abandonware games sorted by popularity

SimCity (or SimCity Classic) is a popular city building simulation in which you, the mayor of a city, have to build a metropolis from the ground up. You can build police and fire d...

If Dizzy was an egg on an adventure, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk turns that concept up a notch with a proper fairytale plot. Released in 1993 for DOS, the game sees Dizzy set out...

The 1990 adaptation of Tim Burton’s Batman hit DOS screens with a moody mix of driving, platforming, and side-scrolling bat-beatdowns. Batman: The Movie swings between genres...

Atomix is a tile-based puzzle game released in 1990 by Thalion Software for platforms like Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64. The objective of Atomix is to assemble mo...

Released in 1990, Geisha is one of those games that makes you ask, “Who thought this was a good idea?” Part adventure, part fever dream, it’s filled with surreal ...

Billy’s babysitter has been abducted by aliens, and he’s not having it. Commander Keen 6: Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter! is the series at its most Saturday-morning-cartoon ...

Arctic Adventure is the sequel nobody asked for to Pharaoh's Tomb, except this time you’re freezing your butt off. As Nevada Smith (not a typo, it’s his real name), you...

The original Command & Conquer (1995, DOS) is the game that launched a thousand LAN parties. It’s gritty, fast-paced RTS warfare with full-motion video cutscenes so chees...

Forget Sonic. Forget Mario. Zool is a ninja from the Nth Dimension, which is apparently a place where hyperactive insects fight sentient sweets. Speed is the name of the game, and ...

The Smurfs is a bright and cheerful platformer that brings the tiny blue heroes to life in a world full of mushrooms, forests, and cartoon danger. You run, jump, and bounce your wa...

The classic bomb-defusing, platform-hopping, enemy-dodging chaos of Bomb Jack gets a fresh coat of pixels in this 2002 DOS remake. You’re still the tiny superhero hopping aro...

Alpha Waves is what happens when someone programs a 3D platformer using only triangles and pure imagination. You bounce. That’s it. You bounce through abstract levels that lo...

Test Drive is a racing game developed by Distinctive Software and released by Accolade in 1987 for multiple platforms, including DOS, Amiga, Apple II, Atari ST, and Commodore 64. I...

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...

Battle Arena Toshinden was the first game in the Toshinden series and was originally released for the Sony PlayStation in 1995 and later for DOS. Battle Arena Toshinden introd...

Alternate Reality: The City is a role-playing video game developed by Paradise Programming for various platforms including Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, and Commodore 64. It was released ...

Domino’s Pizza once had a mascot called the Noid and someone decided he deserved his own video game. Avoid the Noid is about a heroic pizza delivery guy trying to bring food ...

Few games deserve the title of “classic” more than Day of the Tentacle (1993). It’s Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman at their weirdest, giving us time travel, mutant...

Darklands is what happens when medieval Europe gets even darker than it already was. This 1992 RPG drops you into the Holy Roman Empire, but don’t expect knights in shining a...

Marble Madness is an abandoned isometric action game designed by Mark Cerny and originally published by Atari as a successful and iconic arcade game. It was later converted for man...

In 1996, Diablo descended onto PCs and basically defined the “click until everything dies” genre. The gothic town of Tristram sits atop a dungeon stuffed with demons, l...

F-14 Tomcat is the kind of flight simulator that makes you feel like you should be wearing aviator sunglasses and chewing gum while sitting at your desk. Released at the height of ...

Released in 1998 for Windows XP-era PCs, Fatal Relations is an interactive drama that leans heavily into adult themes, intrigue, and morally questionable choices. More visual novel...

Ugh! answers the eternal question: what if a stone-age delivery service were the basis for an entire video game? You play as a caveman whose main skills include grunting, flying a ...

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...

Phantasmagoria is a point-and-click horror adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line, released in 1995. Directed by Roberta Williams, Phantasmagoria departed from Si...