abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

Released in 1983, this is your grandpa’s Battleship—minus the plastic pegs, but with all the tension of blind naval warfare. There are no fancy graphics, no Hollywood e...

Cosmic Crusader is proof that sometimes simple is perfect. You’re a lone pilot defending space against endless waves of enemies, in a game that’s basically a love lette...

Released in 1994 for DOS, Iron Cross is a historical strategy game that tries very hard to make military planning look sexy. Spoiler: it doesn’t. You’re dealing with Wo...

XQuest offers a blend of action and exploration, creating a gameplay loop that feels both dynamic and rewarding. It encourages players to experiment, try different approaches, and ...

Saddle up for an awkward mix of minigames that vaguely resemble rodeo events. Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show tries to recreate the excitement of a 19th-century traveling circus but ...

As the title suggests, Global Domination doesn’t aim small, throwing you into a contest for control of the entire planet. It leans into a more arcade-like approach to strateg...

Colonialism meets turn-based strategy in Champion of the Raj, where you attempt to conquer India with charm, cunning, and the occasional elephant race. It’s part political si...

There’s something charmingly ruthless about TV Mogul, a game that hands you a television network and basically says, “Don’t mess it up.” Released in 1988, it throws you int...

A loving parody of science fiction tropes, EGA Trek takes obvious inspiration from Star Trek and runs with it, humor first. You command a starship, making decisions that range from...

Global Conquest is strategy boiled down to its essentials, offering a streamlined take on world domination that’s easy to pick up but harder to master. You’ll move armi...

The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian is a title that feels like it was generated by rolling dice on a fantasy word table, and somehow that’s part of its ...

International Athletics from 1992 offers the classic sports-game formula of running, jumping, and furiously hammering keys as though your keyboard personally insulted you. Covering...

It’s 1990, and you’re sitting at your DOS PC playing Accordion, a game that somehow turns solitaire into something slower and more passive-aggressive. It’s not fl...

Ah, Betrayal—a game with a name that really sets the tone. Is it about backstabbing? Politics? Lost love? Not really. It’s actually a hybrid of strategy and role-playin...

Sounds ominous, right? In Choose an Enemy, you’re given exactly that: a list of foes to annihilate in turn-based combat. It’s like a dinner menu, but instead of appetiz...

Strife from 1996 is a first-person shooter game developed by Rogue Entertainment and published by Velocity, based on the Doom engine. It's often remembered for being one of the ear...

Before Tetris conquered the world, Nyet gave DOS users their own block-stacking fix. It’s essentially a clone, but with its own quirks and rough edges — the kind of thi...

Dragons of Flame (1989) was SSI’s continuation of the Dragonlance saga, following up on Heroes of the Lance. Like its predecessor, it was a side-scrolling action RPG that tes...