abandonware games sorted by popularity

Infiltrator 2 basically asks: “What if we took everything from the first game and doubled down?” The result is a sequel that’s larger, louder, and just as gleeful...

Zyclunt is a side-scrolling action game developed and published by Phantagram in 1995. The game is set in a dystopian future where incurable diseases and a rise in criminal activit...

MDDClone is a modern retro-style project that deliberately looks back toward the golden age of classic computer games. Rather than chasing photorealistic graphics or enormous open ...

ELIZA, created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT, was one of the first computer programs to simulate human conversation. Designed as a natural language processing demons...

QBasic 1.1 is Microsoft's approachable programming environment for DOS and one of the easiest ways an entire generation learned that computers could be told exactly what to do. It ...

The 1998 adaptation of Settlers of Catan brought Klaus Teuber’s famous board game to computers, allowing players to trade resources and sabotage friendships without needing a phy...

Frac takes a minimalist concept—navigate fractal landscapes—and turns it into something hypnotic and slightly disorienting. The visuals shimmer with mathematical flair,...

Ghost Master is a strategy and simulation game developed by Sick Puppies and published by Empire Interactive. It was originally released for Microsoft Windows in 2003 and later por...

Freddy Hardest introduces a hero whose name suggests subtlety was never on the table. This action-platformer throws you into alien-infested territory armed with a blaster and a stu...

The Twilight Zone adapts the eerie spirit of Rod Serling's famous television series into a computer adventure built around mystery, strange situations and the possibility that real...

Part interactive thriller, part newsroom simulator, The President is Missing (1988, DOS) casts you as an investigative journalist trying to unravel a political conspiracy before ev...

If you’ve ever wondered what professional wrestling would look like if it were coded on a calculator from the 1980s, Tag Team Wrestling has your answer. Two beefy sprites&mda...

Ganja Farmer is a small, deliberately unusual farming simulation built around a subject that conventional agricultural software tends to avoid mentioning. The basic idea is familia...

Tracon: Air Traffic Control Simulator takes an everyday job and turns it into a surprisingly tense computer simulation. You sit in front of a radar display and become responsible f...

Racter is one of the more unusual pieces of software from the early home-computer era: an experimental text-generation program designed to produce apparently original prose. Rather...

Remember when being radical meant wearing neon shorts and dodging killer squirrels on a skateboard? No? Well, Awesome Earl in SkateRock is here to educate you. Released in 1988, th...

Despite the name, Aquaphobia (1992) doesn’t help you overcome your fear of water. In fact, it might just make it worse. This is an action-platformer where you try not to drow...

Troll's Tale is a charming early adventure that combines fairy-tale imagery with simple exploration and puzzle solving. The player takes on the role of a young heroine travelling t...

Meantime is one of those fascinating lost adventures that has become more interesting precisely because players never got the chance to experience the finished game. Designed by th...

WWF European Rampage Tour brings professional wrestling to the computer with all the theatricality, enormous personalities and questionable physics you would expect. Players can ta...

World Rally Fever: Born on the Road delivers a straightforward rally experience built around speed, tight corners, and the eternal battle between the driver and the scenery. The ca...

X-COM: Alliance is one of those legendary “what could have been” titles, a fascinating ghost in gaming history rather than a fully realized experience. Originally envisioned as...

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...

Released in 1994, _Jetstrike_ mixes action, strategy, and flight combat into a surprisingly ambitious package. Players take command of military aircraft and tackle missions that in...

In Armor Alley, you command a helicopter in a warzone that looks like a side-scrolling office meeting gone wrong. It’s strategy meets action: you must manage resources, deplo...

Mech Brigade (1987) is a strategy game that lets you live out your dream of commanding an army of giant robots. Set in a futuristic battlefield, you’re in charge of deploying...

Rescue Rover is a 1991 DOS puzzle adventure from id Software that combines colorful presentation with clever environmental challenges. Players control a small rover navigating haza...

Crime Time blends point-and-click adventure with a murder mystery that’s as much about wit as it is about clues. You play an innocent man framed for murder, scrambling to gat...

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....

Paintshow is a DOS graphics program from an era when creating pictures on a computer still felt like a minor act of wizardry. It provides tools for drawing, editing, and manipulati...