abandonware games sorted by popularity

Theme Hospital takes the serious business of healthcare and turns it into one of the funniest management simulations ever made. Instead of simply treating ordinary illnesses, you r...

Tomb Raider introduced Lara Croft to a generation of players and combined third-person exploration, platforming, puzzle solving and gunplay into a remarkably atmospheric adventure....

Uncharted Waters invites you to sail the high seas in 1990, back when exploration meant patience, curiosity, and occasionally getting very lost. This isn’t a game that rushes you...

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...

Deluxe Paint, often abbreviated as DPaint, was a popular bitmap graphics editor and animation software package. It was developed by Electronic Arts (EA) and released in the mid-198...

There was a time when digitized sprites and surprisingly loud crowd noise felt like cutting-edge sports science, and FIFA Soccer 96 proudly lived in that moment. The big selling po...

Wall Street Raider is less a game about buying a nice office and more an uncompromising simulation of corporate warfare. Released in 1986, it puts you in the role of an ambitious i...

Fascination, released in 1991 for DOS, is a point-and-click adventure that clearly wanted to be edgy, mysterious, and just a little bit scandalous. Set in a neon-soaked future full...

Chuck Yeager's Air Combat is a combat flight simulation video game released in 1991 by Electronic Arts. The game is named after and endorsed by the real-life aviation legend, Chuck...

Ascendancy is the friendlier, trippier cousin of Master of Orion. It’s 4X strategy in space, with bizarre alien races, psychedelic menus, and a soundtrack that sounds like it...

Before Street Fighter became a cultural juggernaut, it was this humble 1988 DOS brawler where Ryu’s fists felt more like sluggish bricks than blazing fireballs. The controls ...

Warlords is a fantasy strategy game that turns the world into a massive board game of conquest. You command heroes, raise armies, capture cities, and summon mythical creatures in a...

Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness takes the series into a much darker setting, sending the hero to the ominous land of Mordavia. Released in 1993, the game blends role-playing...

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 ...

Italicized title: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. II: The Two Towers. Continuing the ambitious adaptation of Tolkien’s saga, this sequel expands both the scope a...

SimLife is a 1992 life simulation that allows players to create and manipulate ecosystems, experimenting with plants, animals, environments, genetics, and evolutionary development....

Super Solvers: Operation Neptune is an educational adventure that combines underwater exploration with lessons disguised as missions. Players take part in a submarine-themed journe...

Tyrian 2000 is what happens when a classic shoot ’em up decides to go all in and then some. Released in 1999, it delivers relentless action, an absurd variety of weapons, and mor...

Castle of the Winds is a fantasy roguelike role-playing game developed by SaadaSoft in the early 1990s. It was designed for Windows 3.x and is notable for being one of the earliest...

Nuclear War is an abandoned turn-based strategy game designed by Eric Hyman and Jon Van Caneghem. Nuclear War was developed and released by New World Computing in 1989 for Amiga an...

Released in 1994, Lode Runner: The Legend Returns successfully modernizes the beloved classic without sacrificing the elegant puzzle design that made the original unforgettable. En...

R-Type is a 1989 shoot 'em up that brings the relentless arcade action of the famous space shooter to DOS. Players pilot a small spacecraft through hostile environments packed with...

Explosions? Check. Missiles? Check. Graphics that look like someone spilled gray soup on your monitor? Double check. A-10 Tank Killer lets you pilot a flying war machine and rain c...

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...

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom arrived in 1989 with a simple objective: survive collapsing mines, hostile cultists, and endless hazards without losing your fedora. Based on t...

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...

Wizardry 4: The Return of Werdna flips the script by letting you play the villain, which is as delightful as it is diabolical. You control Werdna, an evil wizard with a knack for c...

The Amazon Trail is an educational adventure that sends you down the Amazon River with considerably less certainty about what you are doing than the title might suggest. Released i...

If Oil Barons is Monopoly with attitude, Oil Imperium is its slightly more serious cousin who read a business textbook once and won’t let you forget it. Released in 1989, thi...

Prince of Persia is a 1990 platform adventure that became famous for its realistic animation, challenging gameplay, and cinematic style. Players control a young hero attempting to ...