abandonware games sorted by popularity

Elona looks innocent, almost cute, and then immediately proves it has no interest in your comfort. This roguelike RPG is bizarre, unpredictable, and gleefully cruel. You can become...

Based on the legendary Argentine comic, L'Eternauta: Gli Invasori della Città Eterna (1994) is bleak, atmospheric, and proudly uninterested in holding your hand. Set in a sn...

SimCity (or SimCity Classic) is a popular city building simulation in which you, the mayor of a city, have to build a metropolis from the ground up. You can build police and fire d...

Dark Ages Volume III: Dungeons of Doom closes out the trilogy with—you guessed it—more doom, dungeons, and ways to fall off platforms you swear you landed on. The serie...

Take American football, remove the rules, add swords and fireballs, and throw in some screaming. That is Brutal Sports Football. This is not about touchdowns. This is about surviva...

Forget Freddy’s razor glove for a second - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1989) for DOS is terrifying in its own way. Mostly because of the controls. You play as a teen trying to...

Grandmaster Chess is not here to hold your hand, compliment your moves, or pretend that losing is part of the fun. In Grandmaster Chess, you are up against a computer that takes it...

Before co-op brawlers were everywhere, there was Double Dragon (1988 on DOS). Two brothers, one kidnapped girlfriend, and enough street thugs to populate a small city—that&rs...

Aaargh (1988) is exactly what you’ll scream as your giant monster stomps through cities with all the grace of a drunk kaiju. On DOS, this arcade-ish game lets you smash stuff...

Times of Lore is an abandoned action RPG designed by Chris Roberts, developed and released by Origin Systems in 1989 for DOS and many more 8 bit and 16 bit platforms. Compared to U...

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, ...

The 1990 adaptation of Tim Burton’s Batman hit DOS screens with a moody mix of driving, platforming, and side-scrolling bat-beatdowns. Batman: The Movie swings between genres...

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...

Dungeon Keeper 3: War for the Overworld is the ghost of a game that never was. Announced, teased, and then buried alive by shifting studio priorities, it exists only in the fever d...

Take Eddie Murphy’s swagger, remove the charm, add some DOS chiptunes, and you get Beverly Hills Cop—a game adaptation that asks: “What if being a wisecracking de...

Great Naval Battles vol. 5: Demise of the Dreadnoughts takes you back even further, exploring naval warfare at a time when technology and tactics were evolving rapidly. In Great Na...

Free Enterprise from 1996 is business simulation with a distinctly ’90s sense of ambition. You’re tasked with building and managing a corporate empire, juggling finance...

Empire Earth asks a bold question: what if we took all of human history and turned it into one very long real-time strategy match? From cavemen to mech-wielding future armies, this...

Imagine Cheers met Quantum Leap and got weirdly philosophical. That’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, a narrative adventure based on Spider Robinson’s sci-fi stories...

Police Quest 3: The Kindred is an adventure video game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1991. It is the third installment in the Police Quest series, which was designed...

If you like your point-and-click adventures served with a side of absurd British humor, Discworld (1995, DOS) is a feast. Based on Terry Pratchett’s beloved universe, the gam...

Released in 1984, Jumpman is a classic platform game that challenges players to navigate construction sites packed with hazards, ladders, and carefully placed obstacles. The object...

Released in 1992, Sextris answered a question nobody had urgently asked by combining puzzle mechanics with cheeky adult themes. Beneath the eyebrow-raising presentation lay a surpr...

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...

Thief: The Dark Project is a first-person stealth video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. Released in 1998, it is considered a groundbreak...

If you ever wondered what driving a luxury sports car felt like in the late 80s, Test Drive delivers that fantasy with all the pixelated swagger you could ask for. This pioneering ...