abandonware games sorted by popularity

Home Alone attempts to capture the chaotic charm of the film, placing you in the shoes of a child defending a house with questionable safety standards. Released in 1991, it mixes s...

Released in 1990, Day of the Viper is a first-person shooter before shooters really found their footing. Imagine a blend of Doom and a bargain-bin puzzle game, but with robots. You...

The adventures of Willy Beamish is a point-and-click adventure that perfectly captures the chaos of being a kid with too much imagination and not enough discipline. Willy is consta...

A Personal Nightmare (1989) blends horror and detective work into one spooky little cocktail of 1980s DOS game design. You return to your hometown to find it overrun by demonic pos...

Mutants! Explosions! Green slime! Bio Menace kicks off with Dr. Mangle’s Lab, a side-scrolling blast of carnage where you, Snake Logan (yes, really), shoot your way through a...

Dungeon Keeper 3: War for the Overworld is the ghost of a game that never was. Announced, teased, and then buried alive by shifting studio priorities, it exists only in the fever d...

When H.R. Giger is involved, you know things will get weird. Dark Seed (1992) is a point-and-click horror adventure where you play Mike Dawson, a man haunted by nightmarish visions...

Steel Panthers is the first game in the Steel Panthers series. It was released in 1995 by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI). This initial release laid the foundation for the series...

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...

Released in 2001 for PC, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is what happens when someone looks at Age of Empires II and says, “This is good, but what if there were AT-ATs stom...

Emmanuelle: A Game of Eroticism is less about eroticism and more about awkward curiosity. Released in 1989, it’s a slow, text-heavy experience filled with suggestion, innuend...

Night Shift is a 1990 action game with a wonderfully unusual premise: instead of saving the world, the player is busy working a night shift. Naturally, this is not an ordinary job,...

Heart of China is an adventure game that leans heavily into storytelling, weaving a tale of intrigue and danger across exotic locations. The narrative is its strongest asset, pulli...

In Search of Dr. Riptide from 1994 is a science-fiction adventure with enough eccentricity to fill several galaxies. Players investigate mysteries, solve puzzles, and generally que...

In The Tyrants of Thaine, the graphics get a modest upgrade, but the soul remains pure: this is RPG comfort food. You’re once again cast as the world's most overworked advent...

Interstate '76 is what happens when vehicular combat, 1970s funk, and action-movie swagger collide magnificently. Released in 1997, it combines stylish storytelling with explosive ...

Indianapolis 500 in 1989 was one of the earliest racing simulators to take itself very seriously, and that seriousness paid off. Rather than arcade thrills, it focused on realism, ...

Supremacy: You Will Be Done (also known simply as Overlord) is a rare example of mix between real-time strategy and science fiction themed 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploid, eXterm...

Take American football, remove the rules, add swords and fireballs, and throw in some screaming. That is Brutal Sports Football. This is not about touchdowns. This is about surviva...

Frogger needs very little introduction, yet it still deserves respect. Originally released in 1983, this deceptively simple game asks you to guide a frog across busy roads and trea...

Stunt Car Racer is an abandoned first-person 3D perspective racing game designed by Geoffrey J. Crammond, developed and released by Microstyle in 1989 for DOS and many other platfo...

If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a 19th-century merchant sailing the high seas with a suspiciously optimistic outlook on international trade, 1869 is your jam. It throws yo...

If spreadsheets are your love language, Capitalism 2 is pure romance. This brutally detailed simulation lets you create your own corporate empire from scratch—manufacturing, ...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Wasteland is the kind of game that quietly changed history while pretending to be just another post-apocalyptic RPG. Long before wastelands were fashionab...