abandonware games sorted by rating

Millennia: Altered Destinies offers a fascinating blend of space exploration, strategy, and time manipulation as players attempt to guide civilizations through an enormous galactic...

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...

Royal Flush Pinball is a 1994 DOS pinball game that brings the familiar combination of flippers, bumpers, targets, ramps, and flashing lights to the PC screen. The goal is wonderfu...

If Catacomb Abyss was “Doom for wizards,” then Catacomb Armageddon is “Doom with a Halloween costume budget.” Bigger levels, more enemies, and slightly more...

Hostage: Rescue Mission puts you in a high-stakes situation where planning and precision matter far more than reflexes. Released in 1989, it blends strategy with action, asking you...

Paint Shop Pro 3 is an early version of PaintShop Pro, which is a graphics editing program known for its user-friendly interface and a range of features that cater to both amateur ...

Imagine Tetris went on a sugar binge and had an identity crisis. That’s Zyconix (1992, DOS) in a nutshell. It’s a tile-matching puzzle game where nothing quite behaves ...

In Assault Trooper, you're the lone soldier with enough ammo to make Rambo blush, dropped behind enemy lines to shoot first and ask “was that a civilian?” later. This 1...

Solidarnosc is a 1991 DOS game built around the Polish political and social movement that became one of the defining forces in the country's modern history. Rather than offering co...

Treasure Trap is the sort of game that understands the basic appeal of a good dungeon: there are treasures to find, dangers to avoid, and absolutely no sensible reason to keep goin...

Released in the twilight of the ‘90s, Disney’s Tarzan brought jungle-swinging to Windows XP. The game is a lush side-scrolling adventure where vines, tree branches, and...

Tubular Worlds is a fast-moving horizontal shoot 'em up that throws the player into a colourful science-fiction landscape packed with enemies, projectiles, obstacles, and the occas...

There’s something oddly poetic about 8088 Othello, a 1985 take on the classic board game that feels like it was programmed by someone who had a personal vendetta against flas...

Goody throws you into the shoes of a small-time thief in a colorful, chaotic city that feels like it was designed by someone who really wanted to punish jump timing. As you sneak a...

Prophecy: The Viking Child is a 1991 platform adventure inspired by Norse mythology, combining action, exploration, and colorful environments. Players guide a young Viking hero thr...

Exterminator, released in 1990, is one of those games that knows exactly what it wants to do and wastes no time doing it. You’re thrown into a top-down action scenario with a...

ResidualVM is an open-source game engine project created to run certain classic adventure games on modern computers by replacing their original executable code with a compatible en...

Igor: Objective Uikokahonia—or however many vowels you can fit into that kingdom's name—arrived in 1995 as a delightfully oddball adventure game. Its humor leans absurd, its pu...

Cyberpunk meets click-and-point in Computer Underground, a game that looks like it was programmed in someone's garage—and probably was. You’re a hacker navigating a pix...

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...

Alien Nations is a real-time strategy game with a lighter, more colourful personality than the usual grim business of commanding armies. Players establish settlements, gather resou...

Released in 1994, All New World of Lemmings gives our suicidal little friends a new lease on life... and new outfits! The puzzles are tougher, the graphics are cleaner, and the fru...

Welcome to Aspetra, a 1996 DOS game that tried to cram an epic sci-fi RPG into your beige box PC — and mostly succeeded! Think “Star Trek meets budget constraints.&rdqu...

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...

1999’s BitStorm is what happens when someone decides to make a strategy game and forgets to put the brakes on the caffeine. It’s fast, it’s furious, and you&rsquo...

Blade Warrior (1991) is a side-scrolling beat 'em up that looks like it was illustrated entirely in heavy metal album covers. You’re a silhouette of rage, cutting through dem...

It’s Boggle (1990, DOS), the digital version of everyone’s favorite game where you try to spell long words while your friend keeps shouting “DOG” over and o...

Bolo Ball is a DOS game from the mid-1990s. It features a physics-based gameplay where the objective is to knock opponent balls out of an arena. When you start the game, you find y...

Part puzzle, part platformer, part “what is even happening,” Bombuzal (1989, DOS) is a game where your job is to blow up every bomb on the screen—while not accide...

Dizzy the egg is back, and this time he’s underwater and floating up on bubbles because... sure, why not? Bubble Dizzy is a mix of patience, timing, and yelling “WHY DI...