abandonware games sorted by popularity

Flying Tigers 2 (1994, DOS) doubles down on the formula of its predecessor and adds a bit more bite to the bark. The action is still brisk, but the skies feel busier, the stakes sl...

Beyond Columns is what happens when someone looks at Tetris and says, “What if we made it... slightly fancier?” This match-three puzzle game involves dropping shiny col...

Released in 1984 for DOS, Farenheit 451 is one of those early adventure games that feels like it’s constantly judging your typing skills. Loosely inspired by Bradbury’s...

Invaders 78 in 2000 is a loving revival of classic arcade shooting, bringing retro alien-blasting into the modern era with affectionate energy. It understands exactly what made the...

If you’ve ever wondered what the world of finance might look like as a video game—minus the existential dread—Inside Trader has you covered. This quirky DOS title...

Sierra Championship Boxing is an abandoned sports boxing game, developed by Evryware and released by Sierra On-Line in 1985. You can issue instructions to the boxer between rounds,...

Heroes of the Lance takes the beloved fantasy setting and turns it into a side-scrolling adventure that is as ambitious as it is occasionally frustrating. Controlling a party of he...

Helter Skelter feels like a delightful experiment in chaos, the kind of game that throws ideas at the wall just to see which ones stick. With its quirky mechanics and slightly unhi...

Few games from 1994 dared to ask the real question: “What if you gave an axe to someone with absolutely no training and dropped them into a dungeon with the reflexes of a slo...

Lancelot (1988) is an action-adventure that draws loosely from Arthurian legend and very tightly from the difficulty school of “good luck.” You guide the famous knight ...

Final Frontier is a late-80s slice of space ambition, the kind that assumes you’re perfectly happy staring at menus while imagining epic interstellar conquest. It’s str...

Borland Eureka: the Solver is an abandoned text-based application developed by Borland Software Corporation and released in 1987 for DOS. The product is designed to solve complex p...

If you've ever dreamed of throwing darts, arm wrestling, or playing a sleazy round of "Last Call Larry" without actually smelling like stale beer, Bar Games is your digital dive ba...

Borrowed Time is a graphic adventure video game developed and published by Interplay Productions. It was released in 1985 for various platforms, including the Apple Macintosh,...

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...

Despite the baffling title (Book I – Chapter 2, yes, really), this is a charmingly earnest old-school RPG. Think “Ultima clone with extra oatmeal” and you're clos...

Zyclunt is a side-scrolling action game developed and published by Phantagram in 1995. The game is set in a dystopian future where incurable diseases and a rise in criminal activit...

Twilight 2000 drops you into a grim alternate future where global conflict has gone spectacularly wrong, and survival is less about heroics and more about scraping by. Released in ...

Heimdall 2: Into the Hall of Worlds expands on the original with more content and a broader scope, as if the developers decided one world was simply not enough. The gameplay remain...