abandonware games sorted by popularity

Karateka combines cinematic storytelling with martial arts action in a way that was remarkably ambitious for its time. Players guide a lone warrior through a fortress filled with g...

Mega Man Legends takes Capcom's famous blue hero in a very different direction from his traditional side-scrolling adventures. Instead of running through neatly arranged platforms,...

Xonix is one of those deceptively simple games that quickly becomes an obsession, tasking you with carving out sections of the screen while avoiding relentless enemies. The mechani...

In Syndicate, you don’t just play the bad guy—you manage a full corporate evil empire, complete with mind-controlled agents in trench coats and a suspicious lack of HR ...

MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1990. The Zhodani Conspiracy is the first installment in the MegaTraveller ser...

When Little Big Adventure appeared in 1994, it immediately stood out thanks to its imaginative world, memorable storytelling, and charming protagonist Twinsen. Blending action, adv...

Hospital management has never been so weirdly German. In Biing!, you hire nurses based on looks, run a completely dysfunctional clinic, and try not to get arrested. It's part strat...

If you like your RPGs verbose, Betrayal at Krondor is basically a fantasy novel you play. Set in Raymond E. Feist’s Midkemia, the game oozes with narrative depth, detailed ch...

HeroQuest brings the tabletop experience to the screen with a sincerity that is hard not to appreciate. It tries to recreate the feeling of gathering around a board, complete with ...

Gal Pani X is the sort of arcade puzzle game that looks innocent for about five seconds before revealing its true nature: a frantic test of nerves where drawing lines is somehow mo...

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...

Welcome to Alter Ego: Male Version, where your life begins with a cry and a diaper and only goes downhill - or uphill, depending on your choices. This text-based simulation lets yo...

Space Rogue is what happens when Elite and Ultima decide to have a baby… in space. You’re dumped into a universe of hostile aliens, smugglers, and zero-g dogfights, an...

Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia is often spoken of with a certain reverence, and it is not hard to see why. Everything comes together with a confidence th...

Ah, Lula: The Sexy Empire (1997, Windows) — the game that tried to make adult business management classy and failed spectacularly. You play Lula, a buxom entrepreneur trying ...

EcoQuest 2 takes its environmental message seriously but packages it in a way that’s engaging rather than preachy. You explore lush rainforest environments, solving puzzles t...

Borland Turbo Basic was a programming language developed by Borland, a software company that was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Turbo Basic was part of the Turbo series of progr...

By 1997, Warlords 3: Reign of Heroes decided it was time to grow up a bit—or at least pretend to. Now running on Windows, it adds quests, diplomacy, and a stronger narrative ...

When Last Ninja reached DOS in 1988, it brought its stylish martial arts adventure to a wider audience with challenging action and memorable level design. Guiding a lone ninja thro...

Released in 1998 for Windows XP-era PCs, Fatal Relations is an interactive drama that leans heavily into adult themes, intrigue, and morally questionable choices. More visual novel...

When Fallout landed in 1997, it didn’t just introduce a new RPG, it redefined what post-apocalyptic storytelling could feel like. Set in a retro-futuristic wasteland dripping...

Environmental doom simulator? Check. Grim statistics? Double check. Balance of the Planet lets you tinker with carbon emissions, wildlife extinction, and deforestation until you ei...

If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to run a railway empire without getting coal dust all over your clothes, Railroad Tycoon is the place to start. This 1990 classic h...

Let’s be honest: Cobra Mission is remembered less for its RPG mechanics and more for its... risqué content. The first “eroge” RPG translated into English, ...

The Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate takes the dungeon-crawling formula of its predecessors and gives it a considerably larger stage. Released in 1990, it offers a sprawling fantasy ad...

Released in 1996, Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail sends Larry aboard a luxurious cruise where romance, mystery, and comedy collide with spectacular enthusiasm. The hand-drawn a...

One of the best licensed games of the '90s, Blade Runner (1997) puts you in the rain-soaked shoes of Ray McCoy, a detective tracking down replicants in a world where it's always ni...

Before Wake of the Ravager, there was Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, the first CRPG to bring Athas to life. It was a bold departure from the usual Gold Box formula, with more freedom i...

Tristan Pinball is a digital pinball table from an era when computer hardware was expected to imitate a real arcade machine despite having considerably fewer pixels and absolutely ...

Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man is a 1986 adventure game that puts the world’s most famous web-slinger into a computer-generated mystery filled with exploration, puzzles, and the...