abandonware games sorted by release date

If you’ve ever wondered what professional wrestling would look like if it were coded on a calculator from the 1980s, Tag Team Wrestling has your answer. Two beefy sprites&mda...

Welcome to Tass Times in Tonetown, where the ‘80s collided with science fiction and nobody cleaned up the mess. It’s a bizarre adventure full of punk hairdos, neon colo...

Tera: La Cité des Crânes is a moody adventure that leans heavily on atmosphere and mystery. The world feels strange and slightly unsettling, with puzzles that require patience an...

As a prisoner of war, you must find a way to escape a prison in Germany in 1942. The prisoner has a daily routine which will follow if not controlled by the player for a certain am...

A text adventure with just enough graphics to remind you what year it is, The Pawn (1986, DOS) wraps you in a fantasy world where the puzzles are clever and the parser occasionally...

WordStar 4 was a popular word processing software program during the early days of personal computing. WordStar 4 included features typical of word processors in that era, all...

Yacht Racing Simulator proves that even in the '80s, developers were brave enough to turn the thrilling world of rich people boating slowly into a video game. With graphics that co...

Time to hit the lanes in 10th Frame, a bowling simulator so committed to realism it even simulates the wait between turns. You line up your shot, set your spin, and pray the ancien...

Released in 1987, this is less of a simulator and more of a fever dream where you pilot a flying box over a grid pretending to be terrain. 3-D Helicopter Simulator was ambitious fo...

In ACE 2 (1987, DOS), you and a buddy can engage in split-screen dogfights so slow they make real air combat look like fast-forwarded ballet. The graphics are simple, but the charm...

Ace of Aces (1987, DOS) is a game where you pilot a WWII plane via a series of still-image panels that suggest action more than deliver it. It’s like a flipbook with ambition...

Acheton (1987, DOS) is one of those text adventures where the game cheerfully tries to kill you every five minutes — and does so with words. You're tossed into a sprawling, b...

Long before Minecraft let us build worlds, Adventure Construction Set handed you a digital Lego box and said, “Go nuts.” Want to make a dungeon full of orcs and ham san...

In Airball (1987), you don’t play a knight, a space marine, or a plumber - you play a literal ball of air. Trapped in an isometric nightmare of spikes, fans, and poison gas, ...

Aldo’s Adventure is what you get when someone squints at Donkey Kong and decides to remake it after four cups of coffee and a long nap. You play Aldo, a brave little guy whos...

Remember ALF? The sarcastic alien who really had it in for cats? Well, in ALF: The First Adventure, you get to live the dream—or nightmare—of controlling the furry mena...