilled into a side-scrolling adventure where your primary verb is “destroy.” The DOS port lacks a bit of arcade sparkle, but the...

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...

Before Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, the world only knew of one man who could mow down Nazis in a maze of corridors — then Blake showed up with a laser gun and a mission to ri...

The Dame Was Loaded is a noir-flavored adventure that throws the player into a world of private investigators, suspicious characters, smoky atmospheres, and the sort of trouble tha...

In Psycho (1988), you’re tossed into a pixelated nightmare loosely inspired by Hitchcock’s classic, though Norman Bates might not recognize the place. You explore creep...

The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian is a title that feels like it was generated by rolling dice on a fantasy word table, and somehow that’s part of its ...