abandonware games sorted by popularity

Before Space Invaders clones flooded arcades, there was Space Commanders (1983, DOS), a bare-bones but addictive shooter where your mission is simple: don’t die. Rows of alie...

Castle of Dr. Brain is a puzzle lover’s fever dream. It’s like someone crammed a Mensa test into a haunted house and added robot arms. You’re solving logic grids,...

Before he became better known as Alien Carnage, Halloween Harry blasted onto DOS PCs in 1993 with fast action, crude humor, and zero interest in subtlety. You play Harry, armed to ...

Test Drive 3: The Passion takes the “driving simulator” label and adds just enough early-’90s flair to make you feel like a rebel with a V8. Forget endless racetr...

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...

The Colonel's Bequest is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 1989 for various platforms, including MS-DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST. T...

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, ...

3-Demon from 1983 is basically Pac-Man with a taste for LSD. You’re in a first-person maze, munching dots while glowing ghosts try to ruin your day. It’s surprisingly c...

Crescent is a mysterious blend of action and intrigue set in a pixelated sci-fi world. The plot is sparse, dropped in cryptic hints as you battle your way through hostile landscape...

Often mistaken as a Dig Dug clone, Digger is more like its eccentric cousin who insists on bringing a disco soundtrack to every family gathering. Released in 1983 for DOS, it combi...

Netscape Navigator was one of the earliest web browsers that played a crucial role in popularizing the World Wide Web. It was developed by Netscape Communications Corporation and r...

The Incredible Toon Machine is a puzzle video game developed by Jeff Tunnell Productions and published by Sierra On-Line in 1994. It serves as the successor to the game Sid & A...

Released in 1983, this classic arcade-style shooter has you defending humanoids from alien abductions. Fly your ship across a scrolling landscape, blasting enemies and saving innoc...

Karnov is a classic side-scrolling action arcade game developed by Data East in 1987. The game features a unique protagonist named Jinborov Karnovski, or "Karnov", a fire-breathing...

If Star Trek: 25th Anniversary isn’t on your DOS nostalgia list, fix that now. Released in 1992, it’s a point-and-click adventure that actually feels like classic Star ...

Super Space Invaders takes the old “shoot the aliens before they land” formula and pours a shot of espresso into it. The result? Faster, flashier, and mildly panic-indu...

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...

Tetris is the kind of game that looks harmless until you realize you’ve been staring at falling blocks for three hours straight. Released in 1987, this deceptively simple puzzle ...

King’s Bounty is a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements, originally released in 1990 by New World Computing. It was created by Jon Van Caneghem, also known for the Migh...

Based on the cult comedy film, Wayne’s World (1993, DOS) is loud, weird, and occasionally frustrating—much like its source material. This platformer throws Wayne and Ga...

NetHack is an open-source roguelike game that's been around since the early 1980s. It's a single-player dungeon exploration game where you navigate your character through a randoml...

Maniac Mansion Deluxe is the unofficial sequel to the acclaimed point & click adventure game released by LucasFilm in 1987. Maniac Mansion Deluxe it's a fan-made adventure deve...

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...

Before space marines were gritty and everything exploded in brown and grey, there was The Adventures of Captain Comic. This is early PC platforming in all its clunky, jumpy, 4-colo...

In 1987, Driller arrived as a revolutionary 3D game that looked light-years ahead of its time. Using the Freescape engine, it let players explore a fully 3D world—on a DOS ma...

One of the best licensed games of the '90s, Blade Runner (1997) puts you in the rain-soaked shoes of Ray McCoy, a detective tracking down replicants in a world where it's always ni...

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...

Q*bert is a classic arcade game that was created by Warren Davis and Jeff Lee and was released by Gottlieb in 1982. The main goal of Qbert is to change the color of every...