abandonware games sorted by popularity

NASCAR Racing is a 1994 racing simulation that takes the world of stock-car racing seriously enough to make players appreciate just how much can go wrong while driving in a circle....

Rampart is what happens when someone mashes Tetris, tower defense, and medieval warfare into a single frantic loop. You rebuild crumbling castle walls using oddly shaped bricks, th...

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...

MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1990. The Zhodani Conspiracy is the first installment in the MegaTraveller ser...

Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe is a 1991 DOS flight combat simulation from Lucasfilm Games that combines arcade-style flying with strategic management during an alternate-history ...

Skale Tracker is a music tracker designed for composing and arranging electronic music on a computer, continuing a tradition that began with classic tracker software on Amiga and D...

Released in 1991, Logical proves that moving colored spheres through intricate puzzle layouts can become surprisingly addictive. Every stage challenges players to think carefully a...

In Color Lines (1992, DOS), colors aren’t just pretty—they're plotting your demise. You match five or more balls in a row before your screen becomes a chaotic rainbow p...

Ever wanted to manage a kingdom, lead armies, go dungeon-crawling, and attend budget meetings? Birthright: The Gorgon’s Alliance makes all your fantasy micromanagement dreams...

The Amazon Trail is an educational adventure that sends you down the Amazon River with considerably less certainty about what you are doing than the title might suggest. Released i...

Fast Tracker 2 is one of the defining music-tracking programs of the DOS era and a major piece of computer-music history. Rather than behaving like a traditional recording studio, ...

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...

The Humans is a puzzle game built around a charmingly simple idea: you control a group of tiny prehistoric people and must help them reach safety by making use of their different a...

The ninja ant is back—and this time, he brought a friend. Zool 2 doubles down on the sugar-fueled mayhem of the first game with more levels, more enemies, and even more inexp...

WitchavenRL takes the fantasy combat of Witchaven and gives it a modern roguelike treatment, creating an experience where exploration and fighting are mixed with unpredictable enco...

Alien Legacy (1994) is like SimCity crashed into Star Trek and nobody called the insurance company. It’s a real-time strategy/simulation game that has you managing a colony 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...

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 expands the theme-park management formula with more attractions, construction options, scenarios, and creative possibilities. Players design elaborate amusem...

Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? turns American geography into a detective game, sending you from state to state while tracking down Carmen and her gang. Each investigation dep...

ARJ is a file compression utility and file format created by Robert K. Jung. The name "ARJ" stands for "Archived by Robert Jung." It was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s a...

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...

Comix Zone (1995, Windows XP) is what happens when a comic book artist gets pulled into his own creation and reacts by roundhouse-kicking everything in sight. Stylized to the max, ...

Midtown Madness turns the streets of Chicago into one enormous playground for chaotic driving, where racing is only one of several excellent excuses to ignore traffic laws. Players...

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...

Jetpack is a classic 2D platformer video game developed by Adept Software and released for MS-DOS computers in 1993. Created by Adam Pedersen, it became popular for its addictive g...

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 a...

Tomb Raider introduced Lara Croft to a generation of players and combined third-person exploration, platforming, puzzle solving and gunplay into a remarkably atmospheric adventure....

Altered Beast is a classic side-scrolling beat 'em up arcade game developed and published by Sega. It was originally released in arcades in 1988 and later ported to various home co...

BloodRayne combines third-person action, supernatural horror and a heroine who is considerably better equipped for monster hunting than most people. Rayne, a dhampir working as an ...

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom arrived in 1989 with a simple objective: survive collapsing mines, hostile cultists, and endless hazards without losing your fedora. Based on t...