abandonware games sorted by popularity

NetStorm: Islands at War is a 1997 real-time strategy game with a wonderfully unusual setting: floating islands suspended in the sky, where rival factions wage war using buildings,...

Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic 1939-1943 sets the stage for the series with a focus on tense, strategic encounters. In Great Naval Battles, you are dealing with limited inform...

Moraff's Dungeon of the Unforgiven is a first-person dungeon crawler filled with monsters, exploration, treasure, and the sort of dark corridors that strongly suggest turning aroun...

Italicized title: Jackal. Fast-paced and unapologetically action-oriented, this military shooter places players behind the wheel of an armed jeep on a mission to rescue prisoners o...

The Blue & the Gray is a strategy game built around the American Civil War, giving players the chance to command forces on either side of the conflict. Released in 1993, it focuses...

Phantasie 1 is a 1987 role-playing game that helped establish many of the traditions later associated with computer fantasy adventures. Players create a party of heroes, explore da...

Combat Chess (1997, Windows XP) takes the cerebral game of kings and adds swords, screams, and shameless violence. Every piece battle-animates into Mortal Kombat-lite fights when y...

Dark, brooding, and a little too serious for its own good, Targhan throws you into a side-scrolling world of swords, sorcery, and moody backgrounds. You play as a loincloth-clad wa...

Black Hole (1993) is a space shooter where you're thrown into the gravitational madness of, you guessed it, a black hole. The physics are wild, the enemies are relentless, and you&...

Gearheads is a colorful puzzle game in which mechanical creatures become the stars of a surprisingly hectic series of challenges. The objective is generally straightforward, but co...

Ford Simulator 5 (1994, DOS) arrives with increased confidence, as though the series has fully embraced its unusual identity. The graphics are cleaner, the environments broader, an...

Released in 1993, Lethal Tender combines platform action with a satirical storyline centered on greed, money, and determined heroes. Players jump through colorful levels while coll...

Vaxine is a first-person shooter with a wonderfully strange premise: you are flying through the interior of a human body, blasting viruses and other microscopic nasties before they...

Paintshow is a DOS graphics program from an era when creating pictures on a computer still felt like a minor act of wizardry. It provides tools for drawing, editing, and manipulati...

Data Perfect 2.6 is a DOS database application representing the practical, no-nonsense side of personal computing. Software of this kind was built for people who needed to organise...

The Clue! turns the classic murder-mystery board game concept into a computer adventure with investigation, deduction, and a suitably suspicious collection of characters. The famil...

Super Speed: Christmas Edition gives the racing formula a festive makeover, combining fast cars with Christmas-themed presentation. The basic objective remains familiar: race aroun...

F-PROT is an antivirus developed by FRISK Software International. The name "F-PROT" stands for "FRISK-PROActive," emphasizing its proactive approach to virus detection and preventi...

International Soccer from 1994 delivers football in its most straightforward digital form: pass, shoot, and wonder why your defenders are wandering elsewhere. It captures the excit...

Grand Prix Wizard sounds like it might involve spells, but sadly no one is casting fireballs at rival drivers. Instead, Grand Prix Wizard leans into management, asking you to handl...

Released in 1994, Iron Seed is a DOS space sim that tried to be both philosophical and technical. You’re leading a fledgling human colony across the stars, tinkering with dip...

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...

Released in 1989 for DOS, Poker Relay (also known as 9 Poker) is less a glamorous casino sim and more a smoky backroom full of pixelated cards and questionable programming. You get...

Super 3-D Noah's Ark is an unusual first-person shooter that takes the familiar Wolfenstein-style formula and gives it an extremely unexpected biblical makeover. Instead of battlin...

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...

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...

Summer Challenge turns the excitement of international athletics into a collection of computer events where timing, rhythm, and frantic button pressing can determine whether you be...

Titans of Steel: Warring Suns is a tactical role-playing game where enormous machines settle arguments in the least environmentally friendly way possible. Players command teams of ...

If adrenaline-fueled car chases aren’t your thing, maybe meticulous Civil War simulations are. Decision at Gettysburg (1990) is a detailed, turn-based strategy game that lets...

Infestation drops you onto a hostile alien world where the welcome committee consists mostly of things with too many legs and way too many teeth. The game mixes exploration and act...