abandonware games sorted by popularity

If you’ve ever looked at a map of the Pacific theater in World War II and thought, “Yes, but what if I micromanaged all of it?”, Gary Grigsby’s Pacific War ...

Hollywood Hijinx feels like stepping into a puzzle-filled mansion where logic occasionally takes a coffee break. Released in 1986, this text adventure blends humor with brain-teasi...

Super Hang-On is an abandoned motorcycle arcade racing game, developed by Sega, designed by Yu Suzuki and published by Data East for DOS in 1988 (the arcade was released in 1987). ...

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...

Rodent's Revenge is a puzzle video game originally released in 1991 as part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows. Developed by Christopher Lee Fraley, the game is simple...

The Legend of Kyrandia: Hand of Fate is the second installment in the Legend of Kyrandia point and click adventure game series developed by Westwood Studios. It was released in 199...

Space 1889 (1990, DOS) is steampunk before steampunk was cool. Based on the tabletop RPG, it sends you to an alternate Victorian era where the British Empire has expanded — t...

Mario Bros VGA brings Nintendo's famous plumbers to DOS with colorful VGA graphics and an experience that faithfully recreates the frantic arcade original. The objective remains wo...

Step into the gray, morally ambiguous world of corporate domination with Big Business. It’s Monopoly with fewer dice and more spreadsheets. Crush your competitors, manipulate...

The proto-fighting game that walked so Street Fighter could punch. Yie Ar Kung Fu is pure arcade joy: a brave martial artist named Oolong fights a rogue’s gallery of opponent...

4Play was a risqué trivia and multi-player board-style game released in the mid-1990s. Designed as a party game, it combined trivia questions, mini-games, and challenge...

Before the IOC cracked down on fun, Caveman Ugh-Lympics gave us the primeval sporting event we never knew we needed. Clubs, fire, and the 100-meter mate drag—yes, that’...

Imagine a game where a gelatinous green creature (that may or may not be sentient chewing gum) bounces its way through logic puzzles and physics that occasionally remember gravity ...

Monuments of Mars (1991) is one of those puzzle-platformers where patience is less a virtue and more a survival tool. You’re stranded on Mars, exploring alien ruins filled wi...

Welcome to the squared circle of wireframe pain. Released in 1991 for DOS, this game puts you in the gloves of a boxer rendered entirely out of jagged geometry. The animation was r...

Released in 1987, Dark Castle is infamous for two things: its moody castle setting and its protagonist’s uncanny ability to slip on stairs as if they’re coated in banan...

Published in 1989, Livingstone 2 continues the adventurous exploits of explorer Henry Livingstone through jungles packed with traps, hostile wildlife, and demanding platform challe...

Better known as Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior in some regions, Death Sword (1988) is remembered less for its deep gameplay and more for its infamous decapitation move. Swing your...

The sequel nobody asked for, but we’re still kinda glad happened. California Games 2 adds even weirder sports: jet-skiing, hang gliding, and bodyboarding, which is like surfi...

Epic Pinball is what happens when a small team says, “Sure, let’s make a pinball game,” and accidentally creates one of the most addictive shareware hits of the d...

Shadowgate (1988, DOS/Windows 3.x/Mac) is a point-and-click adventure that politely invites you into a castle and then gleefully kills you for touching the wrong thing. Armed with ...