abandonware games sorted by popularity

Visions of the Aftermath: The Boomtown is an abandoned simulation game with role-playing elements developed by Mindscape and released in 1988 exclusively for DOS. Visions of the Af...

If you ever looked at regular Tetris and thought, “What this really needs is eye-melting colors and a possible migraine,” then Acid Tetris (1998, DOS) is your jam. It&r...

A Dudley Dilemma (1988) sounds like the title of a children’s book, but it’s actually a very British text adventure for DOS where the stakes are politely quirky and mil...

X-COM: Apocalypse takes the familiar alien invasion formula and tosses it into a sprawling futuristic city, where things feel both more chaotic and oddly more personal. Instead of ...

The all new Family Feud brings the classic TV game show into your home, complete with survey questions and the eternal struggle to guess what other people are thinking. It’s simp...

Released in 1994, _Jetstrike_ mixes action, strategy, and flight combat into a surprisingly ambitious package. Players take command of military aircraft and tackle missions that in...

ZZT (1991, DOS) looks like it was drawn by an enthusiastic ASCII artist with too much time and not enough colors. And yet, it’s brilliant. Part action game, part puzzle adven...

Paganitzu is a classic puzzle-adventure game released in 1991 by Apogee Software. Set in an ancient pyramid, the game follows the exploits of its protagonist, Alabama Smith, who mu...

Released in 1988, Serve & Volley transformed tennis into a surprisingly entertaining digital pastime. It captured the excitement of the sport without requiring players to understan...

Terminal Velocity is all about speed, freedom, and blowing things up while flying at ridiculous velocities. The open environments give a sense of scale rarely seen at the time, and...

Ah, Bob Winner (1986, DOS), the game that asks: what if Indiana Jones had a cousin who got lost in a side-scroller? You play as the titular Bob, an adventurer who walks like he&rsq...

In Crime and Punishment, you’re not the criminal—you’re the detective, judge, and executioner rolled into one. Presented as a legal simulation, it tasks you with ...

Released in 1984, Lords of Midnight is one of those rare games that feels more like a living legend than a product. Blending strategy, role-playing, and a kind of emergent storytel...

Superhero League of Hoboken is a humorous role-playing game (RPG) released in 1994, developed by Legend Entertainment. It's a quirky mix of a traditional RPG and an adventure game,...

Released in 1986, Dragons: A Challenge in Chivalry leaned more toward interactive storytelling than traditional gameplay. You weren’t just hacking at dragons—you were r...