abandonware games sorted by popularity

Hi-Octane is exactly what the title suggests, a fast-paced racing experience that prioritizes speed and chaos over realism. The vehicles feel more like futuristic experiments than ...

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption is a dark action RPG that combines gothic horror, character development, and a surprisingly complicated vampire social life. You play Christof ...

Off Shore Warrior is a 1988 action game that combines military combat with the distinctly unusual setting of offshore environments. Players take control of a heavily armed vehicle ...

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...

Strategy fans with a taste for sci-fi and logistics will find something special in Full Metal Planete. Released in 1990 for DOS and Mac, the game is essentially a futuristic board ...

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...

By 1992, Dragon’s Lair 3: The Curse of Mordread continued Dirk’s tradition of “failing spectacularly until you don’t.” Once again, you guide the world...

Released in 1990, Lightspeed blends space simulation, exploration, and strategic resource management into an ambitious science fiction adventure. Players travel across distant star...

The Lost Treasures of Infocom is essentially a library of interactive fiction for players willing to trade spectacular graphics for spectacularly active imaginations. The collectio...

Before Indiana Jones had a whip, Chagunitzu had block puzzles. Released in 1990 by Softdisk (and developed by a young John Romero), this game is a precursor to God of Thunder and p...

Boston Bomb Club (1991, DOS) is a Rube Goldberg fever dream disguised as a puzzle game. Your mission: guide bombs (yes, bombs) along increasingly elaborate tracks using contraption...

Fountain of Dreams is a post-apocalyptic RPG that feels like a distant, slightly sunburned cousin of more famous wasteland adventures. Set in a radioactive Florida, it sends you sc...

Santa's Xmas Caper is a 1993 DOS holiday-themed action game that puts players in the middle of a festive adventure involving Santa Claus and the usual seasonal chaos. Instead of qu...

Starglider 2 takes the original's flying and shooting formula and expands it into a much larger science-fiction playground. Released in 1989, it gives players a futuristic craft ca...

Despite its title, Endless Horror doesn’t go for cheap jump scares—it prefers the slow, creeping kind of dread that seeps in while you stare at murky DOS graphics and w...

Monopoly (Adam Stevens) offers another computer interpretation of the classic property-trading board game, bringing familiar streets, rents, and financial scheming to the DOS envir...

Part interactive fiction, part “how far can curiosity push you,” Essex places you aboard a massive starship filled with secrets. As you explore its dim corridors and ma...

Nitemare 3D is a 1994 first-person shooter that takes the basic idea of exploring dark corridors and adds monsters, weapons, magic, and enough supernatural unpleasantness to make t...

Ruins of Cawdor is a 1995 DOS role-playing game centered on dungeon exploration, combat, character development, and the discovery of ancient secrets. Players venture into dangerous...

War of the Lance turns the Dragonlance setting into a substantial fantasy strategy game, allowing players to participate in the enormous conflict between the forces of good and evi...

Also known as The Crypt, Castle Master 2 is like the goth sibling of the first game—darker, moodier, and with more corpses lying around. The gameplay’s pretty much the ...

Follow the Reader (1992, DOS) is an educational oddity that feels like a kindly librarian discovered the power of DOS and decided to make literacy a competitive sport. You guide wo...

Fox Ranger is a side-scrolling shooter that wastes no time explaining itself—because lasers are self-explanatory. You pilot a sleek craft through swarms of enemies with the s...

Released in 1990, Disc feels like a relic from a parallel universe where Frisbee is the most important sport in history. The game is minimalist to a fault: you throw discs, catch d...

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...

If classic fantasy ever needed a designated clown, Eric the Unready would proudly volunteer. This 1993 adventure from Legend Entertainment gleefully demolishes every heroic trope i...

Clyde is no hero—he's just a guy in a helmet trying to jump through castles and avoid death by... everything. Clyde's Adventure is a charming little platformer that dares to ...

Sonic Millennium Edition is a fan-oriented Sonic project that brings the famous blue hedgehog into a PC setting with a distinctly retro spirit. The game focuses on the familiar ing...

Where Time Stood Still is an adventure set in a strange, dangerous land where getting lost is considerably easier than finding the exit. You guide a small group of characters throu...

Tongue of the Fatman is one of those games that seems to have escaped from a particularly strange corner of an arcade designer's imagination. It is a fighting game, but instead of ...