abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

Before James Bond was saving the world with cinematic flair, he was crashing pixelated helicopters in 007: License to Kill. This top-down action game takes the movie and crams it i...

SimFarm is a simulation video game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts in 1993. In SimFarm, players take on the role of a farmer and manage various aspects of runni...

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...

Back in 1984, Devastator promised arcade-style action on DOS, which is another way of saying “prepare for blocky graphics and relentless difficulty.” It’s a shoot...

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...

MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1990. The Zhodani Conspiracy is the first installment in the MegaTraveller ser...

Balance of Power: The 1990 Edition is a geopolitical strategy game developed by Chris Crawford and released in 1985. It is considered a classic in the genre of political and strate...

In Space Quest 1: The Sarien Encounter, the galaxy’s least qualified hero, Roger Wilco, begins his long tradition of surviving disasters mostly by accident. Released in 1986,...

D/Generation is a slick blend of action, puzzle-solving, and corporate dystopia. You’re a courier dropped into a high-security biotech facility to deliver a package, only to ...

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...

Released in 1988, Alien Fires 2199 AD looks and plays like someone tried to translate a fever dream into a sci-fi RPG. You control some dude with a chin of steel and a crew that se...

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...

A-Train (1992) is the game that proves building a railroad empire can be just as stressful as running an actual train. Available on DOS and Mac, it’s a complex economic simul...

Part Cold War thriller, part adventure game, part submarine simulator, Code-Name: Iceman is a Sierra title that demands patience, precision, and a deep respect for diplomacy and to...

La Abadía del Crimen (1987) is famously unforgiving, and it knows it. Inspired by Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, this is an isometric adventure where breaking the...

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...

Rogue is one of the first RPGs in the history of video gaming. It's a text-based dungeon crawler in which you have to fight your way in the dungeon to recover the Amulet of Yendor....

If Lorna were a comic book, it would be the kind your parents warned you about. Based on the Spanish sci-fi heroine by Alfonso Azpiri, this 1990 action-platformer on DOS is a cockt...

When H.R. Giger is involved, you know things will get weird. Dark Seed (1992) is a point-and-click horror adventure where you play Mike Dawson, a man haunted by nightmarish visions...