abandonware games sorted by popularity

Mental Blocks is a puzzle game built around spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and the ancient videogame tradition of making the player feel personally responsible for every m...

Guardians: Agents of Justice puts the player in the role of a superhero-style operative tasked with dealing with threats that are considerably less interested in obeying the law. T...

For those who think snooker is too posh and billiards too French, there's Archer Maclean's Pool, the most ‘90s way to simulate the timeless art of arguing over whether that s...

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...

MinerVGA takes the familiar mining concept and gives it a colorful VGA makeover, challenging players to explore underground environments while collecting resources and avoiding dan...

When Strider (1989, DOS) hit PCs, gamers suddenly felt like ninjas who’d been dropped into a Cold War fever dream. You play as Hiryu, a futuristic assassin slicing through me...

Italian noir meets circus mystery in Yellow Kid: Giallo al Circo, where you play a journalist with a yellow trench coat and more curiosity than self-preservation. The game’s ...

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...

The sequel to Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch, Return to Ringworld throws you back into Larry Niven’s vast sci-fi universe—except this time, the puzzles are tougher...

If you’ve ever wondered what baseball would look like if someone crammed the entire sport into a DOS machine and sprinkled a bit of 90s attitude on top, Epic Baseball has you...

Guardians of Infinity: to Save Kennedy is the sort of time-travel adventure that casually suggests you might want to prevent one of the most infamous assassinations in history befo...

Steel Panthers 3: Brigade Command expands the series into larger-scale warfare, putting you in charge of formations where the number of units on the map can become rather intimidat...

If you ever looked at regular Tetris and thought, “What this really needs is eye-melting colors and a possible migraine,” then Acid Tetris (1998, DOS) is your jam. It&r...

Fidelity Chessmaster 2100, released in 1989 for DOS, is chess with a very clear mission: beat you, patiently and without mercy. At the time, it was a serious achievement in compute...

Do you enjoy betrayal, backstabbing, and pretending to be a global power while actually being terrible at geography? Computer Diplomacy is the digital version of the classic board ...

Saddle up for an awkward mix of minigames that vaguely resemble rodeo events. Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show tries to recreate the excitement of a 19th-century traveling circus but ...

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...

Williams Arcade Classics is essentially a small time machine disguised as a computer game, collecting several classic arcade experiences in one package. Instead of asking players t...

Adventure enthusiasts received a real treasure with the Magnetic Scrolls Collection, bringing together several legendary text adventures celebrated for their witty writing and chal...

In Armor Alley, you command a helicopter in a warzone that looks like a side-scrolling office meeting gone wrong. It’s strategy meets action: you must manage resources, deplo...

In Dark Designs 1: Grelminar’s Staff, you’re thrust into a classic fantasy dungeon crawler with an emphasis on text-driven menus and turn-based combat. It’s like ...

Fancy a war under the sea? Battle for Atlantis (1990) asks the age-old question: what if submarines had grudges? This top-down, action strategy title throws you into a deep-sea tur...

ScummVM is one of the most important preservation projects in the world of classic adventure games. Rather than emulating an entire old computer, it recreates the game engines used...

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...

The classic television quiz show made its way to computers with Jeopardy! in 1987. Players compete by answering questions presented in the show's famous answer-and-question format,...

Roadwar Europa is a 1987 DOS strategy game that moves the post-apocalyptic road adventure into a devastated European landscape. Players command a convoy through a continent where r...

Back in 1996, Macromedia Flash Player was like that mysterious new kid at school who suddenly knew how to juggle, ride a unicycle, and solve a Rubik’s Cube—all at the s...

Thunderhawk AH-73M is a helicopter combat simulation that gives players control of a heavily armed attack helicopter and a collection of dangerous missions. Unlike a simple arcade ...

King's Quest III Redux: To Heir is Human is a fan-made remake that lovingly modernizes Sierra's classic while respecting everything that made the original memorable. Enhanced visua...