abandonware games sorted by popularity

Named after the famously outspoken baseball manager, Earl Weaver Baseball takes the sport seriously, sometimes almost aggressively so. This isn’t about flashy graphics or arc...

CHAMP Invaders takes the classic alien-shooting formula and gives it the straightforward treatment you would expect from a retro arcade homage. Rows of hostile creatures advance to...

D-Zone is what you’d get if someone blended city-building with military strategy and sprinkled in a dash of chaos. You’re tasked with running a base while fending off a...

Striker 95 takes the football formula into the middle of the 1990s, with more detailed presentation and a stronger emphasis on competitive matches. The game offers the usual ingred...

Motorbike Madness is an arcade-style motorcycle game that puts the player behind the handlebars and wastes very little time explaining the dangers involved. The focus is on speed, ...

Ocean Ranger is a 1988 simulation that places the player in command of an offshore oil platform, which sounds like a perfectly calm occupation until you remember that the ocean, ma...

Winter Olympiad 88 brings a selection of winter sporting events to the computer, allowing players to experience the excitement of the 1988 Winter Olympics without having to put on ...

FoxBASE 2 is a database development system from the early years of DOS computing, part of the family of tools that helped transform personal computers into practical information-ma...

Top Secret is an old-school adventure built around mystery, investigation, and the wonderfully dangerous habit of poking your nose into places where it probably should not be. The ...

In Gnome Alone, you step into the tiny boots of a gnome who really should have picked a quieter profession than “wandering into danger for no clear reason.” The game mi...

Italicized title: J-Bird. Long before endless runners and mobile time-wasters became fashionable, this quirky little game asked players to guide a determined bird through a maze-li...

Long before indie developers made “roguelike” a buzzword, someone decided to fuse Doom with permadeath and ASCII graphics. The result: Doom: The Roguelike (2005). On pa...

TheDraw 4 is a classic DOS text and ASCII-art editor, built for users who wanted their otherwise boring command-line screens to have a little personality. It provides tools for cre...

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 ...

Rules of Engagement is a 1991 DOS space strategy and combat simulation that puts players in command of a fleet operating in a dangerous futuristic conflict. Instead of simply jumpi...

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...

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...

Xenopods offers a quirky take on space exploration, combining elements of strategy and action in a way that feels both unusual and oddly charming. You control small pods navigating...

Guy Spy and the Crystals of Armageddon is gloriously over-the-top, starring a hero who looks like he walked out of a Saturday morning cartoon and into a global conspiracy. The digi...

The Lost Vale is the great “what if” of the Ultima series. Developed as an expansion to Pagan but never officially released, it became the stuff of legend. Players were...

Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood is a gentle adventure that transforms the familiar world of Pooh and his friends into a colorful computer journey. Instead of fighting armi...

World Darts takes the humble pub game of darts and gives it a suitably digital makeover. The objective sounds simple enough: throw little pointed objects at a circular board and tr...

Shard of Spring (1987, DOS) is a role-playing adventure from an era when mapping dungeons on graph paper was practically mandatory. You assemble a party and set out on a quest fill...

Midwinter 2: Flames of Freedom expands the original's ambitious open-world design with a larger setting, new vehicles, more varied missions, and a broader struggle for freedom. Pla...

Super Battleship brings the classic naval guessing game to the computer, adding enough extra rules and presentation to make sinking ships feel slightly more official. Players deplo...

Ready to get your heart racing with the world’s slowest competitive sport? Bicycle Bridge brings the thrill of bidding, trick-taking, and utter confusion straight to your DOS...

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...

Escape from Monkey Island brings Guybrush Threepwood back for another wonderfully ridiculous pirate adventure. The game mixes exploration, dialogue, puzzles, and comedy, continuing...

Solidarnosc is a 1991 DOS game built around the Polish political and social movement that became one of the defining forces in the country's modern history. Rather than offering co...

In Core War Plus, programming isn’t just for making spreadsheets—it’s for virtual combat. You write tiny programs that battle for control of computer memory, turn...