abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

Dark Legions is a 1994 strategy gem that asks: what if Archon got a DOS makeover with bloodier battles? You command armies of fantastical creatures, from vampires to trolls, across...

Deus Ex is a critically acclaimed action role-playing video game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released in 2000 and was designed by Warren Spect...

Dungeon Keeper 2 took everything its predecessor did and gave it a demonic polish. Slicker graphics, full 3D environments, and imps that finally looked like they deserved a raise. ...

By 1994, RPG fans were spoiled with titles like Might and Magic and Ultima. Then along came Disciples of Steel, a brutally complex, turn-based fantasy epic for DOS. It drops you in...

Paperboy 2 is the sequel to the much acclaimed coin-op arcade hit Paperboy in which you have to deliver newspapers to subscribers while avoiding every kind of obstacle. Paperboy 2 ...

Black Hole (1993) is a space shooter where you're thrown into the gravitational madness of, you guessed it, a black hole. The physics are wild, the enemies are relentless, and you&...

Zona 0 is a top-down action game from Spain that blends cyberpunk aesthetics with frenetic gameplay and a dash of existential dread. You play a cyber-agent navigating a dystopian c...

Castle Adventure is what happens when a medieval fantasy RPG gets crammed into a game smaller than your average selfie. ASCII graphics? Check. Typing commands like “GET SWORD...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Star Trek: First Contact (not to be confused with the later movie) is more puzzle-solving than phaser-firing. You take control of the Enterprise crew as t...

Douglas Adams, the twisted genius behind Hitchhiker’s Guide, brings you the most terrifying adventure of all: paperwork. Bureaucracy turns mundane modern life into a text-bas...

Infestation drops you onto a hostile alien world where the welcome committee consists mostly of things with too many legs and way too many teeth. The game mixes exploration and act...

Post-apocalyptic survival meets real estate management in Burntime, where the world is ruined, but you still need to hire employees and secure water rights. It’s like Mad Max...

Teen Agent is a charming, tongue-in-cheek adventure about a teenager recruited to save the world because, well, why not? With its colorful art, witty dialogue, and delightfully abs...

This 1992 DOS version of Scrabble takes the world’s most civilized word battle and turns it into a duel between man and silicon. The AI opponent doesn’t cheat (much), b...

Released in the mid-’80s, Earthly delights is an odd, almost poetic little DOS title that feels more like an experiment than a traditional game. It blends abstract visuals wi...

ELIZA, created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT, was one of the first computer programs to simulate human conversation. Designed as a natural language processing demons...

Shadows Over Riva caps the trilogy with a confident stride. The graphics receive a welcome upgrade, the atmosphere takes a darker turn, and the narrative leans heavily into detecti...

In Dragon’s Lair 2: Time Warp (1990), Dirk doesn’t just fight dragons—he bungles his way through time itself. Want to rescue your wife Daphne? Prepare to stumble ...