abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Ancient Art of War is one of those games whose title sounds as though it should be carved into a stone tablet, and its ambition certainly matches the name. Released in 1984, it...

The Bard's Tale 2: The Destiny Knight expands the original formula with a larger world, tougher enemies, new locations, and another opportunity to discover that adventuring is most...

NetHack is one of the great survivors of computer gaming, a 1987 roguelike that has been challenging players for decades with randomly generated dungeons, brutal enemies, complex s...

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...

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...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a famously peculiar interactive fiction adventure based on Douglas Adams's equally peculiar science-fiction comedy. Playing it is less about...

Before Doomguy started ripping and tearing, there was Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. A stealth game where sneaking is mandatory, disguises are fashionable, and stabbing Nazis is encour...

Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness takes the series into a much darker setting, sending the hero to the ominous land of Mordavia. Released in 1993, the game blends role-playing...

Flight of the Amazon Queen is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Interactive Binary Illusions and originally released in 1995. The game is heavily inspired by the likes ...

1893: A World's Fair Mystery is an interactive fiction game developed by the American studio Illuminated Lantern and released in 2002. Set during the Chicago World's Columbian Expo...

Qix is a 1989 arcade-style puzzle game built around the strangely satisfying task of claiming territory while avoiding a dangerous moving shape. Players guide a marker across the s...

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...

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...

Forget Sonic. Forget Mario. Zool is a ninja from the Nth Dimension, which is apparently a place where hyperactive insects fight sentient sweets. Speed is the name of the game, and ...

Before he became better known as Alien Carnage, Halloween Harry blasted onto DOS PCs in 1993 with fast action, crude humor, and zero interest in subtlety. You play Harry, armed to ...

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...

If you ever wanted to play a video game that doubles as a philosophical think piece, A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985) is your ride. Released for DOS and Macintosh, this is one of Inf...

Indianapolis 500 in 1989 was one of the earliest racing simulators to take itself very seriously, and that seriousness paid off. Rather than arcade thrills, it focused on realism, ...

If your childhood involved model trains and elaborate setups that your cat kept destroying, 3D Ultra Lionel Traintown is digital therapy. Released in 2000 for Windows XP, it mixes ...

Fable (1996) is one of those DOS curiosities that feels like it was built late at night with equal parts ambition and caffeine. It presents itself as a fantasy role-playing experie...

Before Street Fighter became a cultural juggernaut, it was this humble 1988 DOS brawler where Ryu’s fists felt more like sluggish bricks than blazing fireballs. The controls ...

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...

Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol is a deep dungeon-crawling role-playing game designed for players who enjoy building powerful characters one dangerous expedition at a time. The under...

Before immersive sims were a buzzword, there was Ultima Underworld. Dropping you into a massive first-person dungeon, it gave players freedom unthinkable at the time. Want to negot...

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...

Frederik Pohl’s Gateway is science fiction that doesn’t hold your hand—or particularly care if you survive. Based on Pohl’s novel, this 1992 adventure drops...

The Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America in Dr. Doom's Revenge! is a crossover that feels like a comic book come to life, complete with iconic heroes and a villain who clearly en...

MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients is the sequel to MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy. It is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1991, developed by Par...

If Street Rod was a rockabilly rebel, Street Rod 2 (1991, DOS) is its cooler, leather-jacket-wearing cousin. Everything’s bigger, badder, and more polished. The cars roar wit...

There was a time when digitized sprites and surprisingly loud crowd noise felt like cutting-edge sports science, and FIFA Soccer 96 proudly lived in that moment. The big selling po...