abandonware games sorted by popularity

Step into the shoes of a medieval lord in this 1991 DOS strategy game. Engage in jousting tournaments, siege castles, and vie for control of England. It's like playing Risk, but wi...

PKzip is one of the most recognizable compression utilities from the DOS era and became almost unavoidable in the world of downloadable software. Its main job is simple: compress f...

Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper is a tough little action game that drops you into a ruined city with one very straightforward job: survive. You play as a lone soldier wandering thro...

Theatre of War is a strategy game that puts the player in command of military forces while recreating the tension of battlefield decisions. Rather than simply moving units toward t...

Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? Deluxe Edition revisits the classic American geography chase with an expanded presentation and the same wonderfully simple premise: find Carmen...

Microsoft Multiplan 4.2 is a spreadsheet application from the years when electronic spreadsheets were still something of a revelation. Multiplan lets users organize figures into ro...

Slam! is a 1993 Windows 3.x game built around fast arcade-style action and competitive play. Its simple presentation reflects the period, but the gameplay aims to provide immediate...

The Final Crusade of Kroz continues the tradition of the Kroz games with another top-down adventure packed with mazes, monsters, treasures, traps, and enough dangerous corridors to...

No, not that Battlestar. Battlestar (1996) is more obscure than a reboot that never happened. Set in deep space with a top-down view and UI only a Windows 3.x user could love, it m...

Obitus is a 1991 action-adventure game that throws the player into a dangerous fantasy world where exploration, combat, and survival are all part of the daily schedule. The game co...

Hard Hat Mack is the kind of game that proves construction work can be more dangerous in pixels than in real life, provided real life had ladders that seem determined to betray you...

Think running an airline is easy? Airlines (1994) says “think again.” This old-school management sim hands you a failing fleet and a world map, then laughs quietly as y...

Ace 2.02 is one of those wonderfully obscure DOS utilities that feels like a small piece of computing archaeology. Rather than trying to impress with flashy graphics or elaborate p...

From the mind of Michael Crichton comes Amazon, a game that lets you live out your jungle explorer fantasies—without the bugs or dysentery. You’re off to the Amazon to ...

Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer 2.0 offers a more serious approach to personal flight simulation, putting the player behind the controls of several aircraft while demanding ...

Before AI could annihilate grandmasters, Psion Chess was already humbling humans back in 1985. Available for DOS and Macintosh, this game wasn’t flashy, but it didn’t n...

Xiphos is a space shooter that mixes straightforward mechanics with a slightly more tactical approach, encouraging players to think as well as react. It is not overly complex, but ...

Mighty Bomb Jack is a fast-paced platform adventure filled with treasure, dangerous enemies, and enough jumping to make your character question the architectural decisions of every...

Novell DOS 7 is an alternative DOS operating system that arrived during the later years of the DOS era, offering compatibility with conventional DOS software while adding a collect...

Acheton (1987, DOS) is one of those text adventures where the game cheerfully tries to kill you every five minutes — and does so with words. You're tossed into a sprawling, b...

Great Naval Battles vol. 3: Fury in the Pacific expands the scope and the intensity, throwing you into larger conflicts with even more to manage. In Great Naval Battles vol. 3, the...

Bright, quirky, and just a little bit mischievous, Finders Keepers feels like it wandered in from another dimension where puzzles and platforming share equal custody of your patien...

Uncover It is a puzzle game from 1994 that thrives on curiosity and a bit of patience. The premise is simple: reveal hidden images piece by piece, but the execution keeps you engag...

Lynx is a text-based web browser that became famous for doing something that sounds almost impossible to younger computer users: browsing the World Wide Web without displaying pict...

Alice: The Personal Pascal is an educational programming environment designed to make Pascal programming approachable for younger users and beginners. Instead of throwing a learner...

Vynil Goddess from Mars is a bright, cheeky platform adventure with a heroine, a bizarre science-fiction setting, and enough cartoon eccentricity to make subtlety pack its bags and...

In Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventures, you’re a green alien kid with suction-cup hands who’s crash-landed on a strange planet. It’s a platformer with bright visuals,...

Space Quest 1: Roger Wilco in the Sarien Encounter is the adventure that introduced Roger Wilco, a janitor who somehow manages to become one of science fiction gaming's most lovabl...

Syberia 2 continues Kate Walker's unusual journey, picking up the story after the events of the first game and taking her even deeper into a mysterious world of automatons, remote ...

Rules of Engagement 2 builds on its predecessor's space-command formula with a larger and more sophisticated strategic experience. Players manage fleets, plan operations, assign sh...