abandonware games sorted by popularity

If Dungeons of Kairn were a person, it’d be that quiet D&D player who never smiles and always plays lawful evil. Released in 1989, this obscure DOS crawler delivers all t...

Beyond the Black Hole promises an interstellar voyage into mystery—and delivers... a disorienting 3D shooter that kind of feels like flying a cardboard spaceship through a ka...

As the title suggests, Global Domination doesn’t aim small, throwing you into a contest for control of the entire planet. It leans into a more arcade-like approach to strateg...

Operation Getafix (1989) is what happens when you turn a beloved comic series into a game with the precision of a wild boar wearing gloves. You play as Asterix on a quest to help G...

Gulf Strike places you in the cockpit during a very contemporary-for-1986 conflict, blending strategy and simulation with a dash of headline-inspired drama. You manage missions, al...

By the time Earthworm Jim hit DOS, its reputation already preceded it, and it largely lived up to the hype. This is a platformer that thrives on absurdity: a worm in a spacesuit, b...

IVAN (Iter Vehemens ad Necem) is one of the strangest and deepest roguelikes ever created. Released in 2001, it combines brutal difficulty with extraordinary detail, from limb dama...

In Lost Adventures of Kroz, ASCII characters do all the heavy lifting. No sprites, no polygons — just your imagination and a fearless “@” symbol running for its l...

If you’ve ever wanted to command armies older than your great-great-great-grandparents, Encyclopedia of War: Ancient Battles is your time machine with a keyboard. Released in...

Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor pushes the series into more ambitious territory. Released in 1991, it features a larger scope and a more complex narrative, set in ...

Side Arms: Hyper Dyne is a side-scrolling shoot-'em-up arcade game developed and published by Capcom in 1986 and later ported on various platforms. Players control a "mobilsui...

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...

If adrenaline-fueled car chases aren’t your thing, maybe meticulous Civil War simulations are. Decision at Gettysburg (1990) is a detailed, turn-based strategy game that lets...

You are Sherlock Holmes, and someone has committed a crime, possibly because they couldn’t handle the game’s UI. 221B Baker Street is a detective board game where your ...

In Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventures, you’re a green alien kid with suction-cup hands who’s crash-landed on a strange planet. It’s a platformer with bright visuals,...

Ford Simulator 5 (1994, DOS) arrives with increased confidence, as though the series has fully embraced its unusual identity. The graphics are cleaner, the environments broader, an...

Shadowcaster is a first-person action role-playing game developed by Raven Software and published by Origin Systems. It was released in 1993 for MS-DOS computers.In Shadowcaster, p...

Forget missiles—Blue Max: Aces of the Great War takes you back to when air combat meant leather helmets, canvas wings, and a healthy fear of gravity. Released in 1990 for DOS...

Silicon Dreams by Level 9 Computing is a trilogy of interactive fiction (text adventure) games released in the mid-1980s. The trilogy includes three separate games: Snowball, Retur...

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...

If gravity had a sense of humor, it would look like Bounce Zone. This 1990 DOS oddball is part platformer, part physics experiment, and part unintentional comedy. You bounce. A lot...

Grand Monster Slam takes tennis, removes anything resembling normal human athletes, and replaces them with creatures that look like they escaped a fever dream. In Grand Monster Sla...

Independence War takes space combat seriously, almost stubbornly so. Instead of arcade-style dogfights, it presents a Newtonian flight model where momentum, inertia, and positionin...

Cirque de Zale is a point-and-click adventure game released in 2004, developed by Rebecca Clements as a freeware title. Created using the Adventure Game Studio (AGS) engine, the ga...

Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space is a science fiction roguelike game developed by Digital Eel. Originally released in 2005, it is the sequel to Strange Adventures in Infinite...