abandonware games sorted by popularity

Rally Championships is a 1994 DOS racing game focused on rally-style competition, where speed alone is not enough to guarantee success. Players must deal with winding tracks, chang...

As the title suggests, Global Domination doesn’t aim small, throwing you into a contest for control of the entire planet. It leans into a more arcade-like approach to strateg...

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-...

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...

Sherman M4 is a 1989 DOS tank combat game centered on the famous American M4 Sherman tank. Players take control of the armored vehicle and face battlefield situations where positio...

Tracon 2 puts the player in the demanding position of managing air traffic, which sounds peaceful until several aircraft arrive at once and all of them expect you to know exactly w...

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...

The Basket Manager is a basketball management simulation for players who would rather control the team from the bench than personally chase the ball around the court. Released in 1...

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...

IBM 9-Hole Miniature Golf from 1983 proves that even the earliest PC games understood the timeless joy of smacking a tiny ball toward disappointment. It is exactly what it promises...

The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian is a title that feels like it was generated by rolling dice on a fantasy word table, and somehow that’s part of its ...

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...

The Tomb of Drewan is an early adventure that sends the player into an ancient tomb packed with mystery, danger, and the sort of puzzles that make you question why anyone thought e...

Long before fan-made clones flooded the internet, there was David's Kong (1984). It’s a straight-up Donkey Kong knockoff, but with enough quirks to make you smile. The premis...

Roller Coaster Rumbler is a 1989 DOS game built around the wonderfully simple idea of causing trouble in a theme-park roller coaster environment. Players must navigate the ride and...

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...

Imagine being the captain of a space freighter crewed entirely by neurotic aliens, each with a personality straight out of a sitcom. That’s Psi 5 Trading Company in a nutshel...

Suspect is an early interactive mystery from Infocom, built around the idea that the player should solve a murder rather than simply watch somebody else do it. Released in 1984, it...

Einstein Writer 7 is a word-processing application from the mid-1980s, built for users who wanted to move beyond the typewriter without necessarily buying a huge office computer. I...

Monuments of Mars (1991) is one of those puzzle-platformers where patience is less a virtue and more a survival tool. You’re stranded on Mars, exploring alien ruins filled wi...

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...

Sword Quest 1: The Search is a fantasy adventure built around exploration, combat, and the hunt for an important artifact. Released in 1992, it follows the familiar but effective f...

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...

Galleons of Glory invites players to sail the high seas in search of fame, fortune, and possibly a few cannonballs heading directly toward their ship. Naval combat games from this ...

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...

Murder Club is a mystery adventure that places players in the middle of a complicated investigation filled with suspects, clues, and enough suspicious behavior to make trusting any...

Passengers on the Wind 2 continues the historical adventure established by its predecessor, expanding the story with new locations, fresh mysteries, and additional opportunities to...

MicroMan is a wonderfully strange platform adventure that shrinks its hero down to microscopic proportions and sends him into a world where ordinary objects become enormous obstacl...

Released in 1984, Janitor Joe proves that maintenance work can be surprisingly dangerous. Players guide Joe through industrial environments filled with ladders, hazards, and mechan...

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...