abandonware games sorted by popularity

Altered Beast is a classic side-scrolling beat 'em up arcade game developed and published by Sega. It was originally released in arcades in 1988 and later ported to various home co...

F-19 Stealth Fighter is all about sneaking in, doing your job, and getting out before anyone realizes what just happened. Instead of brute-force dogfighting, this game focuses on s...

Heretic is what happens when someone looks at fantasy and thinks it needs more fireballs and a lot more attitude. Built on familiar shooter foundations, it swaps sci-fi corridors f...

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...

Fire and Forget: Final Assault is the kind of game that asks a very specific question: “What if driving a heavily armed car was your full-time job?” Released in 2013, i...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Wasteland is the kind of game that quietly changed history while pretending to be just another post-apocalyptic RPG. Long before wastelands were fashionab...

Phantasmagoria is a point-and-click horror adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line, released in 1995. Directed by Roberta Williams, Phantasmagoria departed from Si...

Grim Fandango is an adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1998 and is known for its unique setting and distinctive art style. The game was directe...

Gruntz looks cute at first glance, like a game that might politely ask you to solve a few puzzles and then let you relax. It is lying. In Gruntz, you control small clay creatures t...

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...

Cover Girl Strip Poker is exactly what the title promises—poker, but with a risqué twist. You play cards, your opponent plays coy, and the stakes are… let&rsquo...

Long before Minecraft let us build worlds, Adventure Construction Set handed you a digital Lego box and said, “Go nuts.” Want to make a dungeon full of orcs and ham san...

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...

Rick Dangerous 2 is a clear example of a sequel done right. Developed by Core Design and released in 1990 on a plethora of platforms, Rick Dangerous 2 is a classic platform game wi...

Body Blows is a 2D fighting game developed and published by Team17, released in 1993. It was initially launched for the Amiga and later ported to MS-DOS. Body Blows was one of the ...

Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is a software development tool that enables users to create point-and-click adventure games. It was originally created by Chris Jones and has been used ...

Atomix is a tile-based puzzle game released in 1990 by Thalion Software for platforms like Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64. The objective of Atomix is to assemble mo...

Crusade in Europe is a detailed World War II strategy game that lets you take command of the Allied or Axis forces during some of the war’s most famous campaigns. It’s ...

Quarantine is a futuristic racing/driving game released by GameTek in 1994 for DOS. Quarantine is set in a dark dystopian futuristic city where the player drives around in a taxi c...

Eishockey Manager is proof that spreadsheets can, in fact, be thrilling—if you really love ice hockey. Released in 1993, this is a hardcore management sim that skips the flas...

Might and Magic: Swords of Xeen is something of a curious side chapter in the Xeen saga, originally created as a smaller adventure but still packed with the series’ trademark...