abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

Inner Worlds is the kind of side-scroller that sneaks up on you. At first, it’s a fantasy action-platformer—monsters, dungeons, the usual—but then you discover th...

Indenture is a small, relatively obscure DOS adventure that thrives on mood rather than complexity. Set in a bleak, oppressive world, it uses minimalistic visuals and text-driven s...

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...

An expansion to the original, Cossacks: The Art of War refines, expands, and generally cranks up the chaos. New units, new campaigns, and more ways to accidentally bankrupt your na...

Highway Fighter delivers straightforward action with a focus on reflexes and timing. It throws obstacles your way with enthusiasm, expecting you to adapt quickly or face the conseq...

The Curse of Monkey Island is one of the great comic adventure games of the late 1990s, combining pirates, absurd puzzles, memorable characters, and enough terrible puns to sink a ...

Othello is a 1986 computer adaptation of the classic strategy board game in which two players compete to control the board by surrounding and flipping their opponent’s pieces. Th...

Great Naval Battles vol. 3: Fury in the Pacific expands the scope and the intensity, throwing you into larger conflicts with even more to manage. In Great Naval Battles vol. 3, the...

Arnhem is the kind of wargame where you spend more time reading hex maps than shooting anything. It’s all about recreating Operation Market Garden — you know, that WWII...

Carriers at War is a detailed naval strategy game focused on aircraft carriers and the brutal arithmetic of Pacific warfare. Players command fleets, plan operations, launch aircraf...

Traffic department 2192 imagines a future where keeping the streets safe apparently requires considerably more shooting than most traffic departments would recommend. The game comb...

The Patcher 6.1 (1993, DOS) is one of those utilities-turned-experiences that makes you feel like a digital surgeon. Instead of saving lives, you’re poking around system file...

Dragon Lord (1990) is what happens when you let a fantasy novelist design a strategy game. You’re a would-be sorcerer trying to raise dragons, manage villages, and conquer la...

Dominus (1994) is what happens when a tower defense game and an RPG get thrown into a medieval blender. You’re tasked with defending your castle from wave after wave of enemi...

Skyfox II: The Cygnus Conflict is a 1988 space combat game that combines strategic decisions with direct piloting. Players command forces involved in a large-scale conflict while a...

Video Casino is a straightforward casino simulation that brings several familiar gambling games to the computer screen. The idea is wonderfully simple: choose your game, place your...

If you’ve ever wanted to play interstellar Monopoly while arguing with alien neighbors, Deadlock: Planetary Conquest is your ticket. Released in 1996, this strategy gem tosse...

NFL Pro League Football is a 1989 football simulation that attempts to capture the strategic complexity of professional American football on a home computer. Players take control o...

Often hailed as the best of the trilogy, Star Trail doubles down on everything its predecessor attempted—and somehow makes it all smoother. The world feels richer, the quests...

Skyroads: Xmas Special takes the wonderfully addictive formula of Skyroads and gives it a festive makeover. The basic idea remains unchanged: pilot a futuristic craft along suspend...

Project Neptune is a 1989 DOS strategy game that takes players into a futuristic underwater conflict where careful planning is the key to victory. Players command forces in a scien...

Antix (1985) is Snake, but with a death wish. Created by the same mad genius behind Tetris, this game takes the familiar snake-trail mechanic and cranks it to eleven. You’ve ...

Wolfsbane is a dark fantasy action game that sends the player into a hostile world filled with monsters, dangerous environments, and the usual medieval assortment of things that re...

Tongue of the Fatman is one of those games that seems to have escaped from a particularly strange corner of an arcade designer's imagination. It is a fighting game, but instead of ...

Imagine X-COM but with fewer excuses to blame the developers when you miss a 95% chance shot—because in UFO 2000 (2004), the chaos was entirely player-driven. A free, open-so...

World Tour Tennis turns tennis into a compact computer contest where positioning and timing matter more than having the reflexes of a professional athlete. Players move around the ...

Ultrabots pits customizable robots against each other in tactical, turn-based combat that rewards planning over reflexes. Before battles even begin, you tinker endlessly with your ...

Dark Designs 2: Closing the Gate picks up right where the first game left off, with your party stumbling into yet another world-threatening mess. The stakes are higher, the enemies...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Fast Break is basketball distilled into pure late-80s computer logic. Don’t expect flashy presentation or TV-style commentary; instead, you get a to...