abandonware games sorted by popularity

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is a role-playing video game that was first released in 1981. It's one of the pioneering titles in the dungeon-crawling genre and one ...

Flashback: The Quest for Identity feels like a playable sci-fi movie that misplaced its budget but kept its ambition. You wake up with amnesia, which is gaming shorthand for &ldquo...

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...

Alpha Waves is what happens when someone programs a 3D platformer using only triangles and pure imagination. You bounce. That’s it. You bounce through abstract levels that lo...

Supaplex is a deceptively simple puzzle game that takes the basic idea of moving objects around a maze and turns it into a surprisingly demanding exercise in planning. Inspired by ...

Half comic book, half arcade game, Batman: The Caped Crusader (1988) offers a delightfully weird aesthetic with its paneled visual style and pulp serial vibe. You’ll punch, p...

The Smurfs is a bright and cheerful platformer that brings the tiny blue heroes to life in a world full of mushrooms, forests, and cartoon danger. You run, jump, and bounce your wa...

Deluxe Paint, often abbreviated as DPaint, was a popular bitmap graphics editor and animation software package. It was developed by Electronic Arts (EA) and released in the mid-198...

Strip Poker 3 continues the long-running tradition of taking a perfectly respectable card game and giving it an entirely different reason to attract attention. The core gameplay is...

B.A.T. is a cyberpunk-themed adventure game released in 1989 by UBI Soft for various platforms, including Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and later the Commodore 64. It blends adventure, ...

Ah, the late '90s: when cars exploded for no reason and acronyms made everything cooler. Axelerator: Have a N.I.C.E. day! is a 1997 Windows racer that asks, “What if racing w...

Rags to Riches is a 1993 DOS business simulation built around the classic dream of starting with almost nothing and ending up with a fortune. Players must make financial decisions,...

Yes, Astrotit (1987) is really the name, and no, it’s not what you think — though it does feel like it was named by a bored teenager. This side-scrolling shooter puts y...

Transport Tycoon is a business simulation game that puts the player at the head of a transport company to compete against rival companies. The player can build stations, airports, ...

Released in 1989 for DOS, The Magic Candle is a classic RPG with more depth than a wizard’s library. You must keep a sacred candle burning to prevent evil from escaping &mdas...

Impulse Tracker was a popular music tracker software developed by Jeffrey Lim in the late 1990s. Impulse Tracker utilized a tracker-style user interface, which was common in t...

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...

Released in 1991, Lemmings introduced one of the most unforgettable puzzle concepts ever created. Players must guide an army of tiny green-haired creatures toward safety by assigni...

Alien Trilogy is a first-person shooter video game released in 1996 for various platforms, including the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS. Developed by Probe Entertainment and ...

Conan: The Cimmerian lets you brawl your way through the Hyborian Age like a shirtless rage machine with a sword and questionable dialogue. It’s got all the ingredients: dark...

Back in 1992, The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel set the bar for pixelated deduction. A famous actress is dead, and every gentleman in London seems...

Released in 1994, Lode Runner: The Legend Returns successfully modernizes the beloved classic without sacrificing the elegant puzzle design that made the original unforgettable. En...

This 1989 game is based on the animated movie where dogs die, go to heaven, then come back for revenge (sort of). The DOS adaptation? Well, it’s more like All Pixels Go Nowhe...

Rick Dangerous 2 continues the adventures of the fearless explorer with larger levels, new environments, and even more inventive ways to make the player regret moving too quickly. ...