abandonware games sorted by popularity

Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O'Fun, released in 1989 for DOS, is a platformer that looks cheerful but hides a surprisingly mean streak. Set in a circus filled with traps, clowns, and ...

Deadly Racer is basically what happens when someone at the office said, “What if racing, but everyone might die?” Released in 1994 for DOS, it’s a fast-paced, rou...

Armour-Geddon is what you get when someone combines Wargames with a midlife crisis. Set in a post-nuke world where you pilot tanks, helicopters, and laser cannons to stop a doomsda...

Take Down lets you relive the golden era of SWAT fantasies—when every problem could be solved with tactical entry and a well-placed flashbang. As leader of an elite anti-terr...

Released in 1988, Legend of the Sword is a graphic adventure that tries to blend epic fantasy storytelling with the puzzle-solving spirit of early point-and-clicks. The result is a...

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...

Mech Brigade (1987) is a strategy game that lets you live out your dream of commanding an army of giant robots. Set in a futuristic battlefield, you’re in charge of deploying...

Final Frontier is a late-80s slice of space ambition, the kind that assumes you’re perfectly happy staring at menus while imagining epic interstellar conquest. It’s str...

Crime Time blends point-and-click adventure with a murder mystery that’s as much about wit as it is about clues. You play an innocent man framed for murder, scrambling to gat...

Welcome to Los Angeles, where crime runs rampant and your job is to bring the chaos down with nothing but surveillance skills and a stern attitude. L.A. Crackdown puts you in the s...

ASCII art has never been so morbid. Classic Hangman is exactly what it says on the tin: guess the word or watch your little stick figure meet a tragic end. Letters become lifelines...

In Contraption Zack, you play as a kid with more mechanical gadgets than common sense. Your job? Fix a series of increasingly absurd machines in a puzzle platformer that’s eq...

Toobin is an abandoned action game developed by Domark Software and released in 1989. Toobin runs on DOS but was also published for Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Game...

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...

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...