abandonware games sorted by popularity

Kingdoms of Germany places players in charge of managing territories within medieval Germany, blending historical strategy with political decision-making and military planning. Suc...

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...

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...

Dragons of Flame (1989) was SSI’s continuation of the Dragonlance saga, following up on Heroes of the Lance. Like its predecessor, it was a side-scrolling action RPG that tes...

Russian Front 2: The Kursk Campaign is a 1990 DOS strategy game focused on one of the largest armored battles of World War II. Players command forces during the Battle of Kursk, ma...

If you wanted a mix of Clue, D&D, and a dash of text-parser frustration, Legends of Murder: Volume 1 – Stonedale Castle (1989) was your game. You play a detective dropped...

The Computer Edition of Scrabble takes the familiar word game and gives it the one opponent who never gets tired, never needs a coffee break, and never claims that a questionable d...

O-Pong is a 1996 DOS game that takes one of the simplest ideas in video game history and gives it another spin. At its heart, it is a variation on Pong, which means two sides, a ba...

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...

Before Donald Duck’s Playground, most kids were told video games were a waste of time. Here, Donald proves otherwise by turning menial labor into an epic adventure. Want to s...

Heavy Metal attempts to capture the spirit of its namesake with a blend of action and style that feels unapologetically bold. It leans into its aesthetic, offering a world that is ...

Ever wondered what it would feel like to be trapped in a neon nightmare where physics and color coordination decide your fate? Color Balls (1996, DOS) is like a Rubik’s Cube ...

Strife from 1996 is a first-person shooter game developed by Rogue Entertainment and published by Velocity, based on the Doom engine. It's often remembered for being one of the ear...

Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace combines Dungeons & Dragons role-playing with space exploration, producing one of the stranger but more memorable fantasy hybrids of the early 19...

Music Time Deluxe is a Windows-era music education and composition package designed to help users explore musical notation, theory, and basic composition. Instead of treating the c...

Long before fan-made clones flooded the internet, there was David's Kong (1984). It’s a straight-up Donkey Kong knockoff, but with enough quirks to make you smile. The premis...

Fantastic Dizzy, released in 1994, stars a cheerful egg with an unfortunate talent for getting into trouble. This platform-adventure hybrid mixes exploration, puzzle-solving, and l...

The classic television quiz show made its way to computers with Jeopardy! in 1987. Players compete by answering questions presented in the show's famous answer-and-question format,...

If you’ve ever wanted to feel intellectually inferior to a few hundred lines of 1981 code, Chess is your game. This digital board doesn’t bother with graphics flair or ...

You’d think a spring break trip would be relaxing. Not when you're a magically inclined college student with a knack for attracting trouble (and bikinis). Spellcasting 301 se...

In Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern, you don’t just ride dragons—you babysit them, talk to them, and occasionally save the world while trying not to fall off mid-fligh...

Rules of Engagement 2 builds on its predecessor's space-command formula with a larger and more sophisticated strategic experience. Players manage fleets, plan operations, assign sh...

Mickey's Space Adventure sends Mickey Mouse on an imaginative journey beyond Earth, blending exploration, storytelling, and educational elements into a charming computer adventure....

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...

Mental Blocks is a puzzle game built around spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and the ancient videogame tradition of making the player feel personally responsible for every m...

Tennis Elbow is where tennis simulation starts to get serious, almost suspiciously so. The physics are detailed, the controls precise, and the learning curve steep enough to scare ...

Sleepwalker is a 1993 DOS platform game inspired by the peculiar problem of wandering around while asleep, which is generally considered an unfortunate hobby even before somebody t...

Radix: Beyond the Void is a 1995 first-person shooter that combines fast combat with a distinctly futuristic setting. Players control a heavily armed combat vehicle and blast throu...

What happens when a basketball game forgets about realism and goes full cartoon? Basket Master (1990), that’s what. This Spanish-developed DOS gem pits two oddly animated bal...

Armour-Geddon is what you get when someone combines Wargames with a midlife crisis. Set in a post-nuke world where you pilot tanks, helicopters, and laser cannons to stop a doomsda...