abandonware games sorted by popularity

Flame Dragon Plus: Marks of Wind is a Japanese-style role-playing game with a strong emphasis on fantasy adventure, character development, exploration, and tactical battles. Player...

Army Men 2 doubles down on everything from the first game - more weapons, more plastic carnage, more trips to “The Real World” where you fight in bathtubs and backyards...

Superstar Ice Hockey brings the rough-and-tumble world of hockey to the computer with a distinctly old-school approach. Released in 1987, it focuses on the essentials: skating, pas...

Incursion is a modern love letter to classic tactical RPGs, clearly inspired by tabletop rulesets and games like early Fallout. It throws you into a turn-based world where position...

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, ...

Turbo Prolog 2.0 is a programming environment built around Prolog, a language particularly associated with artificial intelligence, symbolic reasoning, and rule-based problem solvi...

Before WWII games flooded the market, Knights of the Desert (1983, DOS) was already reenacting the North African campaign in pixels. You command Rommel’s Afrika Korps—o...

Released in 1994, Iron Seed is a DOS space sim that tried to be both philosophical and technical. You’re leading a fledgling human colony across the stars, tinkering with dip...

No, it’s not about a guy who holds your groceries. Bagman is a retro-style indie throwback where you’re a pickaxe-wielding convict trying to steal bags of cash from a m...

Star Fleet 1: The War Begins is a 1985 space strategy game inspired by classic television science fiction, putting players in command of a starship during a large-scale conflict. R...

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...

Borderworld (1996, DOS) is a sci-fi RPG with big ideas, a tiny budget, and enough ambition to fuel a space shuttle. You’re thrown into a galaxy of politics, smuggling, and st...

Mike Ditka Ultimate Football brings American football to the computer with a focus on strategy, play selection, and the hard-hitting action that makes the sport so distinctive. Pla...

Mental Blocks is a puzzle game built around spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and the ancient videogame tradition of making the player feel personally responsible for every m...

Independence War takes space combat seriously, almost stubbornly so. Instead of arcade-style dogfights, it presents a Newtonian flight model where momentum, inertia, and positionin...

Navy Seal is a 1989 action game that puts the player in the boots of an elite military operative and sends them into dangerous missions where stealth, combat, and quick reactions a...

Before AI could annihilate grandmasters, Psion Chess was already humbling humans back in 1985. Available for DOS and Macintosh, this game wasn’t flashy, but it didn’t n...

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, ...

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a cop who drifts around corners at 90 mph in a convertible, Cisco Heat is your kind of chaos. This arcade racer puts you in the shoes of a law...

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...

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...

Black Friday (1983) isn’t about shopping mayhem—though you might wish it were after trying to figure out what’s going on. This early DOS title is part stock marke...

Red Storm Rising is a 1989 submarine simulation based on Tom Clancy's Cold War novel, putting players in command of a nuclear-powered submarine during a fictional conflict between ...

Modem Wars is an early strategy game that feels almost prophetic today, especially because it was designed around competitive play long before online gaming became commonplace. Pla...

Word Perfect 5 is one of the defining DOS word processors of its generation, offering a remarkably powerful writing environment while remaining firmly rooted in keyboard-driven com...

Beyond the Black Hole promises an interstellar voyage into mystery—and delivers... a disorienting 3D shooter that kind of feels like flying a cardboard spaceship through a ka...

Hamburger Hell from 1986 is one of those titles that practically dares you to ask, “What were they thinking?” The premise is gloriously absurd, and the execution doesn&...

Ever wanted to combine your love for trivia with Old Testament knowledge and 256-color DOS graphics? Bible Builder is here to test your biblical memory one verse at a time. It's li...

Outcast is a 1999 science-fiction action-adventure that sends players to the alien world of Adelpha, a place where the scenery is beautiful, the inhabitants are mysterious, and the...

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...