abandonware games sorted by popularity

LadyLove (1990) is infamous, misunderstood, and often misremembered. Marketed as erotic, it’s actually a text-heavy life simulation about relationships, choices, and social n...

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...

Gruntz looks cute at first glance, like a game that might politely ask you to solve a few puzzles and then let you relax. It is lying. In Gruntz, you control small clay creatures t...

Hero's Quest: So You Want to Be a Hero is a charming blend of role-playing and adventure that gently nudges you into a world where saving the day involves as much thinking as it do...

Another World (1991) is a cinematic platformer with big ideas, minimal UI, and a shocking willingness to let you die within five seconds of starting. You play as a scientist who ge...

Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame continues the legendary adventure with larger environments, improved graphics, and an expanded story. Released in 1993, it follows the ...

Castle of the Winds is a fantasy roguelike role-playing game developed by SaadaSoft in the early 1990s. It was designed for Windows 3.x and is notable for being one of the earliest...

Released in 1994, Lode Runner: The Legend Returns successfully modernizes the beloved classic without sacrificing the elegant puzzle design that made the original unforgettable. En...

Sid Meier's Colonization is Civilization’s scrappy, historically charged cousin. You start with a tiny ship and a dream: exploit the New World before the other European power...

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...

Mick's Strip Poker combines card-game mechanics with an adult presentation, offering a digital version of strip poker that reflects the technology and attitudes of its era. The bas...

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...

MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients is the sequel to MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy. It is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1991, developed by Par...

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...

A Night with Troi (1991) sounds like a fan fiction gone too far - and, well, that’s pretty much what it is. It’s a DOS-based “adventure” in the loosest sens...

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...

Hard Nova blends space exploration with role-playing elements, creating an experience that feels like a tabletop campaign decided to go digital and slightly unpredictable. You mana...

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...

Space exploration reaches impressive heights in Master of Orion, a strategy classic that challenges players to guide an interstellar civilization toward galactic supremacy. Coloniz...

Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0 expands the already impressive flight simulation experience with improved graphics, more detailed environments, and a greater sense of realism. Playe...

Part Cold War thriller, part adventure game, part submarine simulator, Code-Name: Iceman is a Sierra title that demands patience, precision, and a deep respect for diplomacy and to...

Elvira: The Arcade Game trades puzzles for action and subtlety for pure chaos. This is fast, brutal, side-scrolling combat with monsters pouring in from every direction. Elvira&rsq...

The Bard's Tale is one of the great early computer RPGs, taking players into a dangerous fantasy world where creating a party is only the beginning of the trouble. Released in 1987...

Before Doom and Wolfenstein 3D turned PC gaming into a pixelated bloodbath, there was Castle Wolfenstein. A stealth game in 1984? Believe it. You sneak around a Nazi fortress, stea...

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...

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...

If Doom was the apocalypse, Doom II: Hell on Earth was the encore nobody asked for but everyone wanted. Released in 1994, it doubled down on everything: bigger maps, nastier monste...

Aces of the Pacific (1992, DOS) takes to the skies over WWII’s Pacific Theater, where you can dogfight in legendary aircraft and prove your piloting prowess — or spin i...

Blackthorne (1994) is what happens when a '90s action hero gets lost in a side-scrolling alien world and decides to shoot everything until it makes sense. You’re Kyle, a shot...

Space Invaders is a 1995 DOS release of the arcade classic in which humanity's entire defense strategy consists of moving a small laser cannon sideways and shooting descending alie...