abandonware games sorted by popularity

Star Control is a 1990 science-fiction strategy game that mixes space exploration, diplomacy, resource management, and tactical combat into an unusually entertaining package. Playe...

Surf Ninjas is exactly the sort of licensed game that sounds like somebody combined two unrelated ideas and decided not to ask questions. Released in 1994, it is based on the film ...

In Power Drive, rally racing comes with an extra dose of “don’t hit the tree.” It’s all about navigating winding tracks with a sense of timing that borders ...

Strife from 1996 is a first-person shooter game developed by Rogue Entertainment and published by Velocity, based on the Doom engine. It's often remembered for being one of the ear...

Robinson's Requiem is a survival adventure that takes the traditional deserted-island scenario and removes most of the comforting assumptions about survival. You are stranded on an...

Omega (1989, DOS) is what happens when someone hands you a robot, a wrench, and a thick manual, then says, “Good luck out there.” Instead of piloting a mech, you actual...

Alice: The Personal Pascal is an educational programming environment designed to make Pascal programming approachable for younger users and beginners. Instead of throwing a learner...

Released in 1996 for DOS, Enigma is what happens when a puzzle game decides it’s not content with simply challenging you—it wants to tease you, mock you, and eventually...

In Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern, you don’t just ride dragons—you babysit them, talk to them, and occasionally save the world while trying not to fall off mid-fligh...

Released in 1988, Dream Zone was a surreal adventure where you explore your own subconscious after being sucked into a dream machine. It’s colorful, strange, and often unsett...

Dungeons & Dragons meets Disney on a sugar rush. Tangled Tales is a bright, humorous RPG that cheerfully pokes fun at fantasy clichés while still serving a solid adventu...

Isle of the Dead is a first-person horror shooter that combines exploration, combat, and a wonderfully grim island setting. You find yourself surrounded by hostile creatures and my...

By 1993, Dragon Force - Day 3 landed as an obscure tactical experiment on DOS. Despite the name, it’s not about a power metal band’s rehearsal schedule but rather a day...

Swap is a puzzle game built around a wonderfully simple idea: rearrange things until the board behaves itself. Released in 1992, it challenges the player with increasingly tricky a...

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,...

Before Titanic was a movie with a lot of weeping, there was Beyond the Titanic, a text adventure where surviving the iceberg is just the beginning. The game takes the historic disa...

The Twilight Zone adapts the eerie spirit of Rod Serling's famous television series into a computer adventure built around mystery, strange situations and the possibility that real...

1999’s BitStorm is what happens when someone decides to make a strategy game and forgets to put the brakes on the caffeine. It’s fast, it’s furious, and you&rsquo...

If you wanted a mix of Clue, D&D, and a dash of text-parser frustration, Legends of Murder: Volume 1 – Stonedale Castle (1989) was your game. You play a detective dropped...

Back in 1989, David Wolf: Secret Agent tried really hard to make you feel like James Bond. You get car chases, fistfights, and enough cheesy dialogue to fill an action movie marath...

Paperboy 2 expands the original concept by introducing new routes, additional hazards, and even more opportunities for suburban chaos. Delivering newspapers remains the central obj...

Theatre of War is a strategy game that puts the player in command of military forces while recreating the tension of battlefield decisions. Rather than simply moving units toward t...

If you’ve ever wondered what Bill Gates was doing before becoming a household name, Donkey BAS holds the answer: programming a game about avoiding pixelated donkeys on a high...

Acquire (1989, DOS) brings boardroom drama to your DOS screen, turning you into a hotel tycoon in a game where the real enemy is... math. It's a faithful adaptation of the classic ...

In Black Crown (1995), you play as a prince with a very punchable name, trying to reclaim his rightful throne by solving puzzles and dying a lot. It's one of those DOS-era games wh...

What happens when a basketball game forgets about realism and goes full cartoon? Basket Master (1990), that’s what. This Spanish-developed DOS gem pits two oddly animated bal...

In Druglord, you’re back on the mean streets, older, wiser, and with slightly better ASCII. Think of it as Drug Wars’s bigger, nastier cousin. You start broke, deal wit...

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...

Zork: Grand Inquisitor is the ultimate swan song for the series—and what a finale it is. Combining laugh-out-loud humor, point-and-click puzzles, and a talking lantern voiced...

Welcome to Los Angeles, where crime runs rampant and your job is to bring the chaos down with nothing but surveillance skills and a stern attitude. L.A. Crackdown puts you in the s...