abandonware games sorted by popularity

Gnome Ranger feels like the kind of game that was designed by someone who really loved puzzles but maybe didn’t love explaining them. You control a gnome (clearly a recurring...

Iron Blood (1996, DOS) is the kind of fighting game that makes you wonder if robots really need martial arts lessons. The story is wafer-thin—something about futuristic warri...

Acrobat Reader was the first of a family of application software developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Acrobat...

The Temple of Elemental Evil is a computer role-playing game (CRPG) released in 2003 by Troika Games and published by Atari. The game is set in the World of Greyhawk, one of D...

Ford Simulator 1 (1987, DOS) is equal parts driving demo and corporate handshake, inviting you to sample shiny vehicles without leaving your desk. You cruise digital roads, admire ...

Think of Bass Tour (1992) as the road trip version of virtual fishing. More simulation than arcade, it lets you travel, pick locations, study conditions, and obsess over bait types...

In 1988, kids with floppy disks instead of smartphones got Designasaurus, a quirky blend of education and prehistoric fantasy. The premise: design your own dinosaur and see if it s...

Omega (1989, DOS) is what happens when someone hands you a robot, a wrench, and a thick manual, then says, “Good luck out there.” Instead of piloting a mech, you actual...

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...

In Street Sports Basketball (1987, DOS), forget polished courts and referees—this is basketball played between garages, with trash cans as sidelines and pride on the line. Th...

In Taipan for Windows, you’re not a hero, you’re a 19th-century capitalist trying to get rich trading tea, silk, and the occasional bit of opium in the South China Sea....

Welcome to Border Zone (1987, DOS), where the Cold War is hot and your only weapon is your brain (and maybe a good map). This text-based espionage thriller from Infocom combines sp...

What if the Nazis won? Kronolog: The Nazi Paradox (1993, DOS) takes that nightmare seriously. You play a time traveler trying to fix history, navigating through an oppressive, Orwe...

Sports games in 1990 weren’t exactly realistic, but Double Dribble made a surprisingly good attempt. This Konami basketball title brought fast-paced, side-scrolling action to...

Humans 3: Evolution - Lost in Time takes the familiar formula of guiding small, vulnerable characters and adds a time-travel twist. Released in 1995, it challenges you to manage gr...

Hot on the heels of the first, Caverns of Kroz 2 (also 1989) doesn’t mess with the formula—it sharpens it. More puzzles, more monsters, more reasons to scream at fallin...

Before apps, spreadsheets, and AI Dungeon Masters, there was Dungeon Master’s Assistant Vol. 1. Released in 1988, this tool was a digital sidekick for pen-and-paper D&D p...

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...

Silicon Dreams by Level 9 Computing is a trilogy of interactive fiction (text adventure) games released in the mid-1980s. The trilogy includes three separate games: Snowball, Retur...