abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

In Sito Pons 500cc Grand Prix, you’re tossed straight onto the track with the grace of a rookie who definitely didn’t read the manual. The game tries hard to recreate t...

Sarakon is a 1991 DOS puzzle game centered around manipulating pieces on a board to create matches and clear obstacles. The basic rules are easy to understand, but the real challen...

In Core War Plus, programming isn’t just for making spreadsheets—it’s for virtual combat. You write tiny programs that battle for control of computer memory, turn...

Roller Coaster Rumbler is a 1989 DOS game built around the wonderfully simple idea of causing trouble in a theme-park roller coaster environment. Players must navigate the ride and...

Compilation titles often feel like a random pile of games tossed together with minimal ceremony, but Future Classics Collection from 1990 tries to do something slightly more ambiti...

Space Quest 4: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers takes the series into the wonderfully chaotic territory of time travel. Released in 1991, it gleefully tosses Roger across multiple ...

Acrobat Reader was the first of a family of application software developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Acrobat...

Rusty is a 1993 DOS action game featuring a small protagonist navigating dangerous environments filled with enemies, obstacles, and arcade-style challenges. The gameplay emphasizes...

Released in 1984, Zyll is what happens when a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master learns to code and decides to build a text adventure inside a coffee machine. There are no graph...

The Ancient Art of War at Sea takes the strategic ideas of its predecessor and moves them onto the water, where armies are replaced by fleets and the battlefield becomes considerab...

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...

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 ...

Paganitzu is a 1991 puzzle-platform adventure starring explorer Alabama Smith, whose archaeological expeditions have an unfortunate tendency to involve deadly temples and elaborate...

Global Effect takes a slightly different angle, blending strategy with a more experimental edge. It’s not always clear what it wants to be, but that’s part of the appea...

Nanotank is a 1993 Windows 3.x strategy game that takes the concept of armored warfare and shrinks it down to a delightfully miniature scale. Instead of commanding enormous armies ...

Long before fan-made clones flooded the internet, there was David's Kong (1984). It’s a straight-up Donkey Kong knockoff, but with enough quirks to make you smile. The premis...

Incursion is a modern love letter to classic tactical RPGs, clearly inspired by tabletop rulesets and games like early Fallout. It throws you into a turn-based world where position...

In 1991, Les Manley in: Lost in L.A. continued the misadventures of its perpetually unlucky protagonist with another humorous point-and-click adventure. This time, Les navigates th...

Deadly Racer is basically what happens when someone at the office said, “What if racing, but everyone might die?” Released in 1994 for DOS, it’s a fast-paced, rou...

The Patcher 6.1 (1993, DOS) is one of those utilities-turned-experiences that makes you feel like a digital surgeon. Instead of saving lives, you’re poking around system file...

Oubliette is a 1983 role-playing game and an important early example of the dungeon-crawling tradition that would influence generations of computer RPGs. Players create characters,...

You’d think a spring break trip would be relaxing. Not when you're a magically inclined college student with a knack for attracting trouble (and bikinis). Spellcasting 301 se...

Released in 1993, Fantasy Empires is a turn-based strategy game that politely assumes you enjoy spreadsheets as much as swords. Managing kingdoms, armies, and resources, it offers ...