abandonware games sorted by popularity

Extreme Pinball from 1995 takes a classic pastime and injects it with a generous dose of digital attitude. This isn’t a calm, gentlemanly pinball experience—it’s ...

A remake with ambition and tragedy, Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded promised to bring the king back in modern glory. It looked great, played smooth, and... was never officially released. W...

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...

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...

Before co-op brawlers were everywhere, there was Double Dragon (1988 on DOS). Two brothers, one kidnapped girlfriend, and enough street thugs to populate a small city—that&rs...

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...

By the time Ultima 9 rolled around, expectations were sky-high—and the result was… divisive. It looked gorgeous for 1999, with sweeping 3D landscapes and dramatic voic...

Beetlejuice: Skeletons in the Closet is a video game based on the popular Beetlejuice franchise, which includes a 1988 film directed by Tim Burton and an animated television series...

Darklands is what happens when medieval Europe gets even darker than it already was. This 1992 RPG drops you into the Holy Roman Empire, but don’t expect knights in shining a...

The sequel no one expected takes our trench-coated hero from gothic horror to gangster ghost story. Yes, Alone in the Dark 2 (1993, DOS) swaps Lovecraftian horror for Tommy guns an...

Warlords is a fantasy strategy game that turns the world into a massive board game of conquest. You command heroes, raise armies, capture cities, and summon mythical creatures in a...

By 1996, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition on DOS felt like the veteran fighter returning for one last round. You could finally play as the bosses, which was a childhood dream...

Xenon 2000: Project PCF is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up video game and originally released in 2000. It is a sequel to the earlier game "Xenon 2: Megablast," which was develope...

Ultima 2 asks the pressing question: what if you mixed time travel with fantasy and a truly mean sorceress named Minax? The answer is chaos. You’ll bounce between eras—...

You thought the first one was hard? Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty laughs at your pain and then asks you to infiltrate a Gestapo HQ with a knife and a prayer. This standalone e...

Ah, 2400 A.D. A game where you can rebel against a robot police state… by slowly walking around in beige. Released in 1988, it’s what happens when you mix Orwellian dy...

Back in 1984, Zaxxon was the future. Isometric graphics? Whoa. Shadow effects? Mind blown. But mostly, it was a game about flying a chunky spaceship through a heavily fortified spa...

Laura Bow 2: The Dagger of Amon Ra is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1992. The game is a sequel to The Colonel's Bequest and follows ...

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...