abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Way of the Exploding Fist PC is a later PC take on the classic martial-arts fighting formula, built around timing, positioning and knowing when to strike. The name already give...

The Ancient Art of War at Sea takes the strategic ideas of its predecessor and moves them onto the water, where armies are replaced by fleets and the battlefield becomes considerab...

A moody sci-fi adventure drenched in neon gloom, The Orion Conspiracy (1995, DOS) tosses you into a futuristic murder mystery where everyone seems to be hiding something—ofte...

Hollywood Squares brings the classic TV game show to your computer, complete with trivia questions and a grid of personalities who may or may not be telling the truth. Released in ...

Black Monday (1987) combines economic panic with the thrill of—wait for it—spreadsheet navigation. It's like Wolf of Wall Street without the fun, drugs, or DiCaprio. Yo...

Ever dreamed of a medieval Wall Street where knights swap swords instead of stocks? Knight Exchange turns that fever dream into pixels. Released in 1988 for DOS, this quirky strate...

Melody Maker 3 is a music creation package that brings composition and experimentation to the DOS environment. Long before modern digital audio workstations turned music production...

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...

Released in 1992, Spellcraft: Aspects of Valor is one of those wonderfully odd games that feels like it was brewed in a laboratory where someone mixed fantasy, strategy, and a pinc...

Welcome to the future, where space empires are managed entirely via text and colored dots. Anacreon puts you in charge of an interstellar civilization and lets you conquer galaxies...

Volleyball Simulator does exactly what its title promises, although anyone expecting a modern sports game with photorealistic athletes should probably adjust their expectations imm...

Dreadnoughts is a naval strategy game built around the imposing battleships of the early twentieth century. Here, subtlety often gives way to armor, artillery, and the rather persu...

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...

Astro Dodge (1982) is basically Frogger — in space. You control a tiny spacecraft tasked with dodging endless waves of meteors, space debris, and possibly your own questionab...

Ascii Sector is what happens when someone takes Privateer, removes the graphics, and replaces them with pure ASCII and sheer willpower. It’s open-world space sim meets roguel...

Starcross is a 1982 science-fiction text adventure from Infocom that places the player aboard a mysterious spacecraft with an intriguing and potentially dangerous problem to solve....

La Grande Armée (1991) returns to Napoleonic warfare, but with a sharper focus on military tactics than imperial administration. This strategy game puts you in charge of mas...

Paratrooper is a 1982 action game that demonstrates how much excitement can emerge from a single defensive position and an endless stream of incoming enemies. Players control an an...

Subbuteo brings the famous tabletop football game to the computer, attempting to capture the peculiar magic of flicking tiny players around a pitch without requiring an actual dini...

In Sito Pons 500cc Grand Prix, you’re tossed straight onto the track with the grace of a rookie who definitely didn’t read the manual. The game tries hard to recreate t...

Tracon: Air Traffic Control Simulator takes an everyday job and turns it into a surprisingly tense computer simulation. You sit in front of a radar display and become responsible f...

Before heroes had inventory screens and voice acting, there was Adventure in Serenia, the lovechild of a text parser and a fever dream. Released in 1982, this proto-graphic adventu...

Highway Patrol 2 puts you on the side of the law, chasing down offenders with determination and a bit of flair. The gameplay focuses on pursuit and control, asking you to balance s...

Flying at incredible speed sounds glamorous until you realize mountains have absolutely no intention of moving out of the way. Mach 3 delivers fast-paced action by placing players ...

In Archimedean Dynasty, humanity did the logical thing after wrecking the surface world: moved underwater and started shooting each other in submarines. It's part tactical sim, par...

Don’t let the cartoony name fool you: Skullduggery: Adventures in Horror wants to unsettle you, and it’s surprisingly good at it. This early horror adventure mixes clas...

Adventure enthusiasts received a real treasure with the Magnetic Scrolls Collection, bringing together several legendary text adventures celebrated for their witty writing and chal...

Sherman M4 is a 1989 DOS tank combat game centered on the famous American M4 Sherman tank. Players take control of the armored vehicle and face battlefield situations where positio...

Novell DOS 7 is an alternative DOS operating system that arrived during the later years of the DOS era, offering compatibility with conventional DOS software while adding a collect...

Armored Fist is all about tanks. Big, heavy, no-nonsense tanks. It's essentially a driving sim for people who think speed is overrated and armor is fashion. Missions involve slow, ...