abandonware games sorted by popularity

Myst is a classic puzzle-adventure video game that was first released in 1993. It was developed by Cyan, a small independent game development studio. The game was initially release...

If you like your point-and-click adventures served with a side of absurd British humor, Discworld (1995, DOS) is a feast. Based on Terry Pratchett’s beloved universe, the gam...

Premier Manager was released in 1992 by Gremlin Interactive for the Commodore Amiga and MS-DOS platforms. It was one of the earliest football management simulation games and allowe...

Just when you thought Keen could catch a break, Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle drops him into a mystical realm full of bouncing jelly beans and sentient toasters. This is w...

Quarantine is a futuristic racing/driving game released by GameTek in 1994 for DOS. Quarantine is set in a dark dystopian futuristic city where the player drives around in a taxi c...

Emmanuelle: A Game of Eroticism is less about eroticism and more about awkward curiosity. Released in 1989, it’s a slow, text-heavy experience filled with suggestion, innuend...

Turbo Pascal 7 (TP7) is a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was developed by Borland as an ev...

Sid Meier's Colonization is Civilization’s scrappy, historically charged cousin. You start with a tiny ship and a dream: exploit the New World before the other European power...

Empire Deluxe is the kind of strategy game that politely pretends to be simple while quietly stealing entire weekends from your life. On the surface, it’s a turn-based war ga...

Interactive Girls Club Games is one of those early ’90s curiosities that tried to blend interactivity with, let’s say, “adult-themed social simulation.” The...

Monster Truck Madness (1996) is proof that “subtlety” and “monster trucks” don’t belong in the same sentence. With Microsoft at the wheel, you’r...

Chessmaster 9000 is a chess game developed by Ubisoft and released in 2002. It's part of the Chessmaster series, which has been around since the 1980s. Chessmaster 9000 was known f...

Ah, Championship Manager 93, the game that taught us yelling at pixels is a valid emotional outlet. It's you, a keyboard, and a list of players with stamina ratings. No fancy graph...

SimCity 3000 is a city-building simulation game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in 1999 as the third major installment in the SimCity series, f...

Contra: Locked and Loaded is like caffeine in video game form—fast, explosive, and just a little dangerous for your health. You’re running, you’re gunning, and yo...

There are games with subtle titles, and then there is Fuck Quest, which clearly decided subtlety was overrated. Released in 1998 for DOS, it belongs to that peculiar era when share...

Before co-op brawlers were everywhere, there was Double Dragon (1988 on DOS). Two brothers, one kidnapped girlfriend, and enough street thugs to populate a small city—that&rs...

Few games deserve the title of “classic” more than Day of the Tentacle (1993). It’s Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman at their weirdest, giving us time travel, mutant...