abandonware games sorted by popularity

Baldur's Gate a fantasy RPG set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe which is regarded as the RPG that brought new life in a dying genre in the late 90s. Baldur's Gate was d...

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...

Zeliard is a fantasy platformer/RPG hybrid that has all the trappings of a classic quest: a brave knight, an evil demon, a princess in distress, and an unreasonable number of bats....

Come one, come all, to the saddest circus ever pixelated. In Ballyhoo, you're stuck in a depressing carnival trying to solve a kidnapping while dealing with clowns, carnies, and th...

In Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, Sierra took the Wild West and decided it needed more jokes, more puns, and significantly more medical malpractice. Released in 1993, this po...

Mix one part turn-based strategy, one part fantasy novel, add a dash of dragon, and you get Age of Wonders (1999). This is the game where wizards rule, elves sulk in forests, and y...

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...

In Syndicate, you don’t just play the bad guy—you manage a full corporate evil empire, complete with mind-controlled agents in trench coats and a suspicious lack of HR ...

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...

Xenon 2000: Project PCF is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up video game and originally released in 2000. It is a sequel to the earlier game "Xenon 2: Megablast," which was develope...

Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain recreates the aerial combat of the Battle of Britain, giving players the chance to fly famous aircraft and participate in one of World War ...

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 lik...

Space Rogue is what happens when Elite and Ultima decide to have a baby… in space. You’re dumped into a universe of hostile aliens, smugglers, and zero-g dogfights, an...

Few adventure games manage to feel as effortlessly cool as Full Throttle. Released in 1995 by LucasArts, it places you in the boots of Ben, the gravel-voiced leader of the Polecats...

Tetris is the kind of game that looks harmless until you realize you’ve been staring at falling blocks for three hours straight. Released in 1987, this deceptively simple puzzle ...

In this 1990 point-and-click adventure, you find yourself in Las Vegas with no memory of how you got there. Solve puzzles, gather clues, and uncover the mystery behind your amnesia...

Blackthorne (1994) is what happens when a '90s action hero gets lost in a side-scrolling alien world and decides to shoot everything until it makes sense. You’re Kyle, a shot...

Lure of the Temptress (1992, DOS) is dark fantasy done right — with muddy streets, suspicious peasants, and a villainess who’s equal parts charm and cruelty. As Diermot...

By Ultima 3, the series had discovered the magic of party-based adventuring. No longer a lonely trek, now you command a ragtag group of heroes who bicker only in your imagination. ...

Wizardry 2: The Knight of Diamonds takes the classic dungeon crawl and adds a few extra twists, like more mazes to get lost in and puzzles designed to make you question your life c...

Welcome to the squared circle of wireframe pain. Released in 1991 for DOS, this game puts you in the gloves of a boxer rendered entirely out of jagged geometry. The animation was r...

Might and Magic: Swords of Xeen is something of a curious side chapter in the Xeen saga, originally created as a smaller adventure but still packed with the series’ trademark...

The Sentinel is one of those games that seems simple for about five minutes, right up until you realize the entire landscape is part of the puzzle. You control a Synthoid moving ac...

SimTower turns building management into a surprisingly addictive simulation in which players construct and operate a huge vertical complex. Instead of spreading a city across a map...

Released later in 1992, _Jill of the Jungle 3: Jill Saves the Prince_ completes the trilogy with another energetic platforming adventure. This time the story reverses traditional f...

After Dark brought a rather different idea of entertainment to the desktop: instead of asking the computer to work harder, why not let it sit there and look interesting? The softwa...

Ninja Rabbits is a 1992 platform game that takes the concept of the ninja and adds a rabbit, because apparently the genre had not yet reached its full potential for unusual protago...

Wing Commander: Privateer takes the universe of Wing Commander and opens the door considerably wider. Instead of following a strictly military career, you are free to explore space...

Virtual Reality Studio 2.0 builds on the idea of creating interactive three-dimensional environments, offering a more advanced version of the DOS development environment introduced...

From the mind of Michael Crichton comes Amazon, a game that lets you live out your jungle explorer fantasies—without the bugs or dysentery. You’re off to the Amazon to ...