abandonware games sorted by popularity

Elvira: The Arcade Game trades puzzles for action and subtlety for pure chaos. This is fast, brutal, side-scrolling combat with monsters pouring in from every direction. Elvira&rsq...

A loving parody of science fiction tropes, EGA Trek takes obvious inspiration from Star Trek and runs with it, humor first. You command a starship, making decisions that range from...

Before Doom, there was Catacomb Abyss, where you throw fireballs down corridors at zombies who all apparently graduated from the same school of slow shuffling. It's a first-person ...

Fox Ranger is a side-scrolling shooter that wastes no time explaining itself—because lasers are self-explanatory. You pilot a sleek craft through swarms of enemies with the s...

Time Bandit is a sprawling arcade adventure that throws the player into a collection of strange worlds filled with enemies, treasures and secret passages. Its maze-like environment...

Before Space Invaders clones flooded arcades, there was Space Commanders (1983, DOS), a bare-bones but addictive shooter where your mission is simple: don’t die. Rows of alie...

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter throws the player into a first-person adventure where prehistoric creatures have apparently decided that modern civilization was a terrible idea. Armed with ...

Transarctica presents a wonderfully bleak vision of the future in which Earth has frozen over and surviving civilization depends on enormous trains crossing the icy wilderness. The...

Kasparov's Gambit offers chess enthusiasts the rare opportunity to challenge a computer program inspired by one of history's greatest grandmasters. Whether you are a beginner hopin...

Warheads is a turn-based artillery game in the grand tradition of blowing your friends to pieces with ridiculous weapons. You control a team of tiny, heavily armed soldiers and tak...

Released in 1989, this game has you exploring a tomb filled with ancient evils. Navigate through dark corridors, solve puzzles, and confront the awakening demons. It's like playing...

From 1987’s text adventure golden age, The Lurking Horror proves you don’t need graphics to be terrified. You’re a student trapped on a snowy university campus du...

Ninja Rabbits is a 1992 platform game that takes the concept of the ninja and adds a rabbit, because apparently the genre had not yet reached its full potential for unusual protago...

Sega Rally Championship is a 1995 arcade racing classic that brings the wonderfully unpredictable world of rally driving to the PC. Players race through dirt, gravel, mud, and othe...

With Zork Zero, Infocom decided to throw everything into the cauldron: graphics, mouse support, and a jester who won’t shut up. A prequel to the original trilogy, it’s ...

Hoyle Classic Card Games is the digital equivalent of a well-stocked card table, offering a variety of games to suit different tastes. Released in 1993, it combines accessibility w...

No guns. No glory. Just two invisible players navigating a weird Tron-like maze to steal each other’s flag. Capture the Flag is what you get when someone says “let&rsqu...

If Clouds of Xeen was the sunny side of the adventure, Might and Magic 5: Darkside of Xeen gleefully flips the map over and shows you the other half. The tone is a bit darker, the ...

Risk: The World Conquest Game is a 1989 DOS version of the famous strategy board game, offering players the familiar objective of controlling territories and eventually conquering ...

Aaargh (1988) is exactly what you’ll scream as your giant monster stomps through cities with all the grace of a drunk kaiju. On DOS, this arcade-ish game lets you smash stuff...

Volfied is a deceptively simple arcade puzzle game in which drawing lines is far more dangerous than it sounds. The basic idea is straightforward: your little craft moves around a ...

Back in 1992, Sensible Soccer arrived and proved that football games did not need dozens of buttons or endless realism to become addictive. Tiny players with oversized heads sprint...

Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? adds a particularly nasty complication to the usual Carmen formula: the criminals are not merely running around the world, they are jumping throug...

Hocus Pocus is the kind of platformer that seems to run on pure sugar and cheerful chaos. You play as a young wizard with more enthusiasm than common sense, bouncing through colorf...

Before Ultima 1 came along, role-playing games on PC were about as sophisticated as a pocket calculator. Then Richard Garriott threw players into a digital world full of space trav...

Anachronox is a 2001 role-playing video game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive with a futuristic, cyberpunk-inspired setting. The game was written and direc...

Based on the cult fantasy novels by Roger Zelazny, 9 Princes in Amber is a 1985 text adventure that assumes two things: you’ve read the books, and you enjoy typing things lik...

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...

In Corruption, you’re a businessman trapped in a web of deceit, murder, and paperwork. It’s an interactive fiction game where every conversation could be a clue—o...

Metal Mutant offers an imaginative action adventure built around a shape-shifting robot capable of transforming into different forms. Each form provides unique abilities, making ex...