abandonware games sorted by release date

Atomic Bomberman (1997) takes the classic formula of blowing up your friends in adorable mayhem and gives it a 90s makeover — complete with voice quips, flashy graphics, and enough chaos to make a LAN party legendary. It&rsq...

Ah, the late '90s: when cars exploded for no reason and acronyms made everything cooler. Axelerator: Have a N.I.C.E. day! is a 1997 Windows racer that asks, “What if racing was less about realism and more about chucking miss...

Baseball Mogul (1997) was the original release that kicked off the whole franchise. Developed by Clay Dreslough and published by Infinite Monkey Systems, this was a pioneer in the world of sports management sims. It was released f...

One of the best licensed games of the '90s, Blade Runner (1997) puts you in the rain-soaked shoes of Ray McCoy, a detective tracking down replicants in a world where it's always night and nobody smiles. It’s not just point-a...

Blades of Exile is a classic role-playing video game developed by Spiderweb Software. It's the third installment in the "Exile" series. The game was released in 1997 for Mac OS, and later for Windows in 1998. In Blades of Exile, p...

Ah yes, Blood (1997)—the cheerful little game where you rise from the grave, wield a pitchfork, and quote evil-sounding movie lines while setting cultists on fire. It’s a first-person shooter soaked in gore and dark hu...

Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Revolution Software. Released in 1997. The game follows the continuing adventures of George Stobbart, an American tourist, and his French jou...

The name screams “budget shareware,” and Bubble Pop delivers. It’s the digital equivalent of popping bubble wrap, except someone decided it needed high scores and obnoxious MIDI music. You click. Things pop. You ...

Also known as Puzzle Bobble, this bubble-popping classic stars those cute dragons from Bubble Bobble, now in competitive puzzle mode. Match three colors, clear the screen, panic as the ceiling drops—repeat until addicted. Bu...

Imagine Cheers met Quantum Leap and got weirdly philosophical. That’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, a narrative adventure based on Spider Robinson’s sci-fi stories. You’re Jake Stonebender, a pun-slinging ti...

Before there was Capitalism 2, there was Capitalism Plus, which basically took the original and added a few bells, whistles, and ways to fail spectacularly. It’s like being handed a multi-billion dollar toy box and told &ldq...

In Carmageddon, winning a race is just one of three options—the other two involve mowing down pedestrians or wrecking your opponents. It’s the game your parents definitely didn’t want you playing, and that’...

A remake of the arcade classic, CHAMP Asteroids lets you relive the joy of spinning wildly in space and smashing rocks with a tiny triangle-shaped ship. It’s like cosmic road rage, but with fewer traffic laws and more flying...

The final Championship Manager to grace DOS—and what a send-off. Season 97/98 is the fan-favorite for a reason: every transfer, every injury, every last-minute goal feels like a dramatic novel you wrote with a keyboard. Slic...

Before Half-Life, there was Chasm: The Rift, a game where time-traveling mutants explode into limbs and every room looks like it was decorated by a doom-metal band. A first-person shooter with surprising depth, it features dismemb...

Checkers for Windows is exactly what it says on the tin—checkers. But somehow, it turns this rainy-afternoon classic into a digital duel of patience and spite. No explosions, no cutscenes, no orchestral score—just pure...

City of Lost Children is as beautiful as it is bewildering. Based on the surreal 1995 film, this adventure game drops you into a dark, oily dystopia filled with creepy orphans, bizarre contraptions, and more existential dread than...

In Colosso Revenge (1997, DOS), a giant angry head (presumably Colosso) is back, and it’s not in a forgiving mood. Expect side-scrolling mayhem with explosions, mutant monstrosities, and the kind of plot that was probably wr...

Colosso Secret (1997, DOS) is the moody prequel/sequel/parallel universe to Colosso Revenge, where secrets abound and subtlety is tossed out the window. Imagine Indiana Jones in a world designed by someone who really, really liked...

Combat Chess (1997, Windows XP) takes the cerebral game of kings and adds swords, screams, and shameless violence. Every piece battle-animates into Mortal Kombat-lite fights when you capture another. It's like regular chess, but w...

Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor (1997, Windows XP) took the RTS formula and flipped it into a weird deathmatch where you control a single unit and try not to die... horribly. It’s like a survival game set inside the Red...

Constructor is a simulation and strategy video game developed by System 3 and first released in 1997. In the game, players take on the role of a property developer with the goal of building and managing a city while dealing with v...

Before its sequel, there was Dark Reign: The Future of War (1997), a forward-thinking RTS that introduced mechanics ahead of its time, like customizable AI scripts for units. The result was a game that demanded brains as much as r...

Dungeon Crawl (also known as Linley's Dungeon Crawl from the name of the original programmer: Linley Henzell) is a classic roguelike: an RPG with permadeath, procedural generation and high replayability. Dungeon Crawl was released...