abandonware games sorted by popularity

Strategy fans, sharpen your wits: The Perfect General (1991, DOS) marches onto the battlefield with hex-based tactics, satisfyingly crunchy mechanics, and a strict “no button...

Forget Rambo. Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines is what happens when you drop six experts behind Nazi lines and tell them to behave tactically… or else. Every mission is a deadl...

Before Half-Life, there was Chasm: The Rift, a game where time-traveling mutants explode into limbs and every room looks like it was decorated by a doom-metal band. A first-person ...

Lemmings 2: The Tribes is an abandoned puzzle game part of the acclaimed Lemmings series. It was developed by DMA Design and released by Psygnosis in 1993. Lemmings 2: The Tribes r...

Elite Plus is an enhanced version of the classic space trading and combat simulator Elite, released by MicroPlay in 1991 for MS-DOS. It was designed as an update to the original 19...

Long before “quiet quitting” became a buzzword, Dilbert’s Desktop Games captured the soul-crushing absurdity of office life. Released for Windows XP in 1997, this...

Just when you thought Keen could catch a break, Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle drops him into a mystical realm full of bouncing jelly beans and sentient toasters. This is w...

Panger General is a turn based strategy wargame developed by SSI set in World War 2. The player can choose Axis or Allies and fight against the AI or another human player in more t...

Zany Golf is what happens when someone says, “Let’s make miniature golf, but with teleporters, hamburgers, and anti-gravity pads.” Part mini-golf simulator, part ...

Before “yippee-ki-yay” became gaming shorthand for chaos, Die Hard (1989) tried to capture the movie’s skyscraper shootout on DOS. You play as John McClane, trapp...

Comix Zone (1995, Windows XP) is what happens when a comic book artist gets pulled into his own creation and reacts by roundhouse-kicking everything in sight. Stylized to the max, ...

Balance of Power: The 1990 Edition is a geopolitical strategy game developed by Chris Crawford and released in 1985. It is considered a classic in the genre of political and strate...

Black & White (2001) is what happens when a god game gets a bit too literal. You play as a deity, complete with a giant hand, an enormous ego, and a giant pet that poops on vil...

The Fool's Errand is a puzzle-adventure computer game created by Cliff Johnson and released in 1987 for Macintosh and later for MS-DOS. The game follows the journey of a namel...

In Castle Master, you get dropped into a spooky polygonal castle and told, “Figure it out.” And that’s it. Early 3D graphics make every wall look like it was pain...

If Sorcerer Lord was about controlling armies, Sorcerian (1990, DOS) zooms in to the party level — a side-scrolling RPG that’s as odd as it is ambitious. You build a te...

Lotus: The Ultimate Challenge (1993, DOS) is the kind of racing game that makes you feel like you should be wearing aviators and blasting synthwave. It’s pure, high-speed sim...

Screamer (1995) was the moment when PC gamers realized DOS could, in fact, go fast. A blistering arcade racer inspired by Daytona USA, it delivered glossy graphics, roaring engines...