abandonware games sorted by popularity

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 ...

The Simpsons: Bart’s House of Weirdness is what happens when a platform game decides to take a holiday inside a surreal cartoon fever dream. You control Bart through two wild...

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...

Steel Panthers 3: Brigade Command expands the series into larger-scale warfare, putting you in charge of formations where the number of units on the map can become rather intimidat...

Murder in the Atlantic takes the classic locked-room mystery and places it aboard a luxury ocean liner, where a murder turns an elegant voyage into an investigation filled with sus...

Released in 1984 for DOS, Sorcerer is Infocom at its most mischievous. You play an apprentice wizard who wakes up from a hangover only to find your mentor missing and reality sligh...

Commando Enhanced revisits the classic commando-style action formula with a more polished presentation and the same basic ingredients: dangerous missions, hostile soldiers, weapons...

Fate: the Traitor Soul is an action RPG built around exploration, combat, loot, and the irresistible temptation to open one more chest before going home. The game sends you into da...

Xenocide is an early example of space combat that leans heavily on atmosphere and tension, even if its technical limitations occasionally get in the way. It tries to create a sense...

The name screams “budget shareware,” and Bubble Pop delivers. It’s the digital equivalent of popping bubble wrap, except someone decided it needed high scores and...

If you wanted a mix of Clue, D&D, and a dash of text-parser frustration, Legends of Murder: Volume 1 – Stonedale Castle (1989) was your game. You play a detective dropped...

The Definitive Wargame Collection is aimed at players who regard a battlefield map as perfectly good entertainment for an entire evening. Rather than focusing on reflexes or flashy...

Romantic Encounters at the Dome is a 1988 DOS title with a decidedly unusual focus, placing romance and social interaction at the center of its gameplay. Rather than commanding arm...

WinFrotz is a Windows implementation of Frotz, an interpreter designed to run classic Infocom-style interactive fiction using Z-machine story files. Instead of providing one specif...

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...

Thunderhawk AH-73M is a helicopter combat simulation that gives players control of a heavily armed attack helicopter and a collection of dangerous missions. Unlike a simple arcade ...

If Dungeons of Kairn were a person, it’d be that quiet D&D player who never smiles and always plays lawful evil. Released in 1989, this obscure DOS crawler delivers all t...

Civil War buffs, rejoice. Battle of Antietam (1985) lets you relive one of the bloodiest days in American history... via pixelated dots and turn-based tension. There’s no fla...

Strike Fleet puts you in command of naval forces and asks you to make decisions that are considerably more complicated than simply pointing a ship toward the enemy. Different vesse...

Postman Pat 3: To the Rescue is a 1992 DOS adventure game based on the popular British children's character. Players help Postman Pat complete various tasks, delivering items and s...

For those who got hopelessly addicted to the card game inside Final Fantasy VIII, Triple Triad Gold (2000) was like someone saying, “Here, now you can ruin your productivity ...

Joe Blade is a classic arcade-style action game in which the titular hero has apparently decided that one man is sufficient to deal with an entire collection of dangerous criminals...

Aka Starglider 2 with an attitude, Revenge of Defender (or Defender of the Crown’s evil twin in name only) is a 3D space shooter where your main enemy is not the aliens&mdash...

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...

Released in 1986, Dragons: A Challenge in Chivalry leaned more toward interactive storytelling than traditional gameplay. You weren’t just hacking at dragons—you were r...

Objection! is a 1992 DOS game built around the dramatic world of courtroom arguments, legal reasoning, and the thrilling possibility that one badly chosen sentence can ruin your en...

Operation Combat: Computer Battle Game is a 1990 strategy title that brings military conflict to the computer screen in a form designed for players who enjoy planning rather than s...

Unreal by Ordilogic, released in 1991, is not the one most people think of, and that alone makes it interesting. It’s an action-adventure experience that blends exploration with ...

If you’ve ever wanted to command armies older than your great-great-great-grandparents, Encyclopedia of War: Ancient Battles is your time machine with a keyboard. Released in...

HTML Tads is a development tool aimed at creating interactive fiction for the web, bringing the wonderfully old-fashioned pleasure of text adventures into a more modern environment...