abandonware games sorted by popularity

Borland dBase 5 is a database development environment from the later years of the DOS and early Windows database era. It belongs to a long tradition of software that allowed users ...

Released in 1988 for DOS, this game lets you drive monster trucks across deserts, swamps, and icy wastelands with all the grace of a drunken forklift. It’s less about speed a...

Madball delivers straightforward arcade action built around bouncing, timing, and a surprising amount of precision. Guiding the energetic ball through increasingly challenging obst...

Volkswriter 3 is a classic DOS word processor from an era when replacing a typewriter with a computer was still a genuinely transformative idea. It provides the basic tools needed ...

Follow the Reader (1992, DOS) is an educational oddity that feels like a kindly librarian discovered the power of DOS and decided to make literacy a competitive sport. You guide wo...

Manic Miner remake faithfully revives one of the most influential platform games ever created while adapting it for a newer generation of PC players. Precision remains absolutely e...

Canton: An Atlas Pathfinder Adventure is an unusual historical exploration game built around geography, navigation, and discovery rather than traditional combat. Set in an imagined...

Long before Minecraft let us build worlds, Adventure Construction Set handed you a digital Lego box and said, “Go nuts.” Want to make a dungeon full of orcs and ham san...

Wizball is a wonderfully strange arcade game built around a simple but unusual mission: restore color to a world that has apparently decided that monochrome is fashionable. You con...

Sid Meier took one look at Earth and said, “Let’s leave this dump.” Thus, Alpha Centauri (1999, Windows XP) was born - a 4X strategy game that takes Civilization ...

Russian Front 2: The Kursk Campaign is a 1990 DOS strategy game focused on one of the largest armored battles of World War II. Players command forces during the Battle of Kursk, ma...

Released in 1988, Jeopardy! Second Edition expanded upon the original computer adaptation by introducing a fresh collection of questions and categories. The familiar quiz-show stru...

Gateway to the Savage Frontier is a Dungeons & Dragons computer role-playing game released in 1991. It was developed by Beyond Software (later known as Stormfront Studios) and ...

V for Victory: Velikiye Luki brings the series' turn-based military simulation to the Eastern Front, recreating the brutal fighting around Velikiye Luki during the Second World War...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is an arcade game released in 1989 by Konami. It is based on the popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. The game was initially released...

Guilty from 1995 is a moody point-and-click adventure that seems to have majored in brooding. You step into a murder investigation drenched in rain-soaked atmosphere and existentia...

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...

BloodNet combines vampires, cyberspace, and noir in a cocktail so strange it probably shouldn’t work but somehow does. You are a hacker who just got bitten by a vampire and n...

In Infidel, you play a not-so-noble adventurer whose moral compass is spinning like a broken ceiling fan. As a treasure-hungry explorer poking around an ancient Egyptian tomb, you ...

Despite the ominous title, Caverns of Chaos (1992) plays like the lovechild of rogue-like masochism and old-school dungeon crawling. There’s loot, traps, monsters, and more w...

Pictionary: The Game of Quick Draw is a 1989 adaptation of the popular drawing and guessing board game, bringing the creativity and chaos of group play to the computer. Players att...

Overlord is a 1994 science-fiction action game that places the player in control of a powerful futuristic vehicle and sends them into a world where enemies, missions, and explosion...

Baseball Mogul (1997) was the original release that kicked off the whole franchise. Developed by Clay Dreslough and published by Infinite Monkey Systems, this was a pioneer in the ...

Joe Blade 2 continues the adventures of its unlikely action hero, once again placing him in situations where common sense would probably recommend staying at home. The sequel expan...

Imagine Tetris but in three dimensions and your brain slowly melting into a puddle of confusion. That is Blockout. You drop 3D shapes into a pit and try to line them up, but nothin...

Monster Truck Madness (1996) is proof that “subtlety” and “monster trucks” don’t belong in the same sentence. With Microsoft at the wheel, you’r...

S.D.I. is a 1989 DOS strategy and action game inspired by the Strategic Defense Initiative, the ambitious Cold War plan better known as “Star Wars.” Players take responsibility...

Jeff Minter's Llamatron 2112, released in 1992, is exactly as gloriously bizarre as its title suggests. Players control an armed llama defending the screen against relentless waves...

In 1988, kids with floppy disks instead of smartphones got Designasaurus, a quirky blend of education and prehistoric fantasy. The premise: design your own dinosaur and see if it s...

Clearly inspired by more famous platforming families, Giana Family doesn’t exactly hide its influences, but it manages to carve out its own identity anyway. The levels are pl...