abandonware games sorted by popularity

Magic: The Gathering Interactive Encyclopedia is an abandoned "educational" application and turn-based strategy game based on he Magic: The Gathering collectible card game. MT...

Imagine Tetris went on a sugar binge and had an identity crisis. That’s Zyconix (1992, DOS) in a nutshell. It’s a tile-matching puzzle game where nothing quite behaves ...

NCSA Mosaic was one of the earliest web browsers to appear on the market. It was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illino...

Sam & Max Hit the Road is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1993 and is based on the characters Sam and Max created by c...

Before Indiana Jones had a whip, Chagunitzu had block puzzles. Released in 1990 by Softdisk (and developed by a young John Romero), this game is a precursor to God of Thunder and p...

Trying to describe Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1991) as a “normal” game is impossible—because nothing about it is normal. It’s a fever dream in pixe...

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is an action-adventure game released in 1999, developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos Interactive. It’s the second game in the Legacy...

Strife from 1996 is a first-person shooter game developed by Rogue Entertainment and published by Velocity, based on the Doom engine. It's often remembered for being one of the ear...

It’s 1990, and you’re sitting at your DOS PC playing Accordion, a game that somehow turns solitaire into something slower and more passive-aggressive. It’s not fl...

The sequel to Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch, Return to Ringworld throws you back into Larry Niven’s vast sci-fi universe—except this time, the puzzles are tougher...

Visions of the Aftermath: The Boomtown is an abandoned simulation game with role-playing elements developed by Mindscape and released in 1988 exclusively for DOS. Visions of the Af...

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...

Don’t let the title fool you — Blitz Draughts isn’t a military simulation but rather a gloriously intense checkers game from 1992. This DOS brain-bender turns the...

Dark, brooding, and a little too serious for its own good, Targhan throws you into a side-scrolling world of swords, sorcery, and moody backgrounds. You play as a loincloth-clad wa...

Blade Warrior (1991) is a side-scrolling beat 'em up that looks like it was illustrated entirely in heavy metal album covers. You’re a silhouette of rage, cutting through dem...

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...