abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Witness is an early detective adventure that asks the player to investigate a murder at an isolated location while questioning suspects, examining evidence and trying to recons...

Starglider is a 1986 science-fiction action game that combines fast flying with shooting, exploration, and a surprisingly open environment. Players pilot a futuristic craft across ...

Great Naval Battles vol. 4: Burning Steel shifts focus to earlier conflicts, offering a different flavor of naval strategy. In Great Naval Battles vol. 4, the mechanics remain deep...

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...

Skifree is an adorable downhill romp… at least until the monster shows up. You start by zipping peacefully through flags and jumps, enjoying the zen simplicity of early Wind...

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...

Dive Bomber (1989) is a game that delivers exactly what it promises: you dive, you bomb, and you try not to crash into the ground in the process. The graphics are about as simple a...

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...

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...

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...

Sirwood throws you into a fantasy kingdom where the trees are friendlier than some of the locals. Half strategy, half adventure, it's the kind of game that expects you to think, pl...

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 ...

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...

If you've ever wanted to pop bubbles while being taunted by adorable dinosaurs, Bust-A-Move Again (1996, DOS) is your jam. It’s like Tetris met a bubble tea menu and had a hy...

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...

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...

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...

Freddy Hardest introduces a hero whose name suggests subtlety was never on the table. This action-platformer throws you into alien-infested territory armed with a blaster and a stu...

Yacht Racing Simulator proves that even in the '80s, developers were brave enough to turn the thrilling world of rich people boating slowly into a video game. With graphics that co...

Feudal Japan gets the wargame treatment in Conquest of Japan, a strategy title that mixes historical context with tactical ambition. You manage provinces, wage war, and occasionall...

More smoke-filled backrooms than a noir film and enough slot machines to trigger déjà vu—Caesars Palace is your low-res Vegas getaway. You're given a pile of ch...

Hockey League Simulator takes the thrilling, bone-crunching sport of hockey and boldly asks: what if you never actually played it? Instead, you manage teams, tweak stats, and stare...

Cyrus is a chess program that doesn’t just play well—it plays with personality. The AI adjusts to your skill level, offering a challenge whether you’re a beginner...

Noctropolis feels like stepping into a fever dream of a comic book you read when you were twelve and maybe shouldn’t have. A surreal noir adventure with gothic heroes, femme ...

Desperados is a tactical western adventure that takes the familiar cowboy setting and replaces the usual run-and-gun chaos with careful planning. You control a small group of chara...

Gettysburg: Civil War Battles is a detailed strategy game centered on one of the most famous battles of the American Civil War. Rather than reducing the conflict to a simple exchan...

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...

PC Paintbrush is an early computer painting program that helped make graphical drawing accessible on IBM-compatible PCs. Released in 1984, it arrived when using a computer to creat...

Acheton (1987, DOS) is one of those text adventures where the game cheerfully tries to kill you every five minutes — and does so with words. You're tossed into a sprawling, b...

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...