abandonware games sorted by popularity

Domino’s Pizza once had a mascot called the Noid and someone decided he deserved his own video game. Avoid the Noid is about a heroic pizza delivery guy trying to bring food ...

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...

Ghosts 'n Goblins is an iconic arcade game developed by Capcom, first released in 1985. It’s widely remembered for its challenging gameplay and its distinct horror-fantasy ae...

The Ancient Art of War is a classic video game that was released in the late 1980s. Developed by Evryware and published by Broderbund, it was available on various platforms, includ...

Before Donald Duck’s Playground, most kids were told video games were a waste of time. Here, Donald proves otherwise by turning menial labor into an epic adventure. Want to s...

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 p...

Empire: Wargame of the Century feels like a military textbook that accidentally became entertaining. Spanning centuries of warfare, it combines grand strategy with a surprisingly a...

Times of Lore is an abandoned action RPG designed by Chris Roberts, developed and released by Origin Systems in 1989 for DOS and many more 8 bit and 16 bit platforms. Compared to U...

Chuck Yeager's Air Combat is a combat flight simulation video game released in 1991 by Electronic Arts. The game is named after and endorsed by the real-life aviation legend, Chuck...

Few games deserve the title of “classic” more than Day of the Tentacle (1993). It’s Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman at their weirdest, giving us time travel, mutant...

Time travel is confusing enough, but Lost in Time (1993, DOS) makes it gloriously absurd. You wake up in a ship’s hold in the 19th century, trying to figure out how you got t...

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...

Rogue is one of the first RPGs in the history of video gaming. It's a text-based dungeon crawler in which you have to fight your way in the dungeon to recover the Amulet of Yendor....

Doh is back, and he’s mad - presumably because no one understood what he was in the first place. Arkanoid 2 takes the original formula and dials everything up: more levels, m...

Fairy Tale Adventure 2: Halls of the Dead (1997) continues its predecessor’s tradition of sprawling fantasy exploration with a darker, more dangerous edge. Available on DOS a...

Released in 1995, Psycho Pinball is what happens when traditional pinball eats too much sugar and loses its mind. It’s loud, colorful, and gleefully unhinged, with four disti...

Ah, B.A.T. 2, the cyberpunk sequel that decided the future needed more trench coats, tech jargon, and inexplicably confusing interfaces. Released in 1992 for DOS, this game throws ...

Don’t let the clown fool you—Krusty’s Super Funhouse (1993, DOS) is more puzzle torture chamber than funhouse. You guide Krusty as he exterminates waves of rats u...

Imagine Cheers met Quantum Leap and got weirdly philosophical. That’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, a narrative adventure based on Spider Robinson’s sci-fi stories...

Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is a turn-based strategy video game set in the Star Trek universe. The game was developed by MicroProse Software and published by Infogrames for ...