abandonware games sorted by release date

Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness is the sequel that helped turn Blizzard fantasy real-time strategy formula into one of the defining PC experiences of the 1990s. Released in 1995, it ...

Take everything that made Warlords 2 addictive, polish it up, throw in more content, and you get Warlords 2 Deluxe, the definitive “I’ll only play for ten minutes&rdquo...

Whiplash is an arcade-style action game that wastes very little time before throwing the player into trouble. Its fast pace, shooting, movement, and constant stream of enemies give...

William Shatner's TekWar takes the futuristic crime world of the TekWar novels and turns it into a first-person shooter filled with gunfights, technology, and suspiciously dangerou...

Williams Arcade Classics is essentially a small time machine disguised as a computer game, collecting several classic arcade experiences in one package. Instead of asking players t...

Wipeout is a futuristic racing game built around speed, aggressive competition, and vehicles that apparently have no interest whatsoever in ordinary road safety. The anti-gravity c...

Witchaven is a dark fantasy first-person action game filled with castles, monsters, weapons, magic, and enough gloomy corridors to make you wonder whether the architect had somethi...

Wolfsbane is a dark fantasy action game that sends the player into a hostile world filled with monsters, dangerous environments, and the usual medieval assortment of things that re...

Worms takes the basic concept of turn-based artillery and replaces the soldiers with tiny worms carrying an almost irresponsible quantity of weaponry. The result is one of those ga...

X-COM: Terror from the Deep (also known as X-COM 2) is a DOS science fiction tactical strategy game and the sequel to one of the most popular DOS games in history, X-COM: UFO ...

Xixit is a puzzle game that feels like it is constantly trying to outwit you, presenting challenges that require both logic and a bit of creative thinking. It does not rely on flas...

Imagine a game where a gelatinous green creature (that may or may not be sentient chewing gum) bounces its way through logic puzzles and physics that occasionally remember gravity ...

Ever dreamed of running a transatlantic zeppelin empire during the golden age of flight? Zeppelin: Giants of the Sky lets you do just that — and it’s every bit as niche...

Imagine if Tetris, Columns, and a pack of highlighters had a baby. That’s Zoop. You’re in the center of the screen, and colorful shapes are marching toward you from all...

Released in 1995 for DOS, Zorlim's Arcade Volleyball is what happens when someone decides regular volleyball isn’t chaotic enough. Picture stick figures with the agility of c...

From the dusty archives of 1995 DOS gaming comes Zorro, a side-scrolling platformer that asks the question: what if the legendary masked hero had the reflexes of a hungover sloth? ...

Zyclunt is a side-scrolling action game developed and published by Phantagram in 1995. The game is set in a dystopian future where incurable diseases and a rise in criminal activit...

This game is either a delightful brain teaser or a slow descent into madness, depending on how patient you are. 15x15 Picture Puzzle gives you a scrambled mess of tiny square tiles...

This 1996 point-and-click western is what you’d get if Lucky Luke and Monkey Island had an awkward but lovable baby. 3 Skulls of the Toltecs throws you into a spaghetti weste...

Afterlife is a simulation strategy game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1996 for Microsoft Windows and later made available on other platforms. The game wa...

Alien Rampage (1996) is what happens when Duke Nukem gets stranded on a hostile alien planet and decides subtlety is for cowards. It’s a side-scrolling shooter dripping with ...

Alien Trilogy is a first-person shooter video game released in 1996 for various platforms, including the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS. Developed by Probe Entertainment and ...

American Civil War: From Sumter to Appomattox offers a strategic treatment of the American Civil War, covering the conflict from its opening confrontation through the final campaig...

Ever wanted to pilot a walking death machine through a series of exploding industrial hellscapes while being shot at from every angle? Welcome to Amok. This 1996 mech-shooter is a ...

ADOM is what happens when a rogue, a wizard, and a hungry troll walk into a dungeon and never come out. Released in 1996, this roguelike classic is brutal, brilliant, and unapologe...

Arachne is a graphical web browser for DOS. Arachne was developed by Michal Polák and released in the early 1990s as a text-mode web browser with limited graphical capabilit...

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...

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...

When in Gaul, punch like the Gauls do. In Asterix and Obelix (1996), you control the iconic French duo on a globetrotting beat-‘em-up adventure that mostly involves sending R...

Azalta: Cult of the Raven is what happens when a lone developer says, “I can make an RPG better than Ultima!” and sort of does. Released in 1996, this DOS dungeon crawl...