abandonware games sorted by popularity

SimCity 3000 is a city-building simulation game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in 1999 as the third major installment in the SimCity series, f...

Tank controls + polar bears + Cold War vibes = Arctic Fox. In this early vehicular combat sim, you're piloting a futuristic snow tank across an icy wasteland to stop some aliens or...

Empire: Wargame of the Century feels like a military textbook that accidentally became entertaining. Spanning centuries of warfare, it combines grand strategy with a surprisingly a...

Lure of the Temptress (1992, DOS) is dark fantasy done right — with muddy streets, suspicious peasants, and a villainess who’s equal parts charm and cruelty. As Diermot...

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is often spoken of in the same breath as the finest adventure games ever made, and for once, nostalgia is not exaggerating. Released in 1992,...

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...

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...

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. II: The Two Towers is an abandoned fantasy top-down DOS RPG game set in the The Lord of the Rings universe. The Lord of the Rings II wa...

Before Worms, before Scorched Earth, there was Tank Wars. Two or more tanks perched on random hills, firing explosive math problems at each other. Adjust your angle, set your power...

Space Harrier is a 3rd-person view rail-shooter developed by Sega in 1985. Space Harrier was a hit in the arcades, and later it was converted for a number of platforms, including D...

Ah yes, the game that crawled so Ultima could run. Akalabeth is a wireframe dungeon crawl where you descend into monster-infested labyrinths with the elegance of a lost spreadsheet...

Impossible Mission 2 proves that espionage is mostly about jumping carefully and avoiding suspicious furniture. Released in 1988 for DOS, this sequel expands on the original's plat...

So you think you're ready to storm Normandy? Think again. 101: The Airborne Invasion of Normandy drops you into the chaos of World War II with all the grace of a paratrooper landin...

Hero's Quest: So You Want to Be a Hero is a charming blend of role-playing and adventure that gently nudges you into a world where saving the day involves as much thinking as it do...

La Abadía del Crimen (1987) is famously unforgiving, and it knows it. Inspired by Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, this is an isometric adventure where breaking the...

Quake II is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and released in 1997. It is the sequel to the original Quake and was a significant milestone in the evolution...

Ah, Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior—the game where loincloths are tiny and sword swings are deadly. This 1989 fighter slashed its way onto DOS with decapitations, grunts, and...

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...

Released in 1984, Hack is one of those games that quietly shaped an entire genre while pretending not to care if you understood it or not. This early roguelike doesn’t bother...

A Personal Nightmare (1989) blends horror and detective work into one spooky little cocktail of 1980s DOS game design. You return to your hometown to find it overrun by demonic pos...

When H.R. Giger is involved, you know things will get weird. Dark Seed (1992) is a point-and-click horror adventure where you play Mike Dawson, a man haunted by nightmarish visions...

Hook brings the world of Peter Pan into video game form, blending platforming with a light sense of adventure. Released in 1992, it captures the whimsical tone of its source materi...

Double Dragon II: The Revenge (1988) takes everything that made the first game fun and cranks it up a notch. The story begins with tragedy—Marian, the damsel from the first g...