abandonware games sorted by popularity

The sequel nobody expected but everyone button-mashed through. Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 adds more characters, more chaos, and less coherence. This time you’re Lee (no relation to Bru...

Guardians of Infinity: to Save Kennedy is the sort of time-travel adventure that casually suggests you might want to prevent one of the most infamous assassinations in history befo...

Feudal Japan gets the wargame treatment in Conquest of Japan, a strategy title that mixes historical context with tactical ambition. You manage provinces, wage war, and occasionall...

Freddy Hardest introduces a hero whose name suggests subtlety was never on the table. This action-platformer throws you into alien-infested territory armed with a blaster and a stu...

If you’ve ever wondered what baseball would look like if someone crammed the entire sport into a DOS machine and sprinkled a bit of 90s attitude on top, Epic Baseball has you...

Sub Command is a naval warfare simulation game developed by Sonalysts Inc. and released in 2001. In Sub Command, you assume the role of a captain commanding one of three advan...

Infiltrator 2 basically asks: “What if we took everything from the first game and doubled down?” The result is a sequel that’s larger, louder, and just as gleeful...

Before WWII games flooded the market, Knights of the Desert (1983, DOS) was already reenacting the North African campaign in pixels. You command Rommel’s Afrika Korps—o...

Crime Time blends point-and-click adventure with a murder mystery that’s as much about wit as it is about clues. You play an innocent man framed for murder, scrambling to gat...

Dylan Dog: Through the Looking Glass takes the surrealism of the comics and dives headfirst into nightmare territory. Imagine Carroll’s Wonderland rewritten by Lovecraft and ...

In Crazy Nick’s Parlor Games with Laura Bow, the famous young detective swaps clues for checkers, backgammon, and card tables. The change of pace is gentle—no bodies to...

Battlecruiser 3000AD (1996) is less a game and more a test of faith. Ambitious beyond reason, it promised total control of a massive starship—crew management, planetary landi...

Cosmic Crusader is proof that sometimes simple is perfect. You’re a lone pilot defending space against endless waves of enemies, in a game that’s basically a love lette...

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...

In Black Crown (1995), you play as a prince with a very punchable name, trying to reclaim his rightful throne by solving puzzles and dying a lot. It's one of those DOS-era games wh...

Before Indiana Jones had a whip, Chagunitzu had block puzzles. Released in 1990 by Softdisk (and developed by a young John Romero), this game is a precursor to God of Thunder and p...

International Soccer Challenge in 1990 continues the tradition of digital football with a more competitive edge. The pacing is brisk, the mechanics approachable, and the matches of...

Imagine if Tetris, Columns, and a pack of highlighters had a baby. That’s Zoop. You’re in the center of the screen, and colorful shapes are marching toward you from all...

The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Presto Studios, released in 1995 as a sequel to The Journeyman Project. The Journeyma...

What if the Nazis won? Kronolog: The Nazi Paradox (1993, DOS) takes that nightmare seriously. You play a time traveler trying to fix history, navigating through an oppressive, Orwe...