abandonware games sorted by popularity

If Shakespeare wrote video games and then decided, “You know what this needs? A parser and some pixelated drama,” you'd get Avon. In this interactive fiction gem from 1...

Eight Ball Deluxe is digital pinball with a swagger, the kind that wears mirrored sunglasses indoors and dares you to beat its high score. Based on the famous Bally table, this 199...

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...

Inspired by the film, The Rocketeer (1991, DOS) lets you strap on a jetpack and soar—well, mostly hover—through an adventure packed with gangsters, Nazis, and mid-centu...

NCSA Mosaic was one of the earliest web browsers to appear on the market. It was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illino...

A detective adventure inspired by Agatha Christie’s collaborative story, The Scoop (1989, DOS) turns you into a newspaper reporter poking around a suspicious death with nothi...

Obitus is a role-playing video game developed by Psygnosis and released in 1991 for various platforms including the Amiga, Atari ST, and DOS. It combines elements of role-playing g...

Set in a foggy, postcard-perfect version of the British capital, Eagle Eye Mysteries in London takes the educational detective formula and gives it a polite accent. You play a youn...

Released in 1983, Battle for Normandy plays less like a game and more like a history book that came alive, donned a helmet, and asked for a coffee. This is wargaming at its purest:...

Named after the famously outspoken baseball manager, Earl Weaver Baseball takes the sport seriously, sometimes almost aggressively so. This isn’t about flashy graphics or arc...

Based on the famously chaotic 1995 movie, Waterworld (1997, DOS) somehow manages to be more confusing than the film itself—and that’s saying something. This action-adve...

When Die Hard 2: Die Harder hit DOS in 1992, it decided the airport setting meant “time for an on-rails shooter.” Picture John McClane glued to a track, blasting bad gu...