abandonware games sorted by popularity

Before Worms made artillery games cute, Bang! Bang! let you and a friend lob cartoonish shells at each other using nothing but angles, wind speed, and pure spite. It's a math lesso...

Take the tactical seriousness of Championship Manager and sprinkle on some espresso. Championship Manager Italia gives you control over Italy’s finest (and most temperamental...

After the success of Ultima 6: The False Prophet, Origin decided to "create worlds" not part of the popular Ultima series (strictly speaking) using the same engine of Ultima 6. The...

Released in 1989, Ghostbusters 2 gives you another shot at wrangling ectoplasm with the world’s most overqualified exterminators. Inspired by the movie sequel, it’s equ...

Stunt Car Racer is an abandoned first-person 3D perspective racing game designed by Geoffrey J. Crammond, developed and released by Microstyle in 1989 for DOS and many other platfo...

In Montezuma’s Revenge (1984), you play Panama Joe, an explorer who spends more time falling into pits than actually raiding temples. This early platformer is all about timin...

ADOM is what happens when a rogue, a wizard, and a hungry troll walk into a dungeon and never come out. Released in 1996, this roguelike classic is brutal, brilliant, and unapologe...

Laura Bow 2: The Dagger of Amon Ra is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1992. The game is a sequel to The Colonel's Bequest and follows ...

Let’s be honest—Centerfold Squares (1988) is what happened when someone asked, “What if Qix but hornier?” You draw squares to reveal pixelated images of... ...

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...

Released in 1989 for DOS, Baal is what happens when demons invade and the only thing standing between Earth and eternal damnation is a guy with a really big gun and absolutely no c...

SimEarth is a simulation in which you can shape and mold a planet in almost every way you can imagine. In SimEarth our planet is simulated as a whole: life, climate, atmosphere are...

Dangerous Dave is the kind of platformer that defined the early ’90s shareware scene: simple, fast, and just tricky enough to make you shout at your monitor. You guide Dave t...

Dreamweb (1994) went full dark cyberpunk, and it didn’t pull its punches. You play Ryan, a man convinced he’s on a mission from mysterious forces to kill seven people w...

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...

King’s Bounty is a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements, originally released in 1990 by New World Computing. It was created by Jon Van Caneghem, also known for the Migh...

Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail! is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It is the sixth installment in the Leisure Suit Larry series and was rel...

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...

Star Goose is a classic video game developed by Logotron and released in 1988 for various home computer systems of that era, including the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and Amstra...