abandonware games sorted by popularity

No relation to Dune (except for being a total rip-off), Arrakis is a homebrew strategy game that feels like a tribute to the sandiest planet in sci-fi. You mine spice, fight vaguel...

Ford Simulator 5 (1994, DOS) arrives with increased confidence, as though the series has fully embraced its unusual identity. The graphics are cleaner, the environments broader, an...

Football Fanatic (1998, DOS) is pure arcade chaos dressed in cleats. It doesn’t care much for the finer tactical nuances of the sport; it wants you sprinting, tackling, and g...

By 1992, Vol. 3 wrapped up the trilogy with even more complex scenarios. At this point, the series had become less of a game and more of an interactive textbook—though that&r...

Trade in your sword and crown for a dice cup in King Graham’s Board Game Challenge. The noble hero of King’s Quest takes a break from slaying dragons to play board game...

Inspector Gadget: Global Terror! takes everyone’s favorite bionic klutz and hands him a globe-trotting mission to stop M.A.D.—which is roughly as risky as giving a todd...

Don’t let the cartoony name fool you: Skullduggery: Adventures in Horror wants to unsettle you, and it’s surprisingly good at it. This early horror adventure mixes clas...

Galactic Battle is a straightforward space shooter that comes from the proud tradition of “tiny ship versus unreasonable number of aliens.” The premise is simple: you p...

Based on the Disney movie that taught us cats can sing, dance, and apparently navigate 1980s New York, Oliver & Company for DOS (1989) is a surprisingly earnest platformer. You...

Time Bandit is a classic top-down arcade-style video game that was released in 1982 for various home computer systems, such as the Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, and others. It was dev...

Roll up, roll up! Circus Attractions turns your PC into a low-resolution big top full of minigames, each one zanier than the last. Think clown juggling, lion taming, and tightrope ...

Released in 2000, Extreme Shopper is one of those games that sounds like a joke—until you realize it fully commits to the premise. You play as a shopper navigating a chaotic ...

Welcome to Aspetra, a 1996 DOS game that tried to cram an epic sci-fi RPG into your beige box PC — and mostly succeeded! Think “Star Trek meets budget constraints.&rdqu...

Operation Bodycount sounds subtle, doesn’t it? Released in 1994, this shooter wastes no time letting you know exactly what it’s about: running around and, well, increas...

Nitemare 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by David P. Gray under the Gray Design Associates label. It was released in 1994 as a follow-up to the earl...

If you’ve ever looked at a cave and thought, “Yes, this is where I’ll build my empire,” then Cave Wars is your jam. Released in 1996, this strategy game thr...

FlixMix feels like someone took a film editor’s desk, scattered it across a computer screen, and invited you to tidy up at speed. The premise is deceptively simple: assemble ...