abandonware games sorted by popularity

Hole in One is golf distilled into its purest, slightly pixelated essence, where patience is key and frustration lurks behind every poorly judged swing. Released in 1995, it captur...

Ah, BurgerTime. The game that asked the important question: what if we made a platformer about a tiny chef assembling giant burgers while being chased by sentient hot dogs? You gui...

Released in 1993 for DOS, A320 Airbus is less “Top Gun” and more “Intro to Aeronautical Bureaucracy.” It’s a flight simulator so realistic, even real ...

For those who think snooker is too posh and billiards too French, there's Archer Maclean's Pool, the most ‘90s way to simulate the timeless art of arguing over whether that s...

Based on the famously chaotic 1995 movie, Waterworld (1997, DOS) somehow manages to be more confusing than the film itself—and that’s saying something. This action-adve...

Checkers for Windows is exactly what it says on the tin—checkers. But somehow, it turns this rainy-afternoon classic into a digital duel of patience and spite. No explosions,...

In Armor Alley, you command a helicopter in a warzone that looks like a side-scrolling office meeting gone wrong. It’s strategy meets action: you must manage resources, deplo...

Flying at incredible speed sounds glamorous until you realize mountains have absolutely no intention of moving out of the way. Mach 3 delivers fast-paced action by placing players ...

Skifree is an adorable downhill romp… at least until the monster shows up. You start by zipping peacefully through flags and jumps, enjoying the zen simplicity of early Wind...

Epic Pinball is what happens when a small team says, “Sure, let’s make a pinball game,” and accidentally creates one of the most addictive shareware hits of the d...

Math was never supposed to be this exciting. In Number Munchers, you’re a green blob with an appetite for multiplication tables, gobbling up correct answers while dodging &ld...

Enchanter is interactive fiction with teeth. As a text adventure, it relies entirely on imagination, yet it manages to feel richer than many graphical games of its era. You play as...

La Grande Armée (1991) returns to Napoleonic warfare, but with a sharper focus on military tactics than imperial administration. This strategy game puts you in charge of mas...

Stormlord is an abandoned DOS platform game set in a fantasy world, developed and published by Hewson Consultants in 1989 and designed by Raffaele Cecco. There was some controversy...

Dragonflight (1991) was a German RPG that dared to think big—party-based adventuring, sprawling maps, and a proper fantasy plot. It played like a love letter to Ultima with i...