abandonware games sorted by popularity

Wizard of Wor 98 revisits the classic maze-shooter concept and gives it a late-1990s computer makeover. Players move through labyrinthine arenas while hunting monsters, dodging att...

Independence War 2: Edge Of Chaos refines its predecessor’s ideas into a more open-ended and player-driven experience. Trading, piracy, and exploration play a much larger rol...

Crash Garrett is a pulp-inspired adventure that puts the player in the role of a tough, wisecracking hero caught up in a mystery filled with danger, suspicious characters, and old-...

Ween: The Prophecy is a surreal French adventure that mixes fantasy, strange characters, puzzles, and an atmosphere that occasionally feels as though someone has poured a dream int...

Space 1889 (1990, DOS) is steampunk before steampunk was cool. Based on the tabletop RPG, it sends you to an alternate Victorian era where the British Empire has expanded — t...

StarBlade is a 1990 DOS space shooter built around fast action, enemy waves, and the familiar challenge of keeping a small spacecraft alive against a very large number of things tr...

Champions is a sports management and strategy title that puts the player in the role of a team manager, where success depends on more than simply hoping your best players have a go...

Destroyer puts you in command of a warship and expects you to worry about things such as navigation, enemy vessels, and the general problem of people trying to sink you. The game c...

If adrenaline-fueled car chases aren’t your thing, maybe meticulous Civil War simulations are. Decision at Gettysburg (1990) is a detailed, turn-based strategy game that lets...

Earthrise taps into late Cold War anxieties, presenting a future shaped by political tension and hard choices. Part strategy, part simulation, it tasks you with managing global sys...

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...

Guardians is a science-fiction action game built around the familiar idea that humanity needs someone brave enough to deal with an assortment of hostile forces. The player explores...

The Patcher 6.1 (1993, DOS) is one of those utilities-turned-experiences that makes you feel like a digital surgeon. Instead of saving lives, you’re poking around system file...

Tony La Russa Ultimate Baseball aims to deliver a serious baseball simulation rather than a quick arcade game, and it takes its sporting responsibilities very seriously indeed. Pla...

Shamus is a maze action game developed by William Mataga and published by Synapse Software in 1982. The game became popular on various home computer platforms of the early 1980s. I...

Rawcopy is a straightforward DOS utility designed around copying data, with the sort of focused functionality that was common among command-line tools of the period. Rather than at...

Visions of the Aftermath: The Boomtown presents a bleak vision of survival in a world that has already suffered the unpleasant consequences of civilization going spectacularly wron...

Released in 1988, Dream Zone was a surreal adventure where you explore your own subconscious after being sucked into a dream machine. It’s colorful, strange, and often unsett...

Renegade Legion Interceptor is a 1990 DOS space combat simulation set in the futuristic Renegade Legion universe. Players pilot an advanced spacecraft through dangerous missions, m...

Sorcerer Lord (1987, DOS) drops you into a fantasy world at war, with strategy rather than sorcery as your weapon. You command the forces of good against the evil Shadowlord’...

Math Circus (1993) is proof that educational games in the DOS era were either unbearably boring or secretly brilliant — and this one leans heavily toward the second category....

Released in 1996 for DOS, Enigma is what happens when a puzzle game decides it’s not content with simply challenging you—it wants to tease you, mock you, and eventually...

The Lost Treasures of Infocom is essentially a library of interactive fiction for players willing to trade spectacular graphics for spectacularly active imaginations. The collectio...

In Black Gold (1989), you're in the cutthroat world of oil barons. It’s like Dallas, but with more charts and fewer cowboy hats. You build rigs, negotiate deals, and try to o...

The Definitive Wargame Collection is aimed at players who regard a battlefield map as perfectly good entertainment for an entire evening. Rather than focusing on reflexes or flashy...

Archery (1985) is what happens when someone says, “Hey, what if we made a bow-and-arrow game with the graphical fidelity of a cave painting?” You shoot arrows. That&rsq...

Crown is a strategy game from an era when computers were perfectly happy to make you read the manual before allowing you anywhere near the throne. Its central appeal lies in planni...

CHAMP Galagon is a fast arcade-style shooter inspired by the classic formation-based space games of the 1980s. The premise is gloriously uncomplicated: enemies appear in patterns, ...

Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space is a compact space strategy game built around exploration, discovery, trading, combat, and the delightful possibility that your carefully pla...

Kangaroo transforms a determined mother kangaroo into one of gaming's most energetic heroes as she hops through colorful stages to rescue her kidnapped joey. Along the way she punc...