abandonware games sorted by popularity

Lynx is a text-based web browser that became famous for doing something that sounds almost impossible to younger computer users: browsing the World Wide Web without displaying pict...

Dino Crisis takes the survival-horror formula and makes one very important adjustment: instead of zombies, you get dinosaurs. Because apparently undead people were not terrifying e...

Round 42 is a 1986 DOS game that offers a compact arcade-style experience built around quick decisions, movement, and increasingly demanding challenges. Its design reflects the str...

WinFrotz is a Windows implementation of Frotz, an interpreter designed to run classic Infocom-style interactive fiction using Z-machine story files. Instead of providing one specif...

Fantastic Dizzy, released in 1994, stars a cheerful egg with an unfortunate talent for getting into trouble. This platform-adventure hybrid mixes exploration, puzzle-solving, and l...

A gentle adventure inspired by the animated film, Once Upon a Forest (1995, DOS) delivers an eco-friendly story wrapped in side-scrolling gameplay. You guide three tiny forest crea...

Operation Market Garden is a 1985 historical strategy game based on the ambitious Allied operation during the Second World War. Players take part in a campaign involving airborne f...

Westphaser is a fast-paced arcade shooter built around the familiar idea that a small spacecraft can somehow be expected to save the universe before lunch. The action takes place o...

Earthrise taps into late Cold War anxieties, presenting a future shaped by political tension and hard choices. Part strategy, part simulation, it tasks you with managing global sys...

Before rhythm games took over, there was Moonwalker (1989), where you play as none other than Michael Jackson himself, saving kidnapped kids by dancing enemies into submission. Yes...

Sword Quest 1: The Search is a fantasy adventure built around exploration, combat, and the hunt for an important artifact. Released in 1992, it follows the familiar but effective f...

The Sporting News Baseball brings America's favorite pastime to the computer with a surprisingly serious approach to statistics, strategy and play-by-play action. Rather than simpl...

Hocus Pocus is the kind of platformer that seems to run on pure sugar and cheerful chaos. You play as a young wizard with more enthusiasm than common sense, bouncing through colorf...

Unlike traditional adventure games, Kingdom: The Far Reaches focuses on cinematic storytelling through live-action performances and beautifully rendered environments. Players unrav...

Don’t let the tongue-twister title fool you—Divine Divinity is a classic in the sprawling world of RPGs. Think of it as Diablo’s eccentric cousin who insists on t...

Supernova is a classic science-fiction adventure that puts the player in the uncomfortable position of having to save the galaxy while also figuring out what the game actually expe...

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is a 1991 mystery adventure that attempts to recreate the experience of investigating a Holmes story rather than simply watching one unfold. Pl...

The Final Battle is a fantasy strategy game built around the sort of grand confrontation that its title promises, with armies, heroes, enemies, and a world apparently determined to...

Microsoft COBOL 1.12 is an early Microsoft implementation of COBOL, providing DOS programmers with the tools required to write and compile applications in one of computing's most i...

Few games let you climb the criminal ladder with as much style as King of Chicago. Instead of saving kingdoms, you negotiate with gangsters, make shady deals, and try to survive th...

Beast is ASCII horror at its most gloriously minimal. You’re a brave soul (well, a smiley face) trapped in a dungeon with sentient blobs (the titular beasts) that want you ve...

Sky Shark is a 1989 DOS conversion of the classic vertically scrolling arcade shooter, putting players behind the controls of a fighter aircraft and filling the screen with enemy p...

The Clue! turns the classic murder-mystery board game concept into a computer adventure with investigation, deduction, and a suitably suspicious collection of characters. The famil...

Quandaries is a 1997 DOS puzzle game that lives up to its name by presenting players with problems that require thought, experimentation, and occasionally the uncomfortable realiza...

Wizard of Wor 98 revisits the classic maze-shooter concept and gives it a late-1990s computer makeover. Players move through labyrinthine arenas while hunting monsters, dodging att...

Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego? sends players across the continent in pursuit of Carmen and her increasingly slippery gang of thieves. The basic formula is wonderfully effectiv...

In Scapeghost (1989), you’re not just dead—you’re also on the clock. As police officer Alan Chance, recently murdered and newly spectral, you’ve got one las...

CHAMP Galaxia is a retro arcade shooter that looks back fondly at the early days of computer space combat. The action revolves around controlling a small craft, blasting waves of h...

Tennis Cup offers a surprisingly nuanced take on tennis, with mechanics that go beyond simply hitting the ball back and forth. Timing, positioning, and spin all play a role, giving...

Gone Fishing is exactly what it sounds like, but with that peculiar late-80s DOS charm where even relaxing feels slightly stressful. You cast your line, wait patiently, and then qu...