abandonware games sorted by popularity

Transylvania 3: Vanquish the Night continues the gothic adventure tradition with another journey into a world of supernatural danger, strange locations, and things that are conside...

If pro wrestling in the '80s had a fever dream after drinking too much neon paint, it would be called Bop'N Wrestle (1988, DOS). You play as Gorgeous Greg, who’s about as gor...

Italicized title: Jackal. Fast-paced and unapologetically action-oriented, this military shooter places players behind the wheel of an armed jeep on a mission to rescue prisoners o...

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...

Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper is a tough little action game that drops you into a ruined city with one very straightforward job: survive. You play as a lone soldier wandering thro...

Legacy of Llylgamyn steps up the ante, sending your party into a town under siege and dungeons filled with more monsters than your imagination can comfortably handle. This isn&rsqu...

What happens when a basketball game forgets about realism and goes full cartoon? Basket Master (1990), that’s what. This Spanish-developed DOS gem pits two oddly animated bal...

Over the Reich is a 1996 strategy game set during the Second World War, focusing on aerial operations and the difficult decisions involved in planning military campaigns. Players c...

Modem Wars is an early strategy game that feels almost prophetic today, especially because it was designed around competitive play long before online gaming became commonplace. Pla...

From the mind of Michael Crichton comes Amazon, a game that lets you live out your jungle explorer fantasies—without the bugs or dysentery. You’re off to the Amazon to ...

Guerrilla War wastes no time pretending to be subtle. You run upward, you shoot everything that moves, and occasionally you rescue a hostage who seems oddly calm about the whole si...

Sword Quest 2: Tale of the Talisman continues the fantasy adventures of its predecessor, offering another journey filled with exploration, enemies, treasure, and the sort of ancien...

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 1994, Sensible Golf took the elegant sport of chasing a tiny ball and gave it the unmistakable Sensible Software treatment. Rather than drowning players in endless stat...

The Lost Patrol (1991, DOS) drops you into the brutal jungles of Vietnam, where survival depends on strategy, luck, and maybe divine intervention. You lead a squad of exhausted sol...

F40 Pursuit Simulator takes a different approach by putting you in the cockpit of a fictional high-tech interceptor designed for one job: catching bad guys. Instead of large-scale ...

The Curse of Monkey Island is one of the great comic adventure games of the late 1990s, combining pirates, absurd puzzles, memorable characters, and enough terrible puns to sink a ...

Often hailed as the best of the trilogy, Star Trail doubles down on everything its predecessor attempted—and somehow makes it all smoother. The world feels richer, the quests...

Everyone’s favorite egg hero returns in Kwik Snax Dizzy (1993, DOS), a fast-paced puzzle game where reflexes and planning matter more than cholesterol levels. You’ll pu...

The Summoning is a fantasy adventure that throws the player into a world of magic, monsters and rather unhealthy amounts of dungeon exploration. Built around an isometric viewpoint...

Vynil Goddess from Mars is a bright, cheeky platform adventure with a heroine, a bizarre science-fiction setting, and enough cartoon eccentricity to make subtlety pack its bags and...

Jeff Minter's Llamatron 2112, released in 1992, is exactly as gloriously bizarre as its title suggests. Players control an armed llama defending the screen against relentless waves...

Port Royale is a 2002 trading and strategy game that lets players experience the life of a merchant in the Caribbean during the age of sailing ships. Instead of becoming a legendar...

Pang Remake is a 1992 recreation of the beloved arcade game where players battle bouncing bubbles that stubbornly refuse to disappear without multiplying first. Armed with a harpoo...

Unnecessary Roughness takes American football and gives it a slightly rougher, more arcade-like edge. Released in 1993, it doesn’t aim for pure simulation, instead focusing on fa...

Remote Control is a 1989 DOS action game inspired by the science-fiction television concept of controlling technology from a distance. Players operate devices and navigate challeng...

If Catacomb Abyss was “Doom for wizards,” then Catacomb Armageddon is “Doom with a Halloween costume budget.” Bigger levels, more enemies, and slightly more...

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...

WinRisk brings the classic territory-conquest board game formula to Windows, giving players a digital battlefield where armies can be moved, territories captured, and alliances rui...

TomeNET is a multiplayer roguelike that takes the old-school Angband formula and turns it into something considerably more sociable, dangerous, and unpredictable. Instead of wander...