abandonware games sorted by popularity

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 ...

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993) is a classic first-person RPG that understands pacing better than many of its peers. It offers a rich fantasy world, memorable characters,...

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...

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...

GW-BASIC (short for Gee Whiz BASIC) is a dialect of the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. It's one of the early implementations of BASIC and was included ...

In Jones in the Fast Lane, success is measured not by defeating monsters or saving kingdoms, but by surviving everyday life. Released in 1991, this unusual board game simulation ha...

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...

Runaway City is a 1995 DOS game that combines exploration, action, and urban adventure in a setting where simply getting from one place to another can become an unexpectedly compli...

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...

You’ve never really lived until you’ve watched a rook pick up a pawn and slam dunk it into the floor. Battle Chess (1988) turns the world’s most intellectual boar...

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...

Skyroads is a brilliantly simple 1993 DOS arcade game in which the player pilots a small futuristic craft across suspended roads floating above strange alien landscapes. The object...

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...

Often regarded as the high point of the series, King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow follows Prince Alexander as he searches for Princess Cassima across the mysterious Land o...

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...

Arkanoid: Doh It Again revisits the classic brick-breaking formula with the familiar paddle, ball and increasingly fragile-looking collection of blocks. The objective remains wonde...

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...

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...

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...

Released in 1992, Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 abandons pure text in favor of colorful point-and-click adventure gameplay while preserving the outrageous humor that made its prede...

Despite its familiar title, Mario and Luigi for DOS offers a very different experience from Nintendo's famous adventures. Created outside the official series, it delivers straightf...

Mega Man 3 continues the formula with even more inventive levels, memorable music, and an expanded selection of Robot Masters waiting to test your skills. Sliding mechanics increas...

Test Drive 3: The Passion takes the “driving simulator” label and adds just enough early-’90s flair to make you feel like a rebel with a V8. Forget endless racetr...

Microsoft Word represents one of the most important steps in the transformation of the personal computer into an everyday writing machine. Early versions were a far cry from the en...

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...

It’s Pac-Man, but with sunglasses. CD-Man v2.0 (1992) is a slick, souped-up clone that trades in yellow cheese for 90s attitude. Maze-chomping, ghost-dodging, and the occasio...

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...

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...

Uncharted Waters invites you to sail the high seas in 1990, back when exploration meant patience, curiosity, and occasionally getting very lost. This isn’t a game that rushes you...

Few games deserve the title of “classic” more than Day of the Tentacle (1993). It’s Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman at their weirdest, giving us time travel, mutant...