abandonware games sorted by popularity

In Gnome Alone, you step into the tiny boots of a gnome who really should have picked a quieter profession than “wandering into danger for no clear reason.” The game mi...

SLASH'EM (Super Lotsa Added Stuff Hack - Extended Magic) is a roguelike game based on NetHack, one of the most famous dungeon-crawling games of all time. It expands upon NetHack 3....

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 ...

There’s something oddly hypnotic about Gapper, a game that feels like it was assembled during a coffee-fueled night by someone who really liked simple mechanics and didn&rsqu...

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...

It’s Colonel Mustard in the Study with the Lead Pipe—but on DOS. Clue Master Detective takes the classic board game and wraps it in moody music, pixelated crime scenes,...

Chaos Overlords is a cyberpunk-themed strategy game developed by Stick Man Games and published by New World Computing in 1996. Set in a dystopian future, the game focuses on contro...

Ah yes, Air Trax from 1983 - a game where “flight” is more of a philosophical concept. It’s clunky, it's slow, and it looks like it was coded in someone’s g...

Firezone is one of those late-80s action titles that seems determined to test both your reflexes and your optimism. It drops you into hostile territory and expects you to cope. The...

Before Virtua Tennis, there was this: 4D Sports Tennis, where physics and pixels politely shake hands and then forget why they were introduced. Released in 1990 for DOS, this game ...

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

Ah, Black Sect (1993), where the puzzles are cryptic, the villagers are creepy, and the atmosphere is so thick you could spread it on toast. A classic first-person point-and-click ...

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...

Infestation drops you onto a hostile alien world where the welcome committee consists mostly of things with too many legs and way too many teeth. The game mixes exploration and act...

Released in 1988, Legend of the Sword is a graphic adventure that tries to blend epic fantasy storytelling with the puzzle-solving spirit of early point-and-clicks. The result is a...

Here comes another bubble game—but this one packs a punch. Bubble Trouble is a frantic shoot-’em-up where you pop evil bouncing bubbles before they bounce you out of ex...

Race Drivin' is a 1990 arcade racing game developed and published by Atari Games.  It's the sequel to Hard Drivin' (1989) and retains the same stunt-based driving mechanics wh...

Adapting movies into games is always tricky, but Predator 2 gives it a shot with mixed results. You play as a cop cleaning up the mean streets while occasionally being stalked by t...

X-COM: Alliance is one of those legendary “what could have been” titles, a fascinating ghost in gaming history rather than a fully realized experience. Originally envisioned as...

Questron II is a role-playing game (RPG) developed by Westwood Associates and published by Strategic Simulations Inc. (SSI) in 1988. It serves as the sequel to the original Questro...