abandonware games sorted by popularity

Angel 3 is that kind of DOS game where you sit down thinking "I'll give it five minutes" and three hours later you're still trying to figure out what just happened. Released in 199...

Before the shades, the muscles, and the one-liners, Duke Nukem was just a guy in a 2D platformer trying to save the world from an evil scientist. It’s bright, fast, and glori...

You’ve never really lived until you’ve watched a rook pick up a pawn and slam dunk it into the floor. Battle Chess (1988) turns the world’s most intellectual boar...

Ever wanted to experience the grim, claustrophobic life of a WWII submarine captain without leaving your desk? Aces of the Deep (1994, DOS) delivers that dream in spades — to...

Sid Meier's Colonization is Civilization’s scrappy, historically charged cousin. You start with a tiny ship and a dream: exploit the New World before the other European power...

Gorillas, also known as "Gorillas.bas," is a turn-based artillery game that was included as a sample program with Microsoft QBasic, an IDE and interpreter for a variant of the...

If you ever wanted to play a point-and-click adventure where the protagonists have the combined IQ of a slice of cheese, Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity is your masterpie...

Gruntz looks cute at first glance, like a game that might politely ask you to solve a few puzzles and then let you relax. It is lying. In Gruntz, you control small clay creatures t...

If Barbie was mildly passive in her 1992 debut, Barbie Super Model (1993) puts her on the runway—literally. You’ll practice walking, dodging obstacles, and matching out...

If you’ve ever wondered what a caveman’s life was like—minus the boredom and constant risk of saber-tooth tiger attacks—Prehistorik has you covered. It&rsqu...

Fairy Nights (2000) is a late-era fantasy title that leans heavily into charm rather than spectacle. Built for Windows XP, it feels like a cozy bedtime story turned into an interac...

Escape from Hell asks the important question: what if escaping the underworld were less Dante and more sarcastic road trip? You descend into a demon-infested landscape armed with d...

Ultima 5 takes a darker turn. Lord British is missing, and his regent, Lord Blackthorn, has turned Britannia into a police state where virtues are enforced at sword-point. You know...

Strap into your Spitfire, because Aces Over Europe (1993, DOS) is here to show you that flying over 1940s Europe was as dangerous as it was polygonal. As a follow-up to Aces of the...

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, ...

In Cosmic Soldier: Psychic War, you’re not just fighting enemies—you’re reading their minds while doing it. This RPG mixes sci-fi exploration with telepathic abil...

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 monste...

A remake with ambition and tragedy, Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded promised to bring the king back in modern glory. It looked great, played smooth, and... was never officially released. W...

Alien Syndrome (1989) is a top-down shooter where you save hostages, shoot aliens, and scream internally because you’re always out of time. It’s frantic arcade action a...

Long before Minecraft let us build worlds, Adventure Construction Set handed you a digital Lego box and said, “Go nuts.” Want to make a dungeon full of orcs and ham san...

Nebulus, also known as Tower Toppler in some regions, is a classic video game released in the 1980s. It was developed by John M. Phillips and published by Hewson Consultants. The g...

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...

Commander Keen 1: Marooned on Mars is a platform video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software in 1990 as shareware for MS-DOS. The game follows the adv...

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 occasio...

Think Indiana Jones meets 90s daytime TV. Amazon: Guardians of Eden is a cinematic point-and-click adventure filled with jungles, conspiracies, and more hair gel than any explorer ...

Released in 1984, Hack is one of those games that quietly shaped an entire genre while pretending not to care if you understood it or not. This early roguelike doesn’t bother...