abandonware games sorted by popularity

Black Friday (1983) isn’t about shopping mayhem—though you might wish it were after trying to figure out what’s going on. This early DOS title is part stock marke...

Supaplex is a classic puzzle game released in 1991 by Think!Ware Development for MS-DOS and Amiga. It is heavily inspired by Boulder Dash but introduces more complex mechanics.&nbs...

Based on a book series almost nobody remembers, Below The Root drops you into a serene world of treehouses, talking children, and deeply philosophical moral choices. Combat does no...

Amberstar is a fantasy old school RPG very similar to Ultima 6 that uses a top-down view for interiors and small locations and a first person pseudo 3D view for everything else. Un...

The last entry in Infocom’s Enchanter trilogy, Spellbreaker is where the training wheels come off. It’s unforgiving, cryptic, and expects you to understand spellcraft l...

Released in 2001, Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel is the black sheep of the family, proudly marching to a different beat. Shifting focus from deep role-playing to squad-based...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Star Trek: First Contact (not to be confused with the later movie) is more puzzle-solving than phaser-firing. You take control of the Enterprise crew as t...

Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O'Fun, released in 1989 for DOS, is a platformer that looks cheerful but hides a surprisingly mean streak. Set in a circus filled with traps, clowns, and ...

In Command Adventures: Starship (1995, DOS), you’re the captain, the admiral, and occasionally the guy who has to fix the hyperdrive when it’s on fire. This obscure gem...

F-15 Strike Eagle is one of those games that practically defined what a combat flight simulator should be in the 1980s. It drops you into the cockpit of the legendary F-15 and tell...

Ever wanted to manage a kingdom, lead armies, go dungeon-crawling, and attend budget meetings? Birthright: The Gorgon’s Alliance makes all your fantasy micromanagement dreams...

Crime Time blends point-and-click adventure with a murder mystery that’s as much about wit as it is about clues. You play an innocent man framed for murder, scrambling to gat...

Ever wanted to pilot a walking death machine through a series of exploding industrial hellscapes while being shot at from every angle? Welcome to Amok. This 1996 mech-shooter is a ...

Yacht Racing Simulator proves that even in the '80s, developers were brave enough to turn the thrilling world of rich people boating slowly into a video game. With graphics that co...

Let’s be honest—Centerfold Squares (1988) is what happened when someone asked, “What if Qix but hornier?” You draw squares to reveal pixelated images of... ...

Back in 1999, Warzone 2100 felt like a glimpse into the future of strategy gaming. Forget endless waves of faceless soldiers; here you could actually design your own tanks and chop...

Released in 2004, Lords of the Realm III is an interesting, sometimes controversial attempt to modernize a beloved strategy franchise. The move to full 3D and a more streamlined ap...

Arachne is a graphical web browser for DOS. Arachne was developed by Michal Polák and released in the early 1990s as a text-mode web browser with limited graphical capabilit...

Ballistix asks: “What if air hockey was controlled by futuristic cannons?” The answer: chaos. You frantically shoot pucks with directional blasts while the physics engi...

Conflict is a turn-based war game where you get to play Commander-in-Chief and yell at your virtual generals when things go wrong (which they often do). It's part military sim, par...

First Samurai is a classic action-platformer game originally released in 1991. The game was initially available on the Amiga and Atari ST, with later ports to the Commodore 64, DOS...