abandonware games sorted by popularity

In 1986, Dragonfly emerged as one of those simple but strangely addictive action games. Picture a cross between a shooter and an abstract insect simulator. The graphics are blocky,...

NewsMaster is an early DOS application built around the practical business of managing and producing news-related information. Its existence reflects a period when personal compute...

If you thought childhood was all about sunshine and puppies, Monster Bash begs to differ. This 1993 side-scroller throws you into the shoes of Johnny Dash, a slingshot-toting kid w...

Primal Rage is a 1995 fighting game that replaces traditional martial artists with enormous prehistoric creatures battling for dominance in a post-apocalyptic world. Players choose...

The 1998 adaptation of Settlers of Catan brought Klaus Teuber’s famous board game to computers, allowing players to trade resources and sabotage friendships without needing a phy...

The Astronomy Quiz is a straightforward educational title aimed at players who enjoy looking toward the stars and then discovering how little they actually know about them. Release...

Before WWII games flooded the market, Knights of the Desert (1983, DOS) was already reenacting the North African campaign in pixels. You command Rommel’s Afrika Korps—o...

In Kobayashi Naru (1987, DOS), you’re not saving the world—you’re solving it. This sci-fi puzzle adventure drops you in a mysterious facility filled with logic te...

Murder in the Atlantic takes the classic locked-room mystery and places it aboard a luxury ocean liner, where a murder turns an elegant voyage into an investigation filled with sus...

Traffic department 2192 imagines a future where keeping the streets safe apparently requires considerably more shooting than most traffic departments would recommend. The game comb...

Fast Food Dizzy, released in 1989 for DOS, is exactly as chaotic as the title suggests. Starring the famously round egg hero, the game drops Dizzy into a world where food falls fro...

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...

Total Carnage is a wonderfully unsubtle top-down shooter in which the solution to almost every problem is to fire more ammunition. Lots more ammunition. You control heavily armed s...

Fish or be fished could be the motto of Bass Duel (1993), a competitive angling game that pits you against a friend or an AI in a fight to the last splash. Strategy is key: where t...

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...

Netherworld is a 1990 action game that sends the player into a strange, hostile world filled with enemies, obstacles, and the sort of atmosphere that suggests the local tourism boa...

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...

One Step Beyond is a retro-inspired action game that takes a familiar arcade formula and gives it a distinctly experimental edge. The gameplay revolves around navigating compact en...

Rocket Ranger is a 1988 DOS action-strategy game from Cinemaware that mixes science fiction, arcade sequences, and an alternate-history version of World War II. Players take on the...

The Blue & the Gray is a strategy game built around the American Civil War, giving players the chance to command forces on either side of the conflict. Released in 1993, it focuses...

Phantasie 1 is a 1987 role-playing game that helped establish many of the traditions later associated with computer fantasy adventures. Players create a party of heroes, explore da...

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,...

Queen of Tenshindo 95 is a 1995 Windows game that combines the atmosphere of Japanese fantasy with a distinctly strategic approach to competition and adventure. The title suggests ...

The Battle of the Bulge: Tigers in the Snow is a detailed World War II strategy game focused on the German offensive in the Ardennes during the winter of 1944. Released in 1982, it...

Star Wars 2 is a 1989 DOS sequel that continues the space-action formula with more missions, more enemies, and another opportunity to experience the Star Wars universe from behind ...

Transland is a strategy-oriented game built around managing transportation and commercial activity, giving players the opportunity to create and operate a network while attempting ...

Beats of Rage is what happens when fans of Streets of Rage decide to stop waiting for Sega and just build their own game—with a side of King of Fighters for flavor. This DOS ...

Stormbringer: Elric of Melnibone brings Michael Moorcock's dark fantasy world to the computer, placing the player in the role of Elric, the tragic albino sorcerer and emperor whose...

Laxius Power is a traditional Japanese-style role-playing game with a generous helping of exploration, battles, character development, and fantasy melodrama. Its story follows youn...

SWIV 3D takes the classic overhead shooting action of SWIV and throws it into a three-dimensional environment. Released in 1996, it gives you a heavily armed vehicle and a battlefi...