abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Games: Winter Challenge takes the multi-event sports formula onto snow and ice, offering a collection of winter competitions where timing and control are considerably more impo...

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...

In King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne, King Graham trades royal paperwork for a perilous journey to find the woman destined to become his queen. The adventure expands upon its p...

Dreamweb (1994) went full dark cyberpunk, and it didn’t pull its punches. You play Ryan, a man convinced he’s on a mission from mysterious forces to kill seven people w...

Operation Stealth is a 1990 adventure game that combines international intrigue, espionage, and the sort of dangerous missions where the protagonist probably should have taken a qu...

Warheads is a turn-based artillery game in the grand tradition of blowing your friends to pieces with ridiculous weapons. You control a team of tiny, heavily armed soldiers and tak...

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...

Ultimate Soccer Manager taps into the irresistible fantasy of running a football club without ever leaving your chair. Instead of flashy graphics, it offers spreadsheets, statistic...

Karadoc’s back, and apparently inflation hit the dungeon economy hard—he wants his gold! Cadaver: The Payoff is less a sequel and more a direct continuation, like findi...

Conan: The Cimmerian lets you brawl your way through the Hyborian Age like a shirtless rage machine with a sword and questionable dialogue. It’s got all the ingredients: dark...

Released in 1992, _Jill of the Jungle_ introduced players to one of the most memorable heroines of the DOS platforming era. Jill runs, jumps, transforms into animals, and explores ...

Marble Cooking is one of those wonderfully unusual puzzle games whose premise sounds completely normal until you actually begin playing. Guiding marbles through increasingly elabor...

Super Star Wars brings the famous Star Wars universe into a side-scrolling action game filled with blasters, enemies, platforms, and enough danger to make the Death Star seem like ...

Solar Winds 2: Galaxy continues the space exploration and trading adventure established by its predecessor, giving players a large science-fiction environment to explore. The game ...

Released in 1989 for DOS, The Magic Candle is a classic RPG with more depth than a wizard’s library. You must keep a sacred candle burning to prevent evil from escaping &mdas...

Maniac Mansion changed adventure games forever by introducing multiple playable characters, each with unique abilities that influence puzzle solutions and story outcomes. The bizar...

By 1993, Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! embraced fully voiced dialogue and colorful VGA graphics, giving the long-running comedy series a significant technical upgrade...

Fast, colorful, and bursting with attitude, Jazz Jackrabbit became one of the most beloved shareware platformers of the 1990s. Released in 1994, it stars a green rabbit hero racing...

American McGee's Alice takes Lewis Carroll's Wonderland and gives it a decidedly darker makeover. Alice is no longer simply wandering through a whimsical fantasy populated by eccen...

Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? adds a particularly nasty complication to the usual Carmen formula: the criminals are not merely running around the world, they are jumping throug...

This 1992 casino sim for DOS drops you into the neon-soaked carpet jungle of the Four Queens Hotel in Vegas. There’s no plot, no hero’s journey - just you, a digital ba...

Rise of the Robots is a 1994 fighting game built around the idea of heavily armed machines battling through a futuristic industrial world. Players control a combat robot and face i...

If you’ve ever wanted to conquer a fantasy world while feeling like a medieval accountant with anger issues, Warlords 2 has you covered. Released in 1993, it’s a turn-b...

NetHack is one of the great survivors of computer gaming, a 1987 roguelike that has been challenging players for decades with randomly generated dungeons, brutal enemies, complex s...

Released in 1996, Discworld 2: Mortality Bytes! continues the misadventures of Rincewind, who once again proves that cowardice can be a powerful survival tool. This time, Death has...

Nobunaga's Ambition is a 1988 strategy game set during Japan’s turbulent Sengoku period, when political alliances were fragile, rival clans were everywhere, and peaceful retireme...

EcoQuest 2 takes its environmental message seriously but packages it in a way that’s engaging rather than preachy. You explore lush rainforest environments, solving puzzles t...

F-22 Lightning II brings the flight sim genre into the late ’90s with faster action, flashier visuals, and a jet that feels like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. The F...

Imagine Cheers met Quantum Leap and got weirdly philosophical. That’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, a narrative adventure based on Spider Robinson’s sci-fi stories...

Microsoft Decathlon challenges players to compete in ten demanding track-and-field events, including running, jumping, throwing, and several activities specifically designed to mak...