The best abandonware action games

If holiday cheer could be bottled into pixels, HappyLand Adventures: X-mas Edition would probably come with a candy cane aftertaste and a mild sugar rush. This cheerful platformer ...

Postman Pat 3 is a retro video game based on the popular British children's television series Postman Pat. Released in 1992 by Alternative Software, it was available for platforms ...

The Simpsons: Bart’s House of Weirdness is what happens when a platform game decides to take a holiday inside a surreal cartoon fever dream. You control Bart through two wild...

Evolution is an early experiment in simulating progress, and it wears its ambition proudly. The game attempts to model development and change over time, often in abstract ways that...

Ah yes, the golden age of video games: where catching babies yeeted from burning buildings was a fun pastime. In Bouncing Babies, you play as a heroic volunteer with a trampoline, ...

Elevator is one of those early arcade-style games that sounds boring on paper and becomes oddly stressful in practice. You’re navigating elevators, rescuing people, and avoid...

Crazy Nick’s Roger Wilco’s Spaced Out Games Pack hands the Space Quest janitor a stack of silly mini-games to keep him from accidentally saving the galaxy again. Expect...

Dangerous Streets is a fighting game that clearly wanted to be the next Street Fighter—and instead became a cult oddity. The character roster is bizarre, the animations oddly...

Rastan is Conan-the-Barbarian energy distilled into a side-scrolling adventure where your primary verb is “destroy.” The DOS port lacks a bit of arcade sparkle, but the...

Kroz returns, and with it, your CRT monitor’s worst nightmare: ASCII graphics! Return to Kroz takes you back to a time when @ meant “you,” and everything else was...

Dark, moody, and surprisingly mature, Manhattan Missions takes the Turtles into gritty territory. The city is under siege, Shredder’s back, and the atmosphere feels more Batm...

Released in the twilight of the ‘90s, Disney’s Tarzan brought jungle-swinging to Windows XP. The game is a lush side-scrolling adventure where vines, tree branches, and...

Pyramid Power (1986) is what happens when archaeology meets abstract strategy. You’re not dodging mummies or solving hieroglyph puzzles—instead, you’re stacking t...

Electroman is a cheerful little platformer with a big grin and zero interest in realism. You play as a cartoonish superhero zipping through levels full of gadgets, traps, and enemi...

Ulises is a mythological adventure that wears its classical inspiration proudly, even when the technology struggles to keep up. Drawing loosely from Homer’s Odyssey, the game...

Long before comic-book games became blockbuster spectacles, The Punisher (1990, DOS) delivered gritty vigilante action with a side of pixelated attitude. You step into Frank Castle...

Dangerous Dave: Dave Goes Nutz! is what happens when a platformer drinks too much coffee. The pace is frantic, the enemies relentless, and the levels filled with hazards that seem ...

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...

In Arcade Volleyball (1987), two pixelated figures smack a ball over a net with all the grace of caffeinated stick figures. It's simple, it's bizarre, and it somehow manages to be ...