abandonware games sorted by popularity

Yes, it’s that Beethoven—the slobbery St. Bernard, not the piano guy. In Beethoven 2, you control a surprisingly agile dog on a quest to rescue your kidnapped puppies. ...

In 1986, Hacker arrived with a premise that felt thrillingly dangerous at the time: you, alone, tapping into secret computer systems and uncovering conspiracies. No explosions, no ...

Battlestar is a science-fiction game that puts the player in command of a starship facing the usual collection of cosmic problems: hostile forces, dangerous situations and a univer...

Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0 continues the ambitious tradition of allowing ordinary computer users to experience the joys and responsibilities of piloting an aircraft. Players ca...

Inspired by the famous comic character, Mandrake: L'Ombra del Cobra mixes adventure and action as the legendary magician confronts dangerous enemies using intelligence alongside il...

Empire Soccer 94 is football stripped of glamour and presented with a straight face that makes everything unintentionally funny. There are no licenses, no famous players, and no at...

Side Arms Hyper Dyne is a 1988 DOS shoot-'em-up adapted from Capcom's arcade game, putting players into a futuristic combat suit and sending them directly into a hostile alien batt...

Released in 1984 for DOS, Felony! is a strange and ambitious early action game that puts you in the role of a criminal on the run. Instead of focusing on a single mechanic, it thro...

Dragons of Flame (1989) was SSI’s continuation of the Dragonlance saga, following up on Heroes of the Lance. Like its predecessor, it was a side-scrolling action RPG that tes...

Times of Lore is an action-oriented fantasy adventure that sends the player into a medieval world filled with monsters, villages, quests and plenty of reasons to keep a sword withi...

Plundered Hearts is a 1987 interactive fiction adventure from Infocom that combines romance, pirates, and high-seas drama into a charming text-based story. Players take the role of...

Executive Suite puts you in the shoes of a corporate leader and asks you to juggle ambition, ethics, and profit, usually with conflicting results. It’s a business simulation ...

Vroom is a racing game that takes a fairly simple premise and pushes it toward a convincing sense of speed. Released in 1994 for DOS, it puts you behind the wheel of fast cars and ...

If Hamlet had a sequel directed by a DOS programmer, Castle Elsinore would be it. This interactive fiction game drops you right into Shakespearean drama with murder, betrayal, and ...

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...

Released in 1992, La Colmena is a curious adaptation of Camilo José Cela’s novel, and it wears its literary roots proudly. Rather than focusing on traditional gameplay...

Stunt Island is part flight simulator, part movie-making playground, and part excuse to crash aircraft repeatedly in the name of entertainment. You take control of various planes a...

Rather than retreading the campaign formula of its predecessor, Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games focused on standalone tactical missions and competitive play. Released in 1996, it off...

Part puzzle, part platformer, part “what is even happening,” Bombuzal (1989, DOS) is a game where your job is to blow up every bomb on the screen—while not accide...

As the name suggests, EGA-Roids is a colorful take on the classic Asteroids formula, adapted for the EGA era. You pilot a ship through space, blasting rocks and dodging debris in f...

Pac-girl is a 1982 arcade-style maze game that offers another charming variation on one of gaming's most recognizable ideas. The objective is immediately familiar: collect every do...

Gremlins 2: The New Batch leans into the chaos of its source material and then adds a layer of video game unpredictability on top. In Gremlins 2, you deal with enemies that are as ...

Turbo OutRun brings Sega's famous arcade driving style to the home computer, putting the player behind the wheel of a fast sports car and asking a very simple question: how long ca...

Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone (1992) is what happens when a simple beat-’em-up decides to go globetrotting. Instead of just brawling through alleys, Billy and Jimmy trav...

Road Runner is a 1989 DOS arcade game based on the famous cartoon rivalry between the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Players control the extraordinarily fast bird as he races thro...

Bomb Run (1991, DOS) sounds like an action-packed thriller—and then you play it and realize you’re just trying to drop bombs in the right spots while flying what feels ...

Great Naval Battles vol. 4: Burning Steel shifts focus to earlier conflicts, offering a different flavor of naval strategy. In Great Naval Battles vol. 4, the mechanics remain deep...

Hard Drivin' 2 takes everything its predecessor attempted and pushes it a little further, like a sequel that insists it has matured but still enjoys causing vehicular embarrassment...

Rally Championships is a 1994 DOS racing game focused on rally-style competition, where speed alone is not enough to guarantee success. Players must deal with winding tracks, chang...

By 1989, Dragon’s Lair had already become legendary in arcades, so its DOS port had a lot to live up to. Spoiler: it couldn’t quite match the arcade’s gorgeous la...