abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

AutoCAD 2.5 represents an important stage in the development of computer-aided design software, arriving when personal computers were beginning to become genuinely useful for techn...

Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire takes the Ultima formula somewhere considerably less medieval, sending the player into a lost jungle world filled with dinosaurs, strange cultur...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

By the time Premier Manager 3 rolled around, the series had cemented its reputation as the thinking fan’s football fix. Released in 1994, it refined the formula once again, o...

Turbo Pascal 7 (TP7) is a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was developed by Borland as an ev...

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...

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...

Double Dragon II: The Revenge (1988) takes everything that made the first game fun and cranks it up a notch. The story begins with tragedy—Marian, the damsel from the first g...

Ever wanted to manage a kingdom, lead armies, go dungeon-crawling, and attend budget meetings? Birthright: The Gorgon’s Alliance makes all your fantasy micromanagement dreams...

Hired Guns is what happens when someone looks at a dungeon crawler and thinks, “Yes, but what if it were louder, messier, and slightly unhinged?” Released in 1993, this squad-b...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

Interstate '76 is what happens when vehicular combat, 1970s funk, and action-movie swagger collide magnificently. Released in 1997, it combines stylish storytelling with explosive ...

Empire: Wargame of the Century feels like a military textbook that accidentally became entertaining. Spanning centuries of warfare, it combines grand strategy with a surprisingly a...

Before Football Manager made spreadsheets cool, there was Bundesliga Manager Professional, a game where managing a German football team involved more math than actual football. You...

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,...

When Links: The Challenge of Golf appeared in 1990, it immediately set new standards for realistic golf simulations. Beautifully designed courses, convincing physics, and carefully...

By 1989, SSI doubled down with Vol. 2, offering more battles, more maps, and the same demanding mechanics. If you enjoyed the first, you’ll feel right at home; if you didn&rs...

The Aethra Chronicles is a fantasy RPG that leans heavily into its world-building, offering players a rich setting filled with lore, quests, and plenty of opportunities to get lost...

ADOM is what happens when a rogue, a wizard, and a hungry troll walk into a dungeon and never come out. Released in 1996, this roguelike classic is brutal, brilliant, and unapologe...

When Fallout landed in 1997, it didn’t just introduce a new RPG, it redefined what post-apocalyptic storytelling could feel like. Set in a retro-futuristic wasteland dripping...

In 1989, Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals expanded the series by allowing players to control both Larry and the capable Passionate Patti...

World Class Leader Board is a classic golf simulation that takes a fairly serious approach to the ancient art of hitting a tiny ball into a distant hole. Rather than turning golf i...

First Samurai is a classic action-platformer game originally released in 1991. The game was initially available on the Amiga and Atari ST, with later ports to the Commodore 64, DOS...