abandonware games sorted by popularity

Welcome to the squared circle of wireframe pain. Released in 1991 for DOS, this game puts you in the gloves of a boxer rendered entirely out of jagged geometry. The animation was r...

Castles is what happens when SimCity meets Game of Thrones. You design your own fortress, manage the budget, and tell unruly peasants why the walls are more important than food. Be...

No guns. No glory. Just two invisible players navigating a weird Tron-like maze to steal each other’s flag. Capture the Flag is what you get when someone says “let&rsqu...

Highway Patrol 2 puts you on the side of the law, chasing down offenders with determination and a bit of flair. The gameplay focuses on pursuit and control, asking you to balance s...

Pipe Mania (also known as Pipe Dream is a tile-matching (sort of) puzzle game about flowing liquids developed by The Assembly Line in 1989. You must build a path made of pipe piece...

Despite the name, Aquaphobia (1992) doesn’t help you overcome your fear of water. In fact, it might just make it worse. This is an action-platformer where you try not to drow...

Hard Drivin' is what happens when someone looks at arcade racing and decides that what it really needs is existential dread and a physics engine that actively judges your driving s...

Golden Oldies: Volume 1 - Computer Software Classics is less a single game and more a time capsule, offering a collection of early titles that remind you just how far gaming has co...

Paperboy was one of (if not THE) arcade hit of 1985. It was developed by Atari for the arcades and later published by Mindscape for DOS in 1988. More conversion were made for quite...

Dungeon Explorer takes the term “dungeon” very seriously—there’s a lot of it, and not much else. Released in 1990, this top-down adventure is part RPG, part...

In Escape from Dr. Colosso, you find yourself trapped in the lair of a mad scientist whose idea of interior design seems to be “danger first, safety never.” It’s ...

The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall is an old school first-person 3D RPG developed by Bethesda Softworks and released in 1996 for DOS. Daggerfall is the second chapter in popular The E...

Don’t let the cartoony name fool you: Skullduggery: Adventures in Horror wants to unsettle you, and it’s surprisingly good at it. This early horror adventure mixes clas...

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...

Unnatural Selection is a quirky strategy game from 1993 that asks a simple question: what if evolution had a sense of humor? You’re tasked with guiding creatures through generati...

Released in 1983, Moon Patrol is the game that proved moon driving is a terrible career choice. You control a buggy with a suspension system that would make NASA jealous, jumping o...

The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate is the third and final installment in the original The Bard’s Tale trilogy, developed by Interplay and published by Electronic Arts i...