abandonware games sorted by popularity

Bomb Run (1991, DOS) sounds like an action-packed thriller—and then you play it and realize you’re just trying to drop bombs in the right spots while flying what feels ...

Armchair Quarterback lets you live the dream of yelling at your TV — but on your DOS machine, and with even less control. It’s part simulator, part quiz show, and all w...

Dick Tracy (1990) tries to turn the classic comic-strip detective into a video game, and the result is equal parts charming and clunky. You’ll chase gangsters, dodge bullets,...

Strategy fans with a taste for sci-fi and logistics will find something special in Full Metal Planete. Released in 1990 for DOS and Mac, the game is essentially a futuristic board ...

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...

Released in 1990, Dawn Raider is one of those obscure DOS shooters that probably spent more time in floppy disk boxes than in actual computers. It’s a vertical shoot-’e...

Ultimuh MCMLXVII: Part 2 of the 39th Trilogy wins points immediately for its audacious title alone. This action-adventure leans heavily into sci-fi weirdness, combining philosophic...

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...

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...

The Lost Treasures of Infocom is essentially a library of interactive fiction for players willing to trade spectacular graphics for spectacularly active imaginations. The collectio...

Demoniak is a dark fantasy adventure that combines exploration, combat, and the sort of atmosphere that suggests nobody in this world has ever heard of adequate lighting. You trave...

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...

Archery (1985) is what happens when someone says, “Hey, what if we made a bow-and-arrow game with the graphical fidelity of a cave painting?” You shoot arrows. That&rsq...

MegaRace is a futuristic racing game that combines high-speed driving with an unusually strong dose of television-show theatrics. Races take place on strange tracks filled with obs...

Global Conquest is strategy boiled down to its essentials, offering a streamlined take on world domination that’s easy to pick up but harder to master. You’ll move armi...

NFL Football is a 1992 American football game that puts players in charge of teams, plays, and the kind of strategic decisions that can make a coach look like a genius one minute a...

No guns. No glory. Just two invisible players navigating a weird Tron-like maze to steal each other’s flag. Capture the Flag is what you get when someone says “let&rsqu...

Electranoid takes the classic Breakout formula, feeds it too much caffeine, and then turns the speed dial to “panic.” This 1995 DOS version is all about reflexes, power...

Released in 1990, Lightspeed blends space simulation, exploration, and strategic resource management into an ambitious science fiction adventure. Players travel across distant star...

Released in 1988, Dream Zone was a surreal adventure where you explore your own subconscious after being sucked into a dream machine. It’s colorful, strange, and often unsett...

Strife from 1996 is a first-person shooter game developed by Rogue Entertainment and published by Velocity, based on the Doom engine. It's often remembered for being one of the ear...

Mystical is an atmospheric adventure that blends exploration, fantasy, and puzzle solving into a journey through a world filled with strange locations and mysterious events. Player...

Redhook's Revenge is a 1993 DOS adventure game built around exploration, danger, and a pirate-flavored setting. Players take part in a swashbuckling journey filled with mysterious ...

The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants puts Bart Simpson in the middle of an extraterrestrial invasion and gives him a surprisingly unpleasant afternoon. The aliens are preparing...

Vengeance of Excalibur is a fantasy role-playing adventure built around the legendary sword Excalibur and a suitably grand quest involving magic, monsters, and medieval intrigue. P...

HTML Tads is a development tool aimed at creating interactive fiction for the web, bringing the wonderfully old-fashioned pleasure of text adventures into a more modern environment...

The 1996 Hamurabi remake takes one of the oldest strategy concepts in gaming and gives it a modest DOS-era facelift. At its core, it’s still about managing resources, feeding...

Blitz Runner is a fast-moving action game built around speed, reflexes and the increasingly difficult task of staying alive while everything around you seems determined to get in t...

Final Frontier is a late-80s slice of space ambition, the kind that assumes you’re perfectly happy staring at menus while imagining epic interstellar conquest. It’s str...

Cannon Fodder 2 continues the gleefully irreverent military mayhem of its predecessor, sending tiny soldiers into missions where survival is never guaranteed and common sense is ap...