abandonware games sorted by popularity

Fable (1996) is one of those DOS curiosities that feels like it was built late at night with equal parts ambition and caffeine. It presents itself as a fantasy role-playing experie...

A gentle adventure inspired by the animated film, Once Upon a Forest (1995, DOS) delivers an eco-friendly story wrapped in side-scrolling gameplay. You guide three tiny forest crea...

Nanotank is a 1993 Windows 3.x strategy game that takes the concept of armored warfare and shrinks it down to a delightfully miniature scale. Instead of commanding enormous armies ...

Football Fanatic (1998, DOS) is pure arcade chaos dressed in cleats. It doesn’t care much for the finer tactical nuances of the sport; it wants you sprinting, tackling, and g...

Questprobe featuring The Hulk is a 1984 adventure game that puts players in control of Marvel’s famously angry green powerhouse. The game combines exploration, puzzles, and probl...

Yuppi's Revenge is what happens when ‘80s satire meets office rage. You’re a disgruntled ex-yuppie on a rampage through the corporate world—armed with a golf club...

Based on the cult fantasy novels by Roger Zelazny, 9 Princes in Amber is a 1985 text adventure that assumes two things: you’ve read the books, and you enjoy typing things lik...

If Sorcerer Lord was about controlling armies, Sorcerian (1990, DOS) zooms in to the party level — a side-scrolling RPG that’s as odd as it is ambitious. You build a te...

Unreal Gold is the polished, expanded version of a game that already made a significant impact. Released in 2000, it combines atmospheric exploration with intense action, creating ...

In Search of Dr. Riptide from 1994 is a science-fiction adventure with enough eccentricity to fill several galaxies. Players investigate mysteries, solve puzzles, and generally que...

Darius Gaiden is a visually stunning side-scrolling shooter where every boss is a giant, weaponized sea creature from a neon-soaked fever dream. You’ll pilot your ship throug...

TwinBlok, released in 1996, is one of those puzzle games that looks simple at first glance and then quietly consumes your afternoon. It builds on familiar falling-block mechanics b...

If you ever wanted to simulate being a helicopter pilot without leaving your MS-DOS comfort zone, Bravo Romeo Delta has you covered. This 1993 sim throws acronyms, radar screens, a...

Fievel's back, and this time it’s personal. An American Tail: Fievel Goes West lets you step into the little cowboy boots of everyone’s favorite Russian mouse as he tri...

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...

In Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, Sierra took the Wild West and decided it needed more jokes, more puns, and significantly more medical malpractice. Released in 1993, this po...

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...

In this 1990 point-and-click adventure, you find yourself in Las Vegas with no memory of how you got there. Solve puzzles, gather clues, and uncover the mystery behind your amnesia...

Van Buren was a science fiction post-apocalyptic RPG being developed by Black Isle Studios and never published. Van Buren was the direct sequel to Fallout 2, part of the Fallout fr...

Atlantis: The Lost Tales is a graphic adventure game developed by Cryo Interactive and released in 1997. It is the first in a series of games set around the legendary lost city of ...

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans is where Blizzard’s legendary fantasy saga began. This real-time strategy classic pits humans against orcs in a battle for control of a war-torn wor...

King's Quest III Redux: To Heir is Human is a fan-made remake that lovingly modernizes Sierra's classic while respecting everything that made the original memorable. Enhanced visua...

Released in 2000, Extreme Shopper is one of those games that sounds like a joke—until you realize it fully commits to the premise. You play as a shopper navigating a chaotic ...

Global Effect takes a slightly different angle, blending strategy with a more experimental edge. It’s not always clear what it wants to be, but that’s part of the appea...