abandonware games sorted by popularity

Slam! is a 1993 Windows 3.x game built around fast arcade-style action and competitive play. Its simple presentation reflects the period, but the gameplay aims to provide immediate...

Ground Control throws you into real-time strategy without the safety net of base building, which is both refreshing and slightly terrifying. In Ground Control, every unit matters, ...

Tracon 2 puts the player in the demanding position of managing air traffic, which sounds peaceful until several aircraft arrive at once and all of them expect you to know exactly w...

Oil Barons takes the glamorous world of oil speculation—yes, glamorous—and turns it into a strategy game that feels like Monopoly went through a midlife crisis. Release...

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...

Citadel of the Black Sun is a fantasy adventure built around exploration, danger, and the ominous business of investigating a mysterious stronghold. The game places the player in a...

Imagine a game where minesweeper meets viral chaos—Chain Reaction (1996) isn’t quite that, but it is a fast-paced puzzle-action hybrid where things blow up in neat litt...

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...

Ultimuh MCMLXVII: Part 2 of the 39th Trilogy wins points immediately for its audacious title alone. This action-adventure leans heavily into sci-fi weirdness, combining philosophic...

Ever wanted to get chess lessons from a genius who could crush your soul with a bishop and a glare? Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess (1994, DOS) is your chance. Based on the classic boo...

Swap is a puzzle game built around a wonderfully simple idea: rearrange things until the board behaves itself. Released in 1992, it challenges the player with increasingly tricky a...

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...

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...

Firezone is one of those late-80s action titles that seems determined to test both your reflexes and your optimism. It drops you into hostile territory and expects you to cope. The...

Midwinter 2: Flames of Freedom expands the original's ambitious open-world design with a larger setting, new vehicles, more varied missions, and a broader struggle for freedom. Pla...

Film Studio Tycoon Alpha is a management simulation about the glamorous world of filmmaking, except that glamour quickly gives way to budgets, scheduling, production decisions, and...

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...

Sports games from the late 1980s often relied on imagination as much as graphics, and Magic Johnson's Basketball is no exception. Featuring the NBA legend himself, it delivers fast...

Surf Ninjas is exactly the sort of licensed game that sounds like somebody combined two unrelated ideas and decided not to ask questions. Released in 1994, it is based on the film ...

Kroz returns, and with it, your CRT monitor’s worst nightmare: ASCII graphics! Return to Kroz takes you back to a time when @ meant “you,” and everything else was...

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 ...

Spy vs Spy 3: Arctic Antics is a 1988 action game featuring the wonderfully destructive rivalry between the two monochrome spies from the classic comic strip. This time the ridicul...

Hot on the heels of the first, Caverns of Kroz 2 (also 1989) doesn’t mess with the formula—it sharpens it. More puzzles, more monsters, more reasons to scream at fallin...

The Untouchables brings the Prohibition-era world of Eliot Ness and his team to the computer, mixing shootouts, driving sequences and other action set pieces inspired by the famous...

Iron Blood (1996, DOS) is the kind of fighting game that makes you wonder if robots really need martial arts lessons. The story is wafer-thin—something about futuristic warri...

Ah, BurgerTime. The game that asked the important question: what if we made a platformer about a tiny chef assembling giant burgers while being chased by sentient hot dogs? You gui...

Sherman M4 is a 1989 DOS tank combat game centered on the famous American M4 Sherman tank. Players take control of the armored vehicle and face battlefield situations where positio...

Savage Warriors is a 1995 DOS fighting game focused on one-on-one battles between powerful martial artists. Players select from a roster of warriors, each with different attacks an...

Forget muscle cars and highways—Detroit (1994) is all about running your own automobile empire. Starting in the early 20th century, you’ll design cars, juggle productio...

Luigi and Spaghetti (1992, DOS) sounds like a dinner order but is actually an educational puzzle adventure. You guide a tiny robot named Luigi (no, not that one) through logic puzz...