abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

Karadoc’s back, and apparently inflation hit the dungeon economy hard—he wants his gold! Cadaver: The Payoff is less a sequel and more a direct continuation, like findi...

Micro Machines 2: Turbo Tournament expands the miniature racing formula with more vehicles, more tracks, and a host of new ways to turn tiny cars into surprisingly serious competit...

Moraff's World offers a colorful fantasy role-playing adventure where players explore a large world, battle monsters, gather treasure, and gradually develop a powerful character. T...

By 1989, SSI doubled down with Vol. 2, offering more battles, more maps, and the same demanding mechanics. If you enjoyed the first, you’ll feel right at home; if you didn&rs...

Fade to Black (1995) aims high and mostly lands on its feet, delivering a cinematic science-fiction adventure that feels ambitious even today. As a sequel to Flashback, it keeps th...

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...

7 Colors is one of those puzzle games that sounds simple on paper but ends up consuming your entire afternoon before you even realize it. Released in 1991 for DOS, it throws you in...

Microsoft Word represents one of the most important steps in the transformation of the personal computer into an everyday writing machine. Early versions were a far cry from the en...

When Links: The Challenge of Golf appeared in 1990, it immediately set new standards for realistic golf simulations. Beautifully designed courses, convincing physics, and carefully...

F-14 Tomcat is the kind of flight simulator that makes you feel like you should be wearing aviator sunglasses and chewing gum while sitting at your desk. Released at the height of ...

Long before “quiet quitting” became a buzzword, Dilbert’s Desktop Games captured the soul-crushing absurdity of office life. Released for Windows XP in 1997, this...

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...

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...

Beneath a Steel Sky is a classic point-and-click adventure game released in 1994, developed by Revolution Software. Set in a dystopian, cyberpunk future, the game is renowned for i...

Aldo’s Adventure is what you get when someone squints at Donkey Kong and decides to remake it after four cups of coffee and a long nap. You play Aldo, a brave little guy whos...

Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures is a charmingly odd experiment that shrinks globe-trotting archaeology into bite-sized missions designed for quick play sessions. Viewed fr...

Alien Attack wastes little time explaining that Earth is having a very bad day. The premise is exactly the sort of thing science-fiction games love: hostile aliens have arrived, an...

Inca 2: Wiracocha doubles down on everything its predecessor attempted, for better and occasionally for worse. The sequel streamlines some mechanics while expanding the universe, l...

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...

Scorched Earth (1991) was the “mother of all games” long before Doom took the title. Two or more tanks face off on a randomly generated terrain, and your only mission i...

Released in 1992, Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 abandons pure text in favor of colorful point-and-click adventure gameplay while preserving the outrageous humor that made its prede...

Released in 1988, BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception is part RPG, part strategy, part “did I just die in the tutorial again?” You’re a young MechWarrior on...

Strip Poker 2 takes the familiar poker format and adds the particular incentive suggested by its title. Beneath the novelty, however, there is still a straightforward card game bas...

Frogger needs very little introduction, yet it still deserves respect. Originally released in 1983, this deceptively simple game asks you to guide a frog across busy roads and trea...

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...

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...

If Oil Barons is Monopoly with attitude, Oil Imperium is its slightly more serious cousin who read a business textbook once and won’t let you forget it. Released in 1989, thi...

Templars, assassins, and a clueless American tourist named George. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a 2D point-and-click masterpiece with more intrigue than a Vatican ba...

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...