abandonware games sorted by popularity

Screamer Rally (1997) took everything that made Screamer great and added dirt. Literally. The tracks are muddy, the physics bumpier, and the action even more intense. This time, it...

Think Dungeon Master, but in space, and your party is made of four remote-controlled robot prisoners. Welcome to Captive, where the only thing more confusing than the plot is the m...

Snood is a charming puzzle game built around matching colorful creatures and clearing them from the screen before things get out of hand. Released in 1996, it looks deceptively sim...

Ultimate Soccer Manager 98 puts the player on the other side of the touchline, where the biggest challenge is discovering that managing a football club is considerably more complic...

Sword of Honour is an action-oriented medieval adventure that mixes swordplay, exploration, and dangerous encounters into a compact old-school package. Released in 1993, it sends t...

Back in 1992, The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel set the bar for pixelated deduction. A famous actress is dead, and every gentleman in London seems...

In Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, Sierra took the Wild West and decided it needed more jokes, more puns, and significantly more medical malpractice. Released in 1993, this po...

Metal & Lace combines giant robots, futuristic combat, and adult-oriented visual novel elements into an unusual package that certainly does not suffer from a lack of ambition. Play...

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...

You don’t need to hate spiders to fear Arachnophobia (1991), but it helps. Based on the movie of the same name, it tasks you with exterminating wave after wave of creepy craw...

Created by devoted fans, Maniac Mansion Deluxe lovingly rebuilds the Lucasfilm classic with improved graphics, modern conveniences, and remarkable respect for the original adventur...

Tristan Pinball is a digital pinball table from an era when computer hardware was expected to imitate a real arcade machine despite having considerably fewer pixels and absolutely ...

Italian noir meets circus mystery in Yellow Kid: Giallo al Circo, where you play a journalist with a yellow trench coat and more curiosity than self-preservation. The game’s ...

The Civil War is a historical strategy game that places the player in command during the American Civil War, with armies, resources, territory, and battlefield decisions all compet...

With a title like Dogfight: 80 Years of Aerial Warfare, you know you’re in for a serious history lesson disguised as a game. Released in 1993, this DOS flight sim spans decad...

SimCity 3000 continues Maxis's famous city-building series with a larger, more detailed simulation and considerably more ways for a mayor to make questionable decisions. Players de...

Ah, Budokan, the game where patience and discipline meet awkwardly slow combat and the occasional flying kick. You play as a martial arts student training in various dojos, culmina...

MechWarrior (1989) was one of the first games to put players inside a 3D cockpit of a giant mech, but it wasn’t just a combat game, it was also an open-ended mercenary RPG, w...

X-Men: Madness in Murderworld sends Marvel's mutant heroes into the bizarre and dangerous amusement park created by the villain Arcade. Rather than offering a conventional superher...

Manhunter 2: San Francisco continues the unsettling science fiction saga with another blend of investigation, puzzle solving, and dark storytelling. Once again humanity struggles b...

Based on Piers Anthony’s pun-filled fantasy world, Companions of Xanth is like walking into a joke book that got lost in a spellbook. You play a guy from the "real world" suc...

Sci-Mutant Priestess (1989) is French, weird, and proud of it. You play as a rebellious mutant in a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi world ruled by bio-psychic cults. Obviously. It’s...

Moria is a legendary roguelike role-playing game where exploration, survival, and procedural danger combine into an experience that can be both thrilling and brutally unforgiving. ...

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is a strange but fascinating blend of adventure game, RPG, and comedy horror. You wander through a spooky mansion, solve puzzles, fight monsters, and g...

Constructor is a simulation and strategy video game developed by System 3 and first released in 1997. In the game, players take on the role of a property developer with the goal of...

Think you’re good at making tough decisions under pressure? Advanced Civilization dares you to prove it by turning diplomacy into passive-aggressive warfare. Based on the cla...

When Little Big Adventure appeared in 1994, it immediately stood out thanks to its imaginative world, memorable storytelling, and charming protagonist Twinsen. Blending action, adv...

In Amnesia, you wake up in a hotel room with no idea who you are, where you are, or why someone wants you dead. And no, this isn’t a gritty FPS—it’s a text advent...

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...

The Blues Brothers 2: Jukebox Adventure follows Jake and Elwood into another platforming adventure, this time with an even stronger emphasis on the colorful, chaotic style of the s...