abandonware games sorted by popularity

Faces Tris 3 (1990) takes a familiar concept and gives it a slightly unsettling twist. Yes, it’s a falling-blocks puzzle game, but instead of abstract shapes, you’re st...

Toyota Celica GT Rally puts the player behind the wheel of Toyota's famous rally machine and focuses on the rougher, dirtier side of motorsport. Instead of smooth circuits and pred...

Industry Giant 2 turns spreadsheets into entertainment, which sounds impossible until you realize how addictive it becomes. Released in 2002, this business simulation asks players ...

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...

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...

Strap in and squint at the horizon—Advanced Tactical Fighter 2 wants you to dogfight like it’s the Cold War and your joystick is a weapon of mass confusion. Released in...

In Crime and Punishment, you’re not the criminal—you’re the detective, judge, and executioner rolled into one. Presented as a legal simulation, it tasks you with ...

Dino Crisis takes the survival-horror formula and makes one very important adjustment: instead of zombies, you get dinosaurs. Because apparently undead people were not terrifying e...

Slam! is a 1993 Windows 3.x game built around fast arcade-style action and competitive play. Its simple presentation reflects the period, but the gameplay aims to provide immediate...

Part action-RPG, part body-horror fairy tale, Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall (1995) is the game where you slowly transform into an insect and, somehow, that’s not even the...

Before AI could annihilate grandmasters, Psion Chess was already humbling humans back in 1985. Available for DOS and Macintosh, this game wasn’t flashy, but it didn’t n...

The Three Stooges brings the chaotic comedy of Moe, Larry and Curly to the computer in a collection of slapstick challenges that are much more interested in laughs than dignity. Th...

Alien Attack wastes little time explaining that Earth is having a very bad day. The premise is exactly the sort of thing science-fiction games love: hostile aliens have arrived, an...

Framed is a puzzle-platformer that treats each screen like a small mechanical riddle. You guide your character through hazards that feel carefully arranged, almost theatrical in th...

F40 Pursuit Simulator takes a different approach by putting you in the cockpit of a fictional high-tech interceptor designed for one job: catching bad guys. Instead of large-scale ...

In BC's Quest for Tires, you play a loincloth-wearing caveman who’s riding a unicycle through danger, because apparently that’s how courtship worked in 1984. The goal? ...

If you wanted a mix of Clue, D&D, and a dash of text-parser frustration, Legends of Murder: Volume 1 – Stonedale Castle (1989) was your game. You play a detective dropped...

Thunderhawk AH-73M is a helicopter combat simulation that gives players control of a heavily armed attack helicopter and a collection of dangerous missions. Unlike a simple arcade ...

Postal is a deliberately provocative top-down action game that throws the player into a bleak world of violence, paranoia, and very questionable decision-making. You control the Po...

Thunderblade puts you in control of a heavily armed helicopter and wastes very little time explaining why the neighborhood suddenly needs several hundred explosions. The action is ...

Harpoon II expands on the original with more content and a greater sense of scale, as if it decided the ocean was not quite big enough the first time around. The added depth makes ...

Italicized title: J.R.R. Tolkien's Riders of Rohan. Rather than focusing on epic battles alone, this adaptation places players in the role of a member of Rohan during one of the mo...

ResidualVM is an open-source game engine project created to run certain classic adventure games on modern computers by replacing their original executable code with a compatible en...

Released in 1987, Laser Surgeon: The Microscopic Mission offers one of gaming's more unusual premises by shrinking players down for a medical adventure inside the human body. Inste...

Based on Anne McCaffrey’s novels, Dragonriders of Pern (1987) is an odd duck. It tries to blend diplomacy, strategy, and a dash of action into one package. You don’t ju...

England Championship Special (1991, DOS) is the kind of football game that doesn’t pretend to know what the Premier League will look like in 30 years—it just wants you ...

Star Fleet 2: Krellan Commander builds on its predecessor with a larger and more ambitious space strategy experience. Players command a starship during a major interstellar conflic...

In 1988, kids with floppy disks instead of smartphones got Designasaurus, a quirky blend of education and prehistoric fantasy. The premise: design your own dinosaur and see if it s...

Floppy Frenzy embraces early-80s arcade spirit with gleeful abandon. The concept is simple, the pace relentless, and the margin for error thinner than a five-and-a-quarter disk. Yo...

Football Glory (1995, DOS) approaches the beautiful game with a playful smirk and a willingness to bend reality for entertainment’s sake. The players move with exaggerated fl...