abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

Commander Keen 3: Keen Must Die! is the kind of title that makes you wonder what this kid did to tick off an entire alien race. After foiling their plans twice, Keen takes the figh...

Ween: The Prophecy is a surreal French adventure that mixes fantasy, strange characters, puzzles, and an atmosphere that occasionally feels as though someone has poured a dream int...

In Gazza 2, the legendary English footballer Paul Gascoigne lends his name to a soccer game that manages to be as unpredictable as his career. Released in 1991, it’s a curiou...

In Conflict: Europe, the Cold War goes hot, and you’re in charge of keeping things cool—or launching World War III. It’s a strategy game with a doomsday timer, wh...

Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch is a 1992 adventure game inspired by Larry Niven's famous Ringworld universe. Players explore a richly imagined science-fiction setting, interac...

Amerzone is like stepping into a dream where logic is optional and atmosphere is everything. You play a journalist unraveling the mystery of a dying explorer’s last journey, ...

Rescue Rover 2 expands on the puzzle-focused gameplay of its predecessor with new environments, challenges, and hazards for the small robotic hero to overcome. Released in 1991, it...

Industrial machinery might not sound thrilling, yet Magnetic Crane transforms operating a giant crane into a surprisingly engaging puzzle experience. Your task is to move cargo eff...

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...

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...

Operation Europe: Path to Victory 1939-45 is a 1994 strategy game that covers the enormous scope of the Second World War and somehow expects the player to make sense of it all. The...

Worlds of Legend: Son of the Empire is an ambitious fantasy role-playing adventure that drops the player into a world of magic, danger and the usual assortment of people who urgent...

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...

Guardians of Infinity: to Save Kennedy is the sort of time-travel adventure that casually suggests you might want to prevent one of the most infamous assassinations in history befo...

Step into the shoes of a medieval lord in this 1991 DOS strategy game. Engage in jousting tournaments, siege castles, and vie for control of England. It's like playing Risk, but wi...

If you thought childhood was all about sunshine and puppies, Monster Bash begs to differ. This 1993 side-scroller throws you into the shoes of Johnny Dash, a slingshot-toting kid w...

Rolling Ronny is a 1991 DOS action game built around a simple but entertaining arcade concept, putting players in control of a character who must navigate hazardous environments wh...

Released in 1990, Les Manley in: Search for the King introduces players to an offbeat adventure full of comedy, quirky characters, and classic point-and-click puzzles. Les embarks ...

If you ever wanted to simulate being a helicopter pilot without leaving your MS-DOS comfort zone, Bravo Romeo Delta has you covered. This 1993 sim throws acronyms, radar screens, a...

Ever dreamed of a medieval Wall Street where knights swap swords instead of stocks? Knight Exchange turns that fever dream into pixels. Released in 1988 for DOS, this quirky strate...

FoxBASE 2 is a database development system from the early years of DOS computing, part of the family of tools that helped transform personal computers into practical information-ma...

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...

Cyberpunk meets click-and-point in Computer Underground, a game that looks like it was programmed in someone's garage—and probably was. You’re a hacker navigating a pix...

Iron Lord (1990, DOS) is the medieval fantasy game that tried to be everything at once—and somehow pulled it off. It’s part RPG, part action, part strategy, and part &l...

Before Titanic was a movie with a lot of weeping, there was Beyond the Titanic, a text adventure where surviving the iceberg is just the beginning. The game takes the historic disa...

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...

Italicized title: Jackal. Fast-paced and unapologetically action-oriented, this military shooter places players behind the wheel of an armed jeep on a mission to rescue prisoners o...

Based on a French comic series, Black Moon Chronicles (1999) is what you'd get if a fantasy novel and a real-time strategy game had a slightly awkward baby. The art is dark, the to...

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...