abandonware games sorted by popularity

Side Arms Hyper Dyne is a 1988 DOS shoot-'em-up adapted from Capcom's arcade game, putting players into a futuristic combat suit and sending them directly into a hostile alien batt...

Amarillo Slim's 7 Card Stud turns the classic poker variant into a computer card game with the legendary Amarillo Slim providing the name and atmosphere. Seven-card stud is all abo...

ASCII art has never been so morbid. Classic Hangman is exactly what it says on the tin: guess the word or watch your little stick figure meet a tragic end. Letters become lifelines...

Safari Guns is a 1989 DOS action game with a rather unusual combination of wildlife and firearms. Players take part in safari-style shooting sequences, hunting targets across exoti...

Before NBA 2K made your thumbs cry, there was One-on-One Basketball. You get to control either Larry Bird or Julius Erving in a thrilling display of 80s pixelated hoop dreams. The ...

The 1996 Hamurabi remake takes one of the oldest strategy concepts in gaming and gives it a modest DOS-era facelift. At its core, it’s still about managing resources, feeding...

Paganitzu is a 1991 puzzle-platform adventure starring explorer Alabama Smith, whose archaeological expeditions have an unfortunate tendency to involve deadly temples and elaborate...

Vroom is a racing game that takes a fairly simple premise and pushes it toward a convincing sense of speed. Released in 1994 for DOS, it puts you behind the wheel of fast cars and ...

Laxius Power is a traditional Japanese-style role-playing game with a generous helping of exploration, battles, character development, and fantasy melodrama. Its story follows youn...

Released in 1984, Jumpman is a classic platform game that challenges players to navigate construction sites packed with hazards, ladders, and carefully placed obstacles. The object...

Released in 1984 for DOS, Sorcerer is Infocom at its most mischievous. You play an apprentice wizard who wakes up from a hangover only to find your mentor missing and reality sligh...

Trade in your sword and crown for a dice cup in King Graham’s Board Game Challenge. The noble hero of King’s Quest takes a break from slaying dragons to play board game...

Hugo 3: Jungle of Doom shifts the setting to a more exotic environment, adding variety to the familiar formula. Released in 1992, it introduces new challenges, new puzzles, and a s...

Released in 1990, Disc feels like a relic from a parallel universe where Frisbee is the most important sport in history. The game is minimalist to a fault: you throw discs, catch d...

Released in 1990, Air Strike USA is what you'd get if Top Gun had a baby with a Saturday morning cartoon. You pilot a heavily armed jet through side-scrolling skies, shooting down ...

Who Framed Roger Rabbit brings the manic world of Roger Rabbit to the computer in an adventure built around investigation, exploration, and the search for answers. The story follow...

In Tau Ceti, you’re the lone pilot of a heavily armed hoverbike trying to reboot a dying colony under an alien sun. It’s slow, moody, and brilliantly atmospheric. The v...

In Nomad, you’re a space pilot with a ship full of bad decisions and a galaxy’s worth of trouble. The game throws you into a vast star map to explore, trade, and occasi...

_Jetset_, released in 1982, belongs to the pioneering era of computer gaming when developers worked wonders with limited technology. The game combines arcade-style action with fast...

Stunt Island is part flight simulator, part movie-making playground, and part excuse to crash aircraft repeatedly in the name of entertainment. You take control of various planes a...

Arcade Pool (1994) is like playing a game of billiards in your best friend’s basement—if your best friend happened to be a DOS machine with a serious competitive streak...

The Sporting News Baseball brings America's favorite pastime to the computer with a surprisingly serious approach to statistics, strategy and play-by-play action. Rather than simpl...

Film Studio Tycoon Alpha is a management simulation about the glamorous world of filmmaking, except that glamour quickly gives way to budgets, scheduling, production decisions, and...

Dark Sun 2: Wake of the Ravager takes the harsh desert world of Athas and turns up the intensity. Building on its predecessor, it offers deeper role-playing, improved combat, and a...

By 1992, The Magic Candle 3 refined everything the series had built — a deep fantasy world, intricate character management, and enough side quests to last you until retiremen...

Music Construction Set is an influential early music composition program that lets users create, edit, and arrange musical pieces on a personal computer. Rather than simply playing...

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...

Vulcan: The Tunisian Campaign is a detailed wargame focused on the Allied invasion of North Africa during World War II. Released in 1988, it asks players to manage military units, ...

Cougar Force feels like the ’80s exploded into a side-scrolling action game. Big guns, big hair, and bigger explosions define this run-and-gun romp where subtlety is for othe...

TheDraw 4 is a classic DOS text and ASCII-art editor, built for users who wanted their otherwise boring command-line screens to have a little personality. It provides tools for cre...