abandonware games sorted by popularity

By 1999, Liero had become a cult favorite thanks to its frantic real-time battles between heavily armed worms. Unlike turn-based competitors, the action never pauses, creating chao...

Strap in and squint at the horizon—Advanced Tactical Fighter 2 wants you to dogfight like it’s the Cold War and your joystick is a weapon of mass confusion. Released in...

Chicago, 1920s. You’ve got a tommy gun, a fedora, and a score to settle. Capone is part gangster sim, part shooting gallery, and part fever dream. The graphics are muddy, the...

International Moto X in 1996 brings motocross thrills to DOS with mud, speed, and the constant threat of spectacular wipeouts. The game balances arcade accessibility with enough ch...

Faces Tris 3 (1990) takes a familiar concept and gives it a slightly unsettling twist. Yes, it’s a falling-blocks puzzle game, but instead of abstract shapes, you’re st...

Fort Apache drops you into the Old West with the subtlety of a saloon door kicked off its hinges. Strategy and action mingle as you defend your frontier outpost from relentless att...

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is a 1991 mystery adventure that attempts to recreate the experience of investigating a Holmes story rather than simply watching one unfold. Pl...

Inspired by the famous comic character, Mandrake: L'Ombra del Cobra mixes adventure and action as the legendary magician confronts dangerous enemies using intelligence alongside il...

Empire Soccer 94 is football stripped of glamour and presented with a straight face that makes everything unintentionally funny. There are no licenses, no famous players, and no at...

SRAM is a 1987 adventure game with a distinctly science-fiction flavor, placing the player in an unusual world where exploration, problem solving, and interaction are more importan...

Round 42 is a 1986 DOS game that offers a compact arcade-style experience built around quick decisions, movement, and increasingly demanding challenges. Its design reflects the str...

MicroLeague Baseball brings the strategic side of baseball to the computer, allowing players to manage teams, select lineups, and make tactical decisions throughout a game. Rather ...

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...

Alien Attack wastes little time explaining that Earth is having a very bad day. The premise is exactly the sort of thing science-fiction games love: hostile aliens have arrived, an...

Family Feud from 1987 turns the popular TV show into a surprisingly tense DOS experience, proving that guessing what other people think is harder than it looks. The core idea is si...

Framed is a puzzle-platformer that treats each screen like a small mechanical riddle. You guide your character through hazards that feel carefully arranged, almost theatrical in th...

Dungeons & Dragons meets Disney on a sugar rush. Tangled Tales is a bright, humorous RPG that cheerfully pokes fun at fantasy clichés while still serving a solid adventu...

Dino Crisis takes the survival-horror formula and makes one very important adjustment: instead of zombies, you get dinosaurs. Because apparently undead people were not terrifying e...

Fancy a war under the sea? Battle for Atlantis (1990) asks the age-old question: what if submarines had grudges? This top-down, action strategy title throws you into a deep-sea tur...

F40 Pursuit Simulator takes a different approach by putting you in the cockpit of a fictional high-tech interceptor designed for one job: catching bad guys. Instead of large-scale ...

Italicized title: J.R.R. Tolkien's Riders of Rohan. Rather than focusing on epic battles alone, this adaptation places players in the role of a member of Rohan during one of the mo...

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...

Ah, Betrayal—a game with a name that really sets the tone. Is it about backstabbing? Politics? Lost love? Not really. It’s actually a hybrid of strategy and role-playin...

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...

Javelin is a programming-oriented tool from 1985, arriving at a time when personal computers were rapidly becoming useful beyond simple word processing and games. Its appeal lies i...

Rescue at Rigel is a 1983 DOS science-fiction adventure from the early days of computer role-playing and interactive storytelling. Players are sent to a space station controlled by...

Chessmaster 8000 is a comprehensive chess package aimed at everyone from casual players to serious enthusiasts. At its heart is a full chess engine capable of providing opponents a...

Shadow Sorcerer is a fantasy role-playing adventure set in the Dragonlance universe, combining exploration, party management, combat, and a strong emphasis on narrative. Players co...

At-slow4 is an obscure DOS utility whose name alone sounds like something that might have been typed into a command prompt by a programmer at three in the morning. It belongs to th...

Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace combines Dungeons & Dragons role-playing with space exploration, producing one of the stranger but more memorable fantasy hybrids of the early 19...