abandonware games sorted by popularity

Supremacy: Your Will Be Done is a grand strategy game with a suitably enormous ambition: conquer space, expand your empire, manage resources, and generally become the sort of inter...

Released in 1988, BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception is part RPG, part strategy, part “did I just die in the tutorial again?” You’re a young MechWarrior on...

Test Drive 3: The Passion takes the “driving simulator” label and adds just enough early-’90s flair to make you feel like a rebel with a V8. Forget endless racetr...

Think of Alter Ego: Female Version as life’s greatest hits - and a few of its flops - played out one decision at a time. From childhood tantrums to awkward teenage crushes an...

Lamborghini: American Challenge (1992) is what happens when arcade racing meets a poster-covered teenage bedroom. You race exotic cars across the U.S., earn money, upgrade vehicles...

Scorched Earth (1991) was the “mother of all games” long before Doom took the title. Two or more tanks face off on a randomly generated terrain, and your only mission i...

Impossible Mission 2 proves that espionage is mostly about jumping carefully and avoiding suspicious furniture. Released in 1988 for DOS, this sequel expands on the original's plat...

Master of Magic remains one of the finest fantasy strategy games ever created, blending empire building with spellcasting in a world where powerful wizards compete for absolute dom...

Gold of the Americas: The Conquest of the New World is a strategy game that invites you to rewrite history, usually by making the same mistakes but with more confidence. You manage...

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...

Before Half-Life, there was Chasm: The Rift, a game where time-traveling mutants explode into limbs and every room looks like it was decorated by a doom-metal band. A first-person ...

SimCity 3000 continues Maxis's famous city-building series with a larger, more detailed simulation and considerably more ways for a mayor to make questionable decisions. Players de...

What do you get when you mix Mad Max, Car Wars, and a fondness for vehicular homicide? You get Autoduel (1985, DOS), a top-down driving RPG where your car is your castle and your g...

Ah, 2400 A.D. A game where you can rebel against a robot police state… by slowly walking around in beige. Released in 1988, it’s what happens when you mix Orwellian dy...

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...

Microsoft Hearts is a digital adaptation of the classic trick-taking card game, and it became another famously distracting member of the Windows software family. The objective is s...

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar is one of the most influential and innovative role-playing games (RPGs) in video game history. Released in 1985 by Richard Garriott under the Origin ...

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...

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...

MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients is the sequel to MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy. It is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1991, developed by Par...

Elona looks innocent, almost cute, and then immediately proves it has no interest in your comfort. This roguelike RPG is bizarre, unpredictable, and gleefully cruel. You can become...

GW-BASIC (short for Gee Whiz BASIC) is a dialect of the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. It's one of the early implementations of BASIC and was included ...

Aces of the Pacific (1992, DOS) takes to the skies over WWII’s Pacific Theater, where you can dogfight in legendary aircraft and prove your piloting prowess — or spin i...

Few games capture the feeling of “the galaxy is huge and you are spectacularly insignificant” quite like Frontier: Elite 2. Released in 1993, this ambitious sequel thro...

Return to Castle Wolfenstein revives the classic Wolfenstein name with a modern first-person shooter built around secret laboratories, Nazi experiments, supernatural forces, and an...

Italy 1990 captures the football fever of the World Cup with arcade-style simplicity and competitive energy. Released during the tournament itself, it thrives on accessibility and ...

Wolfenstein 3D is one of the landmark first-person shooters, placing players behind the eyes of an Allied soldier fighting through Nazi strongholds packed with guards, dogs, secret...

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...

Fable (1996) is one of those DOS curiosities that feels like it was built late at night with equal parts ambition and caffeine. It presents itself as a fantasy role-playing experie...

Then there’s Martian Dreams, the Ultima game where you travel to Mars in the 19th century with none other than Sigmund Freud and Nikola Tesla. Yes, it’s as delightfully...