abandonware games sorted by popularity

Star Trek: Starfleet Command (1999, Windows XP) is a dream come true for anyone who memorized warp core schematics. It’s a tactical space combat simulator that rewards patien...

Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia is often spoken of with a certain reverence, and it is not hard to see why. Everything comes together with a confidence th...

Released in 2001 for PC, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is what happens when someone looks at Age of Empires II and says, “This is good, but what if there were AT-ATs stom...

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...

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...

Maniac Mansion Deluxe is the unofficial sequel to the acclaimed point & click adventure game released by LucasFilm in 1987. Maniac Mansion Deluxe it's a fan-made adventure deve...

Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? is an educational computer game and television game show franchise created by Broderbund. It focuses on teaching geography and history while playe...

Ivan 'Iron Man' Stewart's Super Off Road is an abandoned diagonal-down off-road racing game developed by Leland and released by Virgin Interactive in 1990 for DOS, but also publish...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Wasteland is the kind of game that quietly changed history while pretending to be just another post-apocalyptic RPG. Long before wastelands were fashionab...

Fairy Nights (2000) is a late-era fantasy title that leans heavily into charm rather than spectacle. Built for Windows XP, it feels like a cozy bedtime story turned into an interac...

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....

Released in 1988, BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception is part RPG, part strategy, part “did I just die in the tutorial again?” You’re a young MechWarrior on...

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...

Step into the polygonal shoes of Edward Carnby (or Emily Hartwood, if you're feeling bold) in Alone in the Dark, the grandfather of survival horror games. Released in 1992 for DOS,...

You’ve never really lived until you’ve watched a rook pick up a pawn and slam dunk it into the floor. Battle Chess (1988) turns the world’s most intellectual boar...

Ah, the late '90s: when cars exploded for no reason and acronyms made everything cooler. Axelerator: Have a N.I.C.E. day! is a 1997 Windows racer that asks, “What if racing w...

Mix one part turn-based strategy, one part fantasy novel, add a dash of dragon, and you get Age of Wonders (1999). This is the game where wizards rule, elves sulk in forests, and y...

Big Red Racing is what happens when you combine arcade mayhem with zero regard for realism and lots of British sarcasm. Drive everything from dump trucks to hovercrafts, insult you...

If your childhood involved model trains and elaborate setups that your cat kept destroying, 3D Ultra Lionel Traintown is digital therapy. Released in 2000 for Windows XP, it mixes ...

Magic Pockets is a platform game developed by The Bitmap Brothers and published by Renegade Software. It was released in 1991 for the Atari ST, Amiga, and MS-DOS platforms. In...

Elona looks innocent, almost cute, and then immediately proves it has no interest in your comfort. This roguelike RPG is bizarre, unpredictable, and gleefully cruel. You can become...

Borland Turbo Basic was a programming language developed by Borland, a software company that was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Turbo Basic was part of the Turbo series of progr...

Gruntz looks cute at first glance, like a game that might politely ask you to solve a few puzzles and then let you relax. It is lying. In Gruntz, you control small clay creatures t...