abandonware games sorted by popularity

Before there was Baldur’s Gate or Skyrim, there was DND. This 1984 DOS dungeon crawler is as old-school as it gets, complete with ASCII graphics, endless hallways, and monsters that live entirely in your imagination. The gam...

The Perfect General is a turn-based strategy military game developed by White Wolf Productions and released in 1991 by Quantun Quality Production. The Perfect General gameplay is quite simple compared to other wargames, but it's b...

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is a classic role-playing game developed by Troika Games and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 2001 for Microsoft Windows. The game is set in a unique steampunk fantasy world...

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 armor—expect alchemy, witch trials, and demon...

The final Championship Manager to grace DOS—and what a send-off. Season 97/98 is the fan-favorite for a reason: every transfer, every injury, every last-minute goal feels like a dramatic novel you wrote with a keyboard. Slic...

It’s Pac-Man, but with sunglasses. CD-Man v2.0 (1992) is a slick, souped-up clone that trades in yellow cheese for 90s attitude. Maze-chomping, ghost-dodging, and the occasional new gimmick keep this version surprisingly fre...

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 in 1985. In Alternate Reality: The City, play...

Before Pixar made you cry with a lamp and a toy cowboy, there was 3D Studio 3 on DOS. Released in 1993, this was the go-to tool for aspiring animators who didn’t mind waiting three hours to render a spinning cube. It came wi...

In 1987, Driller arrived as a revolutionary 3D game that looked light-years ahead of its time. Using the Freescape engine, it let players explore a fully 3D world—on a DOS machine, no less. The premise: drill into a planet&r...

If you ever wanted to run a football club without leaving your chair, The Manager (1991, DOS) delivers. This early management sim lets you buy players, balance budgets, and suffer endless heartbreak when your team loses despite pe...

Halloween Harry is a DOS science fiction multi-directional scroller shooter game. Halloween Harry - later renamed Alien Carnage - was published by Apogee, developed by Interactive Binary Illusions and designed by John Passfield an...

The Neuromancer video game, released in 1988 by Interplay Productions, is an adventure/role-playing game loosely based on William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer (1984). It combines elements of science fiction, hackin...

ZZT (1991, DOS) looks like it was drawn by an enthusiastic ASCII artist with too much time and not enough colors. And yet, it’s brilliant. Part action game, part puzzle adventure, part game creation tool, ZZT is the reason s...

In Lucky Luke (1997, Windows), the fastest gun in the West is also the funniest. Based on the beloved Belgian comic, the game mixes platforming and slapstick as Luke outsmarts bandits, rescues Dalton brothers (again), and proves t...

Frontier: Elite II is a classic space simulation and trading game released in 1993, developed by David Braben and his company Frontier Developments. Frontier is the sequel to the pioneering 1984 game Elite and is often considered ...

Released in 1992, Barbie for DOS is what happens when someone asks, “What if pink could be a video game?” You play as Barbie on a quest to collect accessories and win Ken's affection, which probably says more about ear...

Transport Tycoon is a business simulation game that puts the player at the head of a transport company to compete against rival companies. The player can build stations, airports, railroads to transport passengers, mail and variou...

Big Red Racing is what happens when you combine arcade mayhem with zero regard for realism and lots of British sarcasm. Drive everything from dump trucks to hovercrafts, insult your friends, and laugh your way to the finish line. ...