abandonware games sorted by popularity

Puzzle Fun Pak is a collection of small brain teasers designed to provide a variety of challenges without requiring a complicated learning curve. Instead of committing to one puzzl...

Meteors takes the classic asteroid-blasting formula and turns it into an addictive test of reflexes and spatial awareness. Players pilot a small spacecraft through increasingly cro...

Paintshow is a DOS graphics program from an era when creating pictures on a computer still felt like a minor act of wizardry. It provides tools for drawing, editing, and manipulati...

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 ...

Safe Opening Simulator is a 1993 DOS simulation built around the surprisingly specialized art of cracking open a combination safe. Instead of blasting doors apart like an action he...

Quest for the Unicorn is a 1990 fantasy adventure that sends players on a quest involving magic, danger, and the sort of mythical creature that is never simply standing around wait...

Basketball Challenge offers a straightforward computer interpretation of basketball, concentrating on shooting, movement and the challenge of putting more points on the board than ...

PC Globe 5 is an educational geography and reference program designed to turn a DOS computer into a compact digital atlas. It provides information about countries, geography, popul...

Backgammon brings the ancient board game into the DOS era with a clean focus on dice, tactics and the eternal hope that probability will suddenly become your best friend. The rules...

There’s something charmingly ruthless about TV Mogul, a game that hands you a television network and basically says, “Don’t mess it up.” Released in 1988, it throws you int...

Dungeon of Shalan is one of those games that greets you with the words “You awaken in a dark room” and then proceeds to make that darkness your entire reality. Released...

Oil's Well is an action-puzzle game released by Sierra On-Line in 1983/84. It was originally made for platforms like the Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS, but was la...

In this 1992 DOS RPG, you play as an agent of the Faunus Foundation, protecting the world from cosmic horrors. Set in 1921, the game combines detective work with Lovecraftian eleme...

Worlds of Legend: Son of the Empire is an ambitious fantasy role-playing adventure that drops the player into a world of magic, danger and the usual assortment of people who urgent...

Interphase from 1989 blends action and puzzle-solving into a futuristic arcade experience that feels distinctly experimental. Players navigate abstract environments, collecting obj...

Floppy Frenzy embraces early-80s arcade spirit with gleeful abandon. The concept is simple, the pace relentless, and the margin for error thinner than a five-and-a-quarter disk. Yo...

Holy Grail is one of those early games that feels like a mysterious artifact itself—intriguing, slightly confusing, and very much a product of its time. Released in 1984, it send...

EGA Bomb is a small, colorful arcade-style game that knows exactly what it is: fast, simple, and slightly mischievous. Built around classic bomb-dropping mechanics, it challenges p...

Corsarios is a maritime adventure that sends players into a world of ships, exploration, trade, and piracy. The player takes control of a vessel and must navigate waters while deal...

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,...

Varicella is a particularly unusual adventure game built around social interaction, exploration, and the sort of eccentric premise that makes you wonder what the designers were dri...

Pharaoh's Tomb is a 1990 platform adventure that combines exploration, traps, and puzzle-solving in a classic archaeological setting. Players guide the hero through ancient tombs f...

Released in 2000, Extreme Shopper is one of those games that sounds like a joke—until you realize it fully commits to the premise. You play as a shopper navigating a chaotic ...

Quarky & Quaysoo's Turbo Science is a 1992 educational game that tries to make science more entertaining by adding colorful characters, experiments, and the sort of playful present...

Think of Bass Tour (1992) as the road trip version of virtual fishing. More simulation than arcade, it lets you travel, pick locations, study conditions, and obsess over bait types...

Back in 1986, when most PC users were still figuring out floppy disks, along came Dr. Ruth Computer Game of Good Sex, a title that promised to educate while entertaining. Imagine t...

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....

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...

Zona 0 is a top-down action game from Spain that blends cyberpunk aesthetics with frenetic gameplay and a dash of existential dread. You play a cyber-agent navigating a dystopian c...

Great Naval Battles vol. 4: Burning Steel shifts focus to earlier conflicts, offering a different flavor of naval strategy. In Great Naval Battles vol. 4, the mechanics remain deep...