abandonware games sorted by popularity

If Dungeons of Kairn were a person, it’d be that quiet D&D player who never smiles and always plays lawful evil. Released in 1989, this obscure DOS crawler delivers all t...

Push-Push Penguin is an expanded version of the classic Sega's 1982 arcade game Pengo, incorporating features like power-ups, a combo system, and a more diverse array of enemies, b...

Fort Apache drops you into the Old West with the subtlety of a saloon door kicked off its hinges. Strategy and action mingle as you defend your frontier outpost from relentless att...

There’s a certain dark humor baked into Global Thermo War, a game that tackles nuclear conflict with a mix of strategy and unsettling realism. It’s not exactly cheerful...

Frac takes a minimalist concept—navigate fractal landscapes—and turns it into something hypnotic and slightly disorienting. The visuals shimmer with mathematical flair,...

An expansion to the original, Cossacks: The Art of War refines, expands, and generally cranks up the chaos. New units, new campaigns, and more ways to accidentally bankrupt your na...

War of the Lance turns the Dragonlance setting into a substantial fantasy strategy game, allowing players to participate in the enormous conflict between the forces of good and evi...

The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants puts Bart Simpson in the middle of an extraterrestrial invasion and gives him a surprisingly unpleasant afternoon. The aliens are preparing...

Yacht Racing Simulator proves that even in the '80s, developers were brave enough to turn the thrilling world of rich people boating slowly into a video game. With graphics that co...

Armour-Geddon is what you get when someone combines Wargames with a midlife crisis. Set in a post-nuke world where you pilot tanks, helicopters, and laser cannons to stop a doomsda...

Released in 1990, Lightspeed blends space simulation, exploration, and strategic resource management into an ambitious science fiction adventure. Players travel across distant star...

Beyond Good and Evil is a stylish action-adventure built around exploration, photography, investigation and a conspiracy threatening the world of Hillys. Players control Jade, a re...

Red Storm Rising is a 1989 submarine simulation based on Tom Clancy's Cold War novel, putting players in command of a nuclear-powered submarine during a fictional conflict between ...

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...

Borrowed Time is a graphic adventure video game developed and published by Interplay Productions. It was released in 1985 for various platforms, including the Apple Macintosh,...

Monuments of Mars (1991) is one of those puzzle-platformers where patience is less a virtue and more a survival tool. You’re stranded on Mars, exploring alien ruins filled wi...

The Feeble Files is a wonderfully odd comedy adventure following Feeble, an ordinary-looking alien whose life becomes considerably less ordinary after he gets caught up in a conspi...

Released in 1994 for DOS, Iron Cross is a historical strategy game that tries very hard to make military planning look sexy. Spoiler: it doesn’t. You’re dealing with Wo...

Released in 1990, Les Manley in: Search for the King introduces players to an offbeat adventure full of comedy, quirky characters, and classic point-and-click puzzles. Les embarks ...

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...

Ah, Betrayal—a game with a name that really sets the tone. Is it about backstabbing? Politics? Lost love? Not really. It’s actually a hybrid of strategy and role-playin...

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate brings the grim darkness of the far future into a turn-based tactical battlefield where subtle diplomacy has been replaced by heavily armed Space Marine...

Released in 1996, Last Knight in Camelot revisits Arthurian legends with a blend of adventure, fantasy, and puzzle-solving. Players step into a kingdom filled with familiar myths w...

Cirque de Zale is a point-and-click adventure game released in 2004, developed by Rebecca Clements as a freeware title. Created using the Adventure Game Studio (AGS) engine, the ga...

By 1992, Vol. 3 wrapped up the trilogy with even more complex scenarios. At this point, the series had become less of a game and more of an interactive textbook—though that&r...

World Darts takes the humble pub game of darts and gives it a suitably digital makeover. The objective sounds simple enough: throw little pointed objects at a circular board and tr...

Rawcopy is a straightforward DOS utility designed around copying data, with the sort of focused functionality that was common among command-line tools of the period. Rather than at...

CHAMP Pac-em is a Pac-Man-inspired arcade game built around the familiar pleasure of navigating mazes while collecting items and avoiding enemies. Anyone who has ever confidently e...

Daemonsgate is what happens when someone decides RPGs need more moral ambiguity, political intrigue, and sprawling maps that require an actual notebook to navigate. You’re to...

18th Airborne is what happens when a military recruitment pamphlet and a tactical shooter have a baby. You’re thrown into the boots of a paratrooper with a mission, a gun, an...