abandonware games sorted by year, newest first

Released in 1983 for DOS, Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator is what happens when early arcade design meets Federation bureaucracy. Vector-style graphics make you feel like ...

Ultima 2 asks the pressing question: what if you mixed time travel with fantasy and a truly mean sorceress named Minax? The answer is chaos. You’ll bounce between eras—...

Legacy of Llylgamyn steps up the ante, sending your party into a town under siege and dungeons filled with more monsters than your imagination can comfortably handle. This isn&rsqu...

You survived Zork I, and now it’s personal. In Zork II, you face off against the enigmatic Wizard of Frobozz, who exists mostly to mess with you like a magical prankster with...

Before heroes had inventory screens and voice acting, there was Adventure in Serenia, the lovechild of a text parser and a fever dream. Released in 1982, this proto-graphic adventu...

Astro Dodge (1982) is basically Frogger — in space. You control a tiny spacecraft tasked with dodging endless waves of meteors, space debris, and possibly your own questionab...

Before realistic fighting games, there was Boxer Rebellion—a 1982 title so primitive, it makes Pong look flashy. It’s boxing with fewer rules and more pixels per punch....

Ah, BurgerTime. The game that asked the important question: what if we made a platformer about a tiny chef assembling giant burgers while being chased by sentient hot dogs? You gui...

Car Builder is less about speed and more about spreadsheets—just with axles. In this 1982 gem, you don’t race cars, you design them. From gear ratios to weight distribu...

Cosmic Crusader is proof that sometimes simple is perfect. You’re a lone pilot defending space against endless waves of enemies, in a game that’s basically a love lette...

Crossfire is what happens when you throw a tank into a maze, give it infinite ammo, and tell it to go wild. Released in 1982, it’s all about twitch reflexes and precise shoot...

Released in 1982, Deadline is one of Infocom’s classic text adventures, and it doesn’t pull punches. You’re a detective with twelve in-game hours to solve a murde...

Executive Suite puts you in the shoes of a corporate leader and asks you to juggle ambition, ethics, and profit, usually with conflicting results. It’s a business simulation ...

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...

Microsoft Decathlon was a popular sports video game released by Microsoft in 1980. It was one of the earliest sports simulation games, notable for its variety of events and competi...

Released in 1982, Novatron is one of those early DOS titles that tried to imagine the future using about twelve pixels and a prayer. It’s an arcade-style shooter that borrows...

PC-Man is an abandoned top-down Pac-Man clone in every regard: from the shape of the protagonist, to the cute ghosts. PC-Man was designed by Greg Kuperberg, developed by Orion Soft...