abandonware games sorted by popularity

Commander Keen 1: Marooned on Mars is a platform video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software in 1990 as shareware for MS-DOS. The game follows the adv...

Hoyle Classic Card Games is the digital equivalent of a well-stocked card table, offering a variety of games to suit different tastes. Released in 1993, it combines accessibility w...

Teresa: House Guest is an interactive experience that feels like a curious blend of storytelling and voyeuristic curiosity. The narrative unfolds through choices, often leading to ...

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...

If Oil Barons is Monopoly with attitude, Oil Imperium is its slightly more serious cousin who read a business textbook once and won’t let you forget it. Released in 1989, thi...

Contra: Locked and Loaded is like caffeine in video game form—fast, explosive, and just a little dangerous for your health. You’re running, you’re gunning, and yo...

In Jones in the Fast Lane, success is measured not by defeating monsters or saving kingdoms, but by surviving everyday life. Released in 1991, this unusual board game simulation ha...

Bigger, darker, and just as merciless, Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep doubled down on everything that made the first game great—and slightly unhinged. Released in...

Subtlety is not in Fire and Forget’s vocabulary. You drive. You shoot. Things explode. That’s the pitch, and the game sticks to it with admirable stubbornness. Released...

EcoQuest 2 takes its environmental message seriously but packages it in a way that’s engaging rather than preachy. You explore lush rainforest environments, solving puzzles t...

Imagine Doom got abducted by aliens, experimented on, and sent back to Earth with a case of amnesia. That’s Alien Cabal (1997). It’s a weird mix of FPS action and X-Fil...

BloodNet combines vampires, cyberspace, and noir in a cocktail so strange it probably shouldn’t work but somehow does. You are a hacker who just got bitten by a vampire and n...

Hercules brings mythological heroism into the late 90s with the kind of enthusiasm that only that era could produce. It mixes action and platforming in a way that occasionally feel...

Released in 1995, Psycho Pinball is what happens when traditional pinball eats too much sugar and loses its mind. It’s loud, colorful, and gleefully unhinged, with four disti...

This 1996 point-and-click western is what you’d get if Lucky Luke and Monkey Island had an awkward but lovable baby. 3 Skulls of the Toltecs throws you into a spaghetti weste...

Skale Tracker is a music tracker designed for composing and arranging electronic music on a computer, continuing a tradition that began with classic tracker software on Amiga and D...

Premier Manager 2 polished the formula, giving football nerds even more stats to obsess over. If you thought juggling line-ups and balancing books was fun in the first game, this s...

Galaxian is one of those early arcade classics that proved space shooters didn’t need complicated rules to be thrilling. Instead of aliens politely marching in formation, the...

Black Tiger is a side-scrolling action game packed with monsters, treasure and enough medieval violence to make a quiet afternoon in the countryside seem considerably less attracti...

Ecstatica is a haunting anomaly in the DOS library, blending early 3D visuals with a dark fairy-tale atmosphere. Its polygonal characters may look crude by modern standards, but th...

The year is 1995, and Abuse brings us one of the slickest, darkest run-and-gun shooters ever to crawl out of a DOS/Linux/Mac basement. You play a guy in prison for a crime he didn&...

American McGee's Alice takes Lewis Carroll's Wonderland and gives it a decidedly darker makeover. Alice is no longer simply wandering through a whimsical fantasy populated by eccen...

Microsoft Decathlon challenges players to compete in ten demanding track-and-field events, including running, jumping, throwing, and several activities specifically designed to mak...

Time Slaughter is a fighting game that embraces the wonderfully excessive attitude of 1990s arcade combat. Its roster of bizarre characters is more interested in beating each other...

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a grave-robbing dwarf with a flair for interior dungeon decoration? Cadaver grants that peculiar wish. As Karadoc, you’ll wander an eer...

Let’s be honest: Cobra Mission is remembered less for its RPG mechanics and more for its... risqué content. The first “eroge” RPG translated into English, ...

PGA Tour Golf is a 1990 golf simulation that brings the famous sport to the computer with a focus on accuracy, strategy, and careful planning. Players can compete on realistic cour...

Also known as Puzzle Bobble, this bubble-popping classic stars those cute dragons from Bubble Bobble, now in competitive puzzle mode. Match three colors, clear the screen, panic as...

If Grand Theft Auto had a German uncle who worked in finance, it might look a lot like Dime City. Released in 1995 for DOS, this oddball title blends business simulation with under...

The classic bomb-defusing, platform-hopping, enemy-dodging chaos of Bomb Jack gets a fresh coat of pixels in this 2002 DOS remake. You’re still the tiny superhero hopping aro...