abandonware games sorted by popularity

Rodent's Revenge is a 1991 Windows 3.x puzzle game that turns the humble mouse into an unlikely arcade hero. Players control a small rodent navigating a maze while attempting to co...

The Temple of Apshai Trilogy is a series of classic role-playing games developed by Automated Simulations (later known as Epyx) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These games were ...

Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance is an adventure game released in 1991, developed by Steve Meretzky and published by Legend Entertainment. It’s the second installme...

Rise of the Robots is a 1994 fighting game built around the idea of heavily armed machines battling through a futuristic industrial world. Players control a combat robot and face i...

When Bungie released Marathon, it offered far more than fast shooting by combining exciting combat with an unusually deep science fiction narrative delivered through computer termi...

Turbo Assembler and Tools 5.0, often referred to as TASM, is an x86 assembler for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. As a key component of Borland's suite of development tools...

Ultima 5 takes a darker turn. Lord British is missing, and his regent, Lord Blackthorn, has turned Britannia into a police state where virtues are enforced at sword-point. You know...

Alien Legacy (1994) is like SimCity crashed into Star Trek and nobody called the insurance company. It’s a real-time strategy/simulation game that has you managing a colony i...

Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf (1994) gives you one helicopter, a desert full of angry enemies, and more explosions than a summer blockbuster. It’s part shooter, part reso...

SimCopter is a 1996 simulation that combines helicopter flying with the familiar city-building world of SimCity. Players pilot a helicopter through cities, responding to emergencie...

Dive, dive! This 1989 DOS simulator puts you in control of a nuclear submarine, though most of the action involves pushing buttons and waiting very patiently. Think of it as the &l...

Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 1995 as a sequel to the original Gabriel Knight...

Blade of Destiny is old-school RPGing at its most unapologetic. Based on the German tabletop system Das Schwarze Auge, it throws you into a world where character creation alone fee...

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...

In 1989, Sex Vixens from Space mixed adventure gameplay with tongue-in-cheek humor and science-fiction themes. Rather than aiming for seriousness, it embraced campy situations and ...

X-Men: The Official Game expands on the X-Men movie universe with a mixture of action and superhero abilities. Players take control of several familiar characters, each offering a ...

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...

Home Alone attempts to capture the chaotic charm of the film, placing you in the shoes of a child defending a house with questionable safety standards. Released in 1991, it mixes s...

Think of Alter Ego: Female Version as life’s greatest hits - and a few of its flops - played out one decision at a time. From childhood tantrums to awkward teenage crushes an...

Microsoft Word represents one of the most important steps in the transformation of the personal computer into an everyday writing machine. Early versions were a far cry from the en...

The Black Cauldron brings Disney's animated fantasy world to the computer in the form of an adventure game. Released in 1986, it follows the story and characters of the film while ...

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is a classic role-playing game developed by Troika Games and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 2001 for Microsoft Windows. T...

If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to run a railway empire without getting coal dust all over your clothes, Railroad Tycoon is the place to start. This 1990 classic h...

Night Shift is a 1990 action game with a wonderfully unusual premise: instead of saving the world, the player is busy working a night shift. Naturally, this is not an ordinary job,...

Part strategy, part slapstick cartoon, North and South makes the American Civil War look like a Saturday morning show. You juggle troop movements, train robberies, and spontaneous ...

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...

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 ...

American McGee's Alice takes Lewis Carroll's Wonderland and gives it a decidedly darker makeover. Alice is no longer simply wandering through a whimsical fantasy populated by eccen...

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993) is a classic first-person RPG that understands pacing better than many of its peers. It offers a rich fantasy world, memorable characters,...

Dr. Sbaitso is one of the more memorable curiosities from the early era of computer speech software. Developed by Creative Labs, it presented itself as a virtual doctor capable of ...