abandonware games sorted by popularity

By 1993, Dragon Force - Day 3 landed as an obscure tactical experiment on DOS. Despite the name, it’s not about a power metal band’s rehearsal schedule but rather a day...

Think Top Gun but with less Tom Cruise and more pixelated explosions. Chopper Duel pits you against a friend (or the AI) in one-on-one rotorcraft carnage. It’s fast, twitchy,...

Before BurgerTime stole the fast-food spotlight, there was Burger Blaster—a game where you build burgers by shooting them. With a gun. Because why not? This early arcade-styl...

If you’ve ever stared at a Monopoly board and thought, “This needs more spreadsheets,” then Oligopoly is basically your spiritual home. Released in 1987 for DOS, ...

Released in 1984, Zyll is what happens when a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master learns to code and decides to build a text adventure inside a coffee machine. There are no graph...

If you wanted a mix of Clue, D&D, and a dash of text-parser frustration, Legends of Murder: Volume 1 – Stonedale Castle (1989) was your game. You play a detective dropped...

Aka Starglider 2 with an attitude, Revenge of Defender (or Defender of the Crown’s evil twin in name only) is a 3D space shooter where your main enemy is not the aliens&mdash...

In Gazza 2, the legendary English footballer Paul Gascoigne lends his name to a soccer game that manages to be as unpredictable as his career. Released in 1991, it’s a curiou...

If you’ve ever wondered what baseball would look like if someone crammed the entire sport into a DOS machine and sprinkled a bit of 90s attitude on top, Epic Baseball has you...

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...

Power Struggle is the kind of strategy game that quietly asks, “Would you like to control the world?” and then immediately throws you into a geopolitical mess. It&rsquo...

Side Arms: Hyper Dyne is a side-scrolling shoot-'em-up arcade game developed and published by Capcom in 1986 and later ported on various platforms. Players control a "mobilsui...

Luigi and Spaghetti (1992, DOS) sounds like a dinner order but is actually an educational puzzle adventure. You guide a tiny robot named Luigi (no, not that one) through logic puzz...

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...

Saddle up for an awkward mix of minigames that vaguely resemble rodeo events. Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show tries to recreate the excitement of a 19th-century traveling circus but ...

Waterloo (1989, DOS) is not here to entertain you with flashy graphics or arcade thrills. Instead, it calmly places Napoleon and Wellington on the table and expects you to think. A...

If gravity had a sense of humor, it would look like Bounce Zone. This 1990 DOS oddball is part platformer, part physics experiment, and part unintentional comedy. You bounce. A lot...