abandonware games sorted by popularity

War of the Lance turns the Dragonlance setting into a substantial fantasy strategy game, allowing players to participate in the enormous conflict between the forces of good and evi...

Rally Championships is a 1994 DOS racing game focused on rally-style competition, where speed alone is not enough to guarantee success. Players must deal with winding tracks, chang...

Interphase from 1989 blends action and puzzle-solving into a futuristic arcade experience that feels distinctly experimental. Players navigate abstract environments, collecting obj...

Operation Europe: Path to Victory 1939-45 is a 1994 strategy game that covers the enormous scope of the Second World War and somehow expects the player to make sense of it all. The...

Put on your mental trench coat, because Codebreaker is here to make you feel smart—or incredibly foolish. It’s a brain-teasing logic game where you deduce secret number...

Guns 'R' Us feels like someone looked at the early ’90s and decided subtlety was overrated. This side-scrolling shooter piles on enemies, explosions, and weapon upgrades with...

Music Construction Set is an influential early music composition program that lets users create, edit, and arrange musical pieces on a personal computer. Rather than simply playing...

With a name like Dink Smallwood, you’d expect something ridiculous—and you’d be right. Released in 1998 for Windows XP, this action RPG follows a pig farmer with ...

Released in 1984 for DOS, Felony! is a strange and ambitious early action game that puts you in the role of a criminal on the run. Instead of focusing on a single mechanic, it thro...

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...

In Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventures, you’re a green alien kid with suction-cup hands who’s crash-landed on a strange planet. It’s a platformer with bright visuals,...

Waterloo (1989, DOS) is not here to entertain you with flashy graphics or arcade thrills. Instead, it calmly places Napoleon and Wellington on the table and expects you to think. A...

Ka-50 Hokum drops players into the cockpit of one of the Soviet Union's most intimidating attack helicopters and expects them to earn their wings the hard way. This is not an arcad...

MinerVGA takes the familiar mining concept and gives it a colorful VGA makeover, challenging players to explore underground environments while collecting resources and avoiding dan...

Back in 1985, Cavequest asked: what if you mixed ASCII graphics with deadly bats and claustrophobia? The answer: a punishingly hard maze crawler that’ll have you screaming at...

Basketball Challenge offers a straightforward computer interpretation of basketball, concentrating on shooting, movement and the challenge of putting more points on the board than ...

You don’t need a joystick the size of a tree to enjoy Konami’s Ping Pong (1996, DOS). Simple, fast, and maddeningly addictive, this digital table tennis game nails the ...

Hardball 2 is baseball distilled into a form that manages to be both accessible and surprisingly tense. It does not overwhelm you with complexity, but it gives you enough control t...

Microsoft Multiplan 4.2 is a spreadsheet application from the years when electronic spreadsheets were still something of a revelation. Multiplan lets users organize figures into ro...

Released in 1994, Alien Olympics answers the age-old question: “What if the Olympics were hosted by Martians on acid?” This wacky collection of mini-games has you compe...

In Crossbow: The Legend of William Tell, you’re not just a heroic archer—you’re a babysitter for an entire group of reckless companions who have an uncanny talent...

By the time Laser Squad reached DOS in 1992, its reputation as a superb tactical strategy game was already well deserved. Every mission demands thoughtful positioning, careful use ...

Klass of 99 is a compact educational game built around the sort of schoolroom challenges that were once considered perfectly acceptable entertainment for a computer. Rather than th...

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...

Obitus is a 1991 action-adventure game that throws the player into a dangerous fantasy world where exploration, combat, and survival are all part of the daily schedule. The game co...

Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper is a tough little action game that drops you into a ruined city with one very straightforward job: survive. You play as a lone soldier wandering thro...

Forgotten Worlds is what happens when gravity politely excuses itself and lets you spin in circles while shooting absolutely everything. Originally an arcade spectacle, this DOS ve...

Push-Push Penguin is an expanded version of the classic Sega's 1982 arcade game Pengo, incorporating features like power-ups, a combo system, and a more diverse array of enemies, b...

Monopoly transforms the familiar board game into a computer experience where property deals, rent payments, and financial disasters can unfold without anyone needing to physically ...

On The Ball is a soccer management game that puts the player on the touchline rather than directly on the pitch. Success depends on decisions involving tactics, lineups, transfers,...