abandonware games sorted by popularity

Heart of the Maelstrom brings epic dungeon crawling to dizzying heights, challenging players with sprawling levels, fiendish enemies, and puzzles that seem to require a PhD in pati...

A Personal Nightmare (1989) blends horror and detective work into one spooky little cocktail of 1980s DOS game design. You return to your hometown to find it overrun by demonic pos...

If Doom and Gauntlet had a lovechild, Alien Breed would be the weird kid who hangs out in dark corridors with a shotgun. Released in 1993 for DOS, this top-down shooter throws you ...

Before he became better known as Alien Carnage, Halloween Harry blasted onto DOS PCs in 1993 with fast action, crude humor, and zero interest in subtlety. You play Harry, armed to ...

Metal & Lace combines giant robots, futuristic combat, and adult-oriented visual novel elements into an unusual package that certainly does not suffer from a lack of ambition. Play...

Microsoft FreeCell takes the deceptively simple card game and turns it into one of the most enduring forms of digital procrastination ever invented. The rules are easy to understan...

Polished to a shine worthy of a senator’s sandals, Caesar 3 finally gets it right. Gorgeous 2D visuals, elegant gameplay, and voiceovers that say “No more workers!&rdqu...

Interactive Girls Club Games is one of those early ’90s curiosities that tried to blend interactivity with, let’s say, “adult-themed social simulation.” The...

Deluxe Paint, often abbreviated as DPaint, was a popular bitmap graphics editor and animation software package. It was developed by Electronic Arts (EA) and released in the mid-198...

Emmanuelle: A Game of Eroticism is less about eroticism and more about awkward curiosity. Released in 1989, it’s a slow, text-heavy experience filled with suggestion, innuend...

Ms. Pac-Man is a classic arcade game released by Midway in 1982 (1984 for DOS) as a follow-up to the original Pac-Man (1980), developed by Namco. While its core gameplay ...

So you think you're ready to storm Normandy? Think again. 101: The Airborne Invasion of Normandy drops you into the chaos of World War II with all the grace of a paratrooper landin...

Supremacy: Your Will Be Done is a grand strategy game with a suitably enormous ambition: conquer space, expand your empire, manage resources, and generally become the sort of inter...

Before co-op brawlers were everywhere, there was Double Dragon (1988 on DOS). Two brothers, one kidnapped girlfriend, and enough street thugs to populate a small city—that&rs...

Sango Fighter is a 1993 fighting game inspired by the historical Three Kingdoms period of China, transforming famous generals and warriors into combatants for one-on-one battles. P...

Heretic is what happens when someone looks at fantasy and thinks it needs more fireballs and a lot more attitude. Built on familiar shooter foundations, it swaps sci-fi corridors f...

Theme Hospital takes the serious business of healthcare and turns it into one of the funniest management simulations ever made. Instead of simply treating ordinary illnesses, you r...

The Legacy: Realm of Terror is a dark first-person RPG that throws you into a genuinely unpleasant supernatural world. Rather than offering heroic castles and cheerful fantasy vill...

Mix one part turn-based strategy, one part fantasy novel, add a dash of dragon, and you get Age of Wonders (1999). This is the game where wizards rule, elves sulk in forests, and y...

Quarantine is a 1994 action game that takes the idea of driving through a dangerous city and removes almost every reassuring element of the experience. The player takes control of ...

The 1990 adaptation of Tim Burton’s Batman hit DOS screens with a moody mix of driving, platforming, and side-scrolling bat-beatdowns. Batman: The Movie swings between genres...

Before Battle Chess, there was Archon. Imagine a board game where pawns and knights settle disputes not with rules, but with full-on gladiatorial combat. Archon gives you light ver...

Star Wars: X-Wing is a 1993 space combat simulator that finally allowed PC players to experience the Star Wars universe from the cockpit of its famous starfighters. Players begin a...

What do you get when you mix Mad Max, Car Wars, and a fondness for vehicular homicide? You get Autoduel (1985, DOS), a top-down driving RPG where your car is your castle and your g...

In 1996, Diablo descended onto PCs and basically defined the “click until everything dies” genre. The gothic town of Tristram sits atop a dungeon stuffed with demons, l...

Alpha Waves is what happens when someone programs a 3D platformer using only triangles and pure imagination. You bounce. That’s it. You bounce through abstract levels that lo...

Army Men lets you live out your childhood fantasy of plastic soldier warfare without the hassle of crawling under the couch. You control Sarge, a green-tinted war machine with a st...

Angel 3 is that kind of DOS game where you sit down thinking "I'll give it five minutes" and three hours later you're still trying to figure out what just happened. Released in 199...

Myth: The Fallen Lords is a landmark real-time strategy game that combines intense tactical battles with a remarkably dark and atmospheric fantasy setting. Players command armies a...

If you ever wanted to feel like you were trapped in a washing machine armed with lasers, Descent is your game. Released in 1995, this claustrophobic, six-degrees-of-freedom shooter...