abandonware games sorted by popularity

Raiden is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up game developed by Seibu Kaihatsu and first released in arcades in 1990 and later for many home computers and consoles. Raiden fol...

Released in 1990, Geisha is one of those games that makes you ask, “Who thought this was a good idea?” Part adventure, part fever dream, it’s filled with surreal ...

CivNet is a multiplayer adaptation of the original Sid Meier's Civilization game, released in 1995. It was developed and published by MicroProse for MS-DOS and Windows. This versio...

What do you get when you mix Mad Max, Car Wars, and a fondness for vehicular homicide? You get Autoduel (1985, DOS), a top-down driving RPG where your car is your castle and your g...

Blackthorne (1994) is what happens when a '90s action hero gets lost in a side-scrolling alien world and decides to shoot everything until it makes sense. You’re Kyle, a shot...

Ever dreamt of running ancient Rome without the toga chafing? Caesar hands you the reins of a budding province and expects you to not burn it to the ground—ideally. This city...

Fade to Black (1995) aims high and mostly lands on its feet, delivering a cinematic science-fiction adventure that feels ambitious even today. As a sequel to Flashback, it keeps th...

Ah, Budokan, the game where patience and discipline meet awkwardly slow combat and the occasional flying kick. You play as a martial arts student training in various dojos, culmina...

Dreamweb (1994) went full dark cyberpunk, and it didn’t pull its punches. You play Ryan, a man convinced he’s on a mission from mysterious forces to kill seven people w...

Released in 1989, Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs is pure old-school sports gaming: simple to learn, hard to master, and endlessly competitive. The presentation is minimal,...

Interstate '76 is a vehicular combat video game developed and published by Activision. It was released in 1997 for Microsoft Windows. The game is set in an alternate history 1976, ...

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans is where Blizzard’s legendary fantasy saga began. This real-time strategy classic pits humans against orcs in a battle for control of a war-torn wor...

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. II: The Two Towers is an abandoned fantasy top-down DOS RPG game set in the The Lord of the Rings universe. The Lord of the Rings II wa...

Let’s be honest: Cobra Mission is remembered less for its RPG mechanics and more for its... risqué content. The first “eroge” RPG translated into English, ...

Supremacy: You Will Be Done (also known simply as Overlord) is a rare example of mix between real-time strategy and science fiction themed 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploid, eXterm...

With a title like Dogfight: 80 Years of Aerial Warfare, you know you’re in for a serious history lesson disguised as a game. Released in 1993, this DOS flight sim spans decad...

SkyGlobe is an astronomy software that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a DOS-based planetarium program that allowed users to explore the night sky in real-tim...

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...

Mega lo Mania, also known as Mega-Lo-Mania: The Battle for Elysium in some regions, is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by Sensible Software and published by Image W...

After the success of Ultima 6: The False Prophet, Origin decided to "create worlds" not part of the popular Ultima series (strictly speaking) using the same engine of Ultima 6. The...

The Neuromancer video game, released in 1988 by Interplay Productions, is an adventure/role-playing game loosely based on William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer (1984...

Xenon 2: Megablast is a classic shoot'em up developed by Bitmap Brothers and released by Image Works in 1990 for DOS and for a plethora of other systems. Xenon was good, Xenon 2 wa...