abandonware games sorted by popularity

In Scrooge (1991), you play everyone’s favorite miser in a faithful retelling of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol—if Dickens had access to VGA graphics and MIDI carols....

If Tetris and a Rubik’s Cube had a weird love child, it’d be Brix. This 1992 brain-snapper is a tile-sliding puzzle game where every move counts and logic is your only ...

Pacific Islands is a 1992 military strategy game that continues the campaign begun in Battle Isle, transporting players to a chain of tropical battlefields where beautiful scenery ...

Dark, moody, and surprisingly creepy, Zork Nemesis is what happens when the whimsical world of Zork goes goth. The text adventures are gone—now it’s full-motion video, ...

Socrates is a 1993 DOS strategy game that takes its name from the famous Greek philosopher, although players will be spending considerably more time thinking about winning than con...

In Search of Dr. Riptide from 1994 is a science-fiction adventure with enough eccentricity to fill several galaxies. Players investigate mysteries, solve puzzles, and generally que...

Inspired by the famous comic character, Mandrake: L'Ombra del Cobra mixes adventure and action as the legendary magician confronts dangerous enemies using intelligence alongside il...

Operation Bodycount sounds subtle, doesn’t it? Released in 1994, this shooter wastes no time letting you know exactly what it’s about: running around and, well, increas...

Back in 1984, Devastator promised arcade-style action on DOS, which is another way of saying “prepare for blocky graphics and relentless difficulty.” It’s a shoot...

Family Feud from 1987 turns the popular TV show into a surprisingly tense DOS experience, proving that guessing what other people think is harder than it looks. The core idea is si...

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 ...

Ground Control throws you into real-time strategy without the safety net of base building, which is both refreshing and slightly terrifying. In Ground Control, every unit matters, ...

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 ...

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...

Citadel of the Black Sun is a fantasy adventure built around exploration, danger, and the ominous business of investigating a mysterious stronghold. The game places the player in a...

Demoniak is a dark fantasy adventure that combines exploration, combat, and the sort of atmosphere that suggests nobody in this world has ever heard of adequate lighting. You trave...

Star Control 3 continues the series' blend of space exploration, alien diplomacy, strategy, and combat, taking players back into a galaxy populated by numerous civilizations with t...

Fancy a war under the sea? Battle for Atlantis (1990) asks the age-old question: what if submarines had grudges? This top-down, action strategy title throws you into a deep-sea tur...

Fort Apache drops you into the Old West with the subtlety of a saloon door kicked off its hinges. Strategy and action mingle as you defend your frontier outpost from relentless att...

Pac Maniac is a 1993 reinterpretation of the familiar maze-chasing formula, adding its own personality while remaining faithful to the frantic spirit of the classics. Players race ...

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...

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...

Traffic department 2192 imagines a future where keeping the streets safe apparently requires considerably more shooting than most traffic departments would recommend. The game comb...

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 ...

SRAM is a 1987 adventure game with a distinctly science-fiction flavor, placing the player in an unusual world where exploration, problem solving, and interaction are more importan...

Cyberpunk meets click-and-point in Computer Underground, a game that looks like it was programmed in someone's garage—and probably was. You’re a hacker navigating a pix...

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...

Released in 1993, Litil Divil follows the misadventures of Mutt, a rather clumsy little devil determined to prove himself in the underworld. The game combines platforming, puzzles,...

Few games from 1994 dared to ask the real question: “What if you gave an axe to someone with absolutely no training and dropped them into a dungeon with the reflexes of a slo...

Before realistic fighting games, there was Boxer Rebellion—a 1982 title so primitive, it makes Pong look flashy. It’s boxing with fewer rules and more pixels per punch....