abandonware games sorted by popularity

Titan is an action-puzzle game built around a small craft navigating increasingly dangerous environments filled with obstacles and enemies. Success depends on movement, timing and ...

Swap is a puzzle game built around a wonderfully simple idea: rearrange things until the board behaves itself. Released in 1992, it challenges the player with increasingly tricky a...

Microsoft COBOL is a classic programming environment for one of computing's most enduring business languages. COBOL was designed with practical data processing in mind, and Microso...

Dragon World (1984) might sound like the precursor to a sprawling epic RPG, but it’s actually more of a board-game-style fantasy experience. Less “slay the dragon with ...

In Ante-Up at The Friday Night Poker Club, you’re not saving the world or slaying dragons — you’re just trying to win a few bucks from a room full of poker-faced ...

Released in 1983, this is your grandpa’s Battleship—minus the plastic pegs, but with all the tension of blind naval warfare. There are no fancy graphics, no Hollywood e...

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...

In Scrooge (1991), you play everyone’s favorite miser in a faithful retelling of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol—if Dickens had access to VGA graphics and MIDI carols....

Arnhem is the kind of wargame where you spend more time reading hex maps than shooting anything. It’s all about recreating Operation Market Garden — you know, that WWII...

Master Ninja: Shadow Warrior of Death is a martial-arts action game that embraces the classic fantasy of becoming an unstoppable ninja warrior. The premise is refreshingly uncompli...

Metaltech: Earthsiege delivers a serious dose of giant-robot warfare, placing players in the cockpit of powerful Herc machines during a desperate conflict against overwhelming enem...

Objection! is a 1992 DOS game built around the dramatic world of courtroom arguments, legal reasoning, and the thrilling possibility that one badly chosen sentence can ruin your en...

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...

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...

ResidualVM is an open-source game engine project created to run certain classic adventure games on modern computers by replacing their original executable code with a compatible en...

Ball Race is a compact racing game built around the deceptively simple idea of controlling a rolling ball while trying to stay ahead of the competition. Instead of roaring engines ...

Klass of 99 is a compact educational game built around the sort of schoolroom challenges that were once considered perfectly acceptable entertainment for a computer. Rather than th...

WWF in Your House turns professional wrestling into a compact arcade-style spectacle, drawing on the flashy presentation and larger-than-life personalities of the WWF era. Matches ...

Pac Maniac is a 1993 reinterpretation of the familiar maze-chasing formula, adding its own personality while remaining faithful to the frantic spirit of the classics. Players race ...

The name screams “budget shareware,” and Bubble Pop delivers. It’s the digital equivalent of popping bubble wrap, except someone decided it needed high scores and...

War of the Lance turns the Dragonlance setting into a substantial fantasy strategy game, allowing players to participate in the enormous conflict between the forces of good and evi...

If you thought Norse mythology needed more monochrome graphics, Caves of Thor (1989) has you covered. It’s an early Apogee game, meaning it’s tough, quirky, and uses le...

Profezia is a 1991 DOS adventure game that combines fantasy themes, exploration, and puzzle-solving into a mysterious journey. Players enter a world filled with secrets, strange ch...

In Air Force Commander (1992), you don’t just fly planes - you run the whole air force. Think of it as being a general with a spreadsheet addiction. Assign squadrons, manage ...

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...

Microsoft Word 5.5 for DOS is one of the best-known mature versions of Microsoft's classic DOS word processor, offering a surprisingly capable writing environment without requiring...

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...

Battlecruiser 3000AD (1996) is less a game and more a test of faith. Ambitious beyond reason, it promised total control of a massive starship—crew management, planetary landi...

P47 Thunderbolt is a 1990 side-scrolling shooter that puts players in the cockpit of the legendary Republic P-47 fighter aircraft during the Second World War. The mission is wonder...

Back in 1989, David Wolf: Secret Agent tried really hard to make you feel like James Bond. You get car chases, fistfights, and enough cheesy dialogue to fill an action movie marath...