abandonware games sorted by popularity

In the neon-lit corridors of cyberspace, you're a "decker," infiltrating corporate mainframes like a digital ninja. Released in 2002, this roguelike RPG offers a tile-based cyberpu...

South Park: Cartman's Authoritah is a short action game built around the irreverent world of South Park and, naturally, the enormous personality of Eric Cartman. The gameplay throw...

NCSA Mosaic was one of the earliest web browsers to appear on the market. It was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illino...

Jumpman Lives! brings back the legendary platforming hero for a new set of challenges in this 1991 sequel. Building upon the foundation of the original, the game introduces fresh l...

Sonic Millennium Edition is a fan-oriented Sonic project that brings the famous blue hedgehog into a PC setting with a distinctly retro spirit. The game focuses on the familiar ing...

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...

Winter Olympics: Lillehammer '94 offers a computer recreation of the famous Norwegian Winter Games, letting players tackle a collection of snowy events from the comfort of a keyboa...

Unreal by Ordilogic, released in 1991, is not the one most people think of, and that alone makes it interesting. It’s an action-adventure experience that blends exploration with ...

In Nomad, you’re a space pilot with a ship full of bad decisions and a galaxy’s worth of trouble. The game throws you into a vast star map to explore, trade, and occasi...

Hugo 3: Jungle of Doom shifts the setting to a more exotic environment, adding variety to the familiar formula. Released in 1992, it introduces new challenges, new puzzles, and a s...

Released in 1990, Air Strike USA is what you'd get if Top Gun had a baby with a Saturday morning cartoon. You pilot a heavily armed jet through side-scrolling skies, shooting down ...

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...

The 7th Guest is one of those games that defined the early CD-ROM era, proudly showing off its multimedia capabilities while quietly messing with your head. Set in a haunted mansio...

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...

Step into the gray, morally ambiguous world of corporate domination with Big Business. It’s Monopoly with fewer dice and more spreadsheets. Crush your competitors, manipulate...

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...

TV Sports Baseball from 1991 tries to bottle the magic of America’s pastime and pour it into your DOS machine, complete with commentary and a surprising amount of personality. Th...

Rastan is Conan-the-Barbarian energy distilled into a side-scrolling adventure where your primary verb is “destroy.” The DOS port lacks a bit of arcade sparkle, but the...

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...

The Great War: 1914 - 1918 is a historical strategy game focused on the First World War, a conflict where “just move forward” was famously not an especially successful tactical...

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...

Iron Lord (1990, DOS) is the medieval fantasy game that tried to be everything at once—and somehow pulled it off. It’s part RPG, part action, part strategy, and part &l...

World Darts takes the humble pub game of darts and gives it a suitably digital makeover. The objective sounds simple enough: throw little pointed objects at a circular board and tr...

Released in 1993, Eye of the Storm is an action-oriented game that embraces speed and spectacle. You’re thrust into fast-paced scenarios where reflexes matter more than long-...

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...

Released in 1983 for DOS, Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator is what happens when early arcade design meets Federation bureaucracy. Vector-style graphics make you feel like ...

Klass of 99 is a compact educational game built around the sort of schoolroom challenges that were once considered perfectly acceptable entertainment for a computer. Rather than th...

Infiltrator 2 basically asks: “What if we took everything from the first game and doubled down?” The result is a sequel that’s larger, louder, and just as gleeful...

Battlecruiser 3000AD (1996) is less a game and more a test of faith. Ambitious beyond reason, it promised total control of a massive starship—crew management, planetary landi...

Gateworld is one of those games that seems determined to test your patience as much as your reflexes. On paper, it’s a straightforward platformer, but in practice it’s ...