abandonware games sorted by popularity

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 monstr...

Bank Streek Writer Plus is a word processor from the DOS era, when writing on a computer still felt like a fairly sophisticated trick. Applications such as this one were expected t...

Bright colors, friendly faces, and zero existential dread: Fisher-Price Firehouse Rescue knows its audience and delivers exactly what it promises. Designed for younger players, it ...

In Sito Pons 500cc Grand Prix, you’re tossed straight onto the track with the grace of a rookie who definitely didn’t read the manual. The game tries hard to recreate t...

Netscape Navigator was one of the earliest web browsers that played a crucial role in popularizing the World Wide Web. It was developed by Netscape Communications Corporation and r...

Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned brings Gabriel Knight back for another wonderfully peculiar supernatural investigation, this time taking him to the Frenc...

Post-apocalyptic survival meets real estate management in Burntime, where the world is ruined, but you still need to hire employees and secure water rights. It’s like Mad Max...

The Bugs Bunny Hare-Brained Adventure is a cheerful platform adventure that puts the world's most famous rabbit through a succession of oddball situations, puzzles, enemies, and ca...

Creatures 2 takes the strange virtual-pet experiment of its predecessor and makes it considerably more ambitious. The Norns return, complete with their ability to learn, reproduce,...

Moonbase (1990) isn’t about blasting aliens or dodging meteors—it’s about survival, planning, and resource management. You’re tasked with building a functio...

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...

The last entry in Infocom’s Enchanter trilogy, Spellbreaker is where the training wheels come off. It’s unforgiving, cryptic, and expects you to understand spellcraft l...

A detective adventure inspired by Agatha Christie’s collaborative story, The Scoop (1989, DOS) turns you into a newspaper reporter poking around a suspicious death with nothi...

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...

Everyone’s favorite egg hero returns in Kwik Snax Dizzy (1993, DOS), a fast-paced puzzle game where reflexes and planning matter more than cholesterol levels. You’ll pu...

Arcade Pool (1994) is like playing a game of billiards in your best friend’s basement—if your best friend happened to be a DOS machine with a serious competitive streak...

Murder on the Zinderneuf combines detective work with a wonderfully theatrical setting, placing players aboard a luxurious airship where a murder has occurred and practically every...

Released in 1990, Joe Montana Football attempts to capture the excitement of American football while making the sport accessible to computer players. Featuring the legendary quarte...

Shanghai is a digital adaptation of the classic mahjong solitaire format, transforming a traditional tile-matching puzzle into a remarkably addictive computer pastime. The objectiv...

Imagine Tetris went on a sugar binge and had an identity crisis. That’s Zyconix (1992, DOS) in a nutshell. It’s a tile-matching puzzle game where nothing quite behaves ...

Heavy Barrel is an action game that embraces chaos with enthusiasm, throwing enemies at you in a way that feels both overwhelming and oddly satisfying. The gameplay is straightforw...

Aurora Dibularos is an unusual game with an equally unusual title, presenting a science-fiction setting through a mixture of exploration, action and puzzle-solving. Its world has t...

La Grande Armée (1991) returns to Napoleonic warfare, but with a sharper focus on military tactics than imperial administration. This strategy game puts you in charge of mas...

Bill Elliott's NASCAR Challenge brings stock-car racing to the computer with a focus on speed, car setup and the unforgiving business of keeping a powerful machine on the track. Pl...

Overlord is a 1994 science-fiction action game that places the player in control of a powerful futuristic vehicle and sends them into a world where enemies, missions, and explosion...

Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego? sends players across the continent in pursuit of Carmen and her increasingly slippery gang of thieves. The basic formula is wonderfully effectiv...

Ace 2.02 is one of those wonderfully obscure DOS utilities that feels like a small piece of computing archaeology. Rather than trying to impress with flashy graphics or elaborate p...

Don’t let the title fool you — Blitz Draughts isn’t a military simulation but rather a gloriously intense checkers game from 1992. This DOS brain-bender turns the...

Master Ninja: Shadow Warrior of Death is a martial-arts action game that embraces the classic fantasy of becoming an unstoppable ninja warrior. The premise is refreshingly uncompli...

Iron Lord (1990, DOS) is the medieval fantasy game that tried to be everything at once—and somehow pulled it off. It’s part RPG, part action, part strategy, and part &l...