abandonware games sorted by popularity

Time travel stories tend to get complicated quickly, and Future Wars: Adventures in Time embraces that chaos with enthusiasm. Released in 1990, this cinematic adventure casts you a...

The Terminator: Rampage puts you behind the controls of a combat vehicle in a future where humanity's relationship with Skynet has gone about as badly as expected. The game combine...

If you ever wanted to fly a helicopter that looks like it belongs in a Michael Bay fever dream, Comanche: Maximum Overkill (1992, DOS) is for you. This voxel-powered beast puts you...

Ivan 'Iron Man' Stewart's Super Off Road is an abandoned diagonal-down off-road racing game developed by Leland and released by Virgin Interactive in 1990 for DOS, but also publish...

Karateka combines cinematic storytelling with martial arts action in a way that was remarkably ambitious for its time. Players guide a lone warrior through a fortress filled with g...

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is one of the great comedy adventures, combining clever puzzles, unforgettable characters, and writing sharp enough to cut through a pirate ship'...

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...

Hercules brings mythological heroism into the late 90s with the kind of enthusiasm that only that era could produce. It mixes action and platforming in a way that occasionally feel...

Chessmaster 9000 is a chess game developed by Ubisoft and released in 2002. It's part of the Chessmaster series, which has been around since the 1980s. Chessmaster 9000 was known f...

Skate or Die is the embodiment of late-’80s “cool,” complete with neon chaos, absurdly dangerous skate events, and characters who look like they stepped out of a ...

Gold of the Americas: The Conquest of the New World is a strategy game that invites you to rewrite history, usually by making the same mistakes but with more confidence. You manage...

F-15 Strike Eagle II takes everything that made the original a classic and cranks it up like a jet engine at full throttle. The visuals are sharper, the missions are more varied, a...

If Oil Barons is Monopoly with attitude, Oil Imperium is its slightly more serious cousin who read a business textbook once and won’t let you forget it. Released in 1989, thi...

Yes, Astrotit (1987) is really the name, and no, it’s not what you think — though it does feel like it was named by a bored teenager. This side-scrolling shooter puts y...

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a grumpy bearded guy swinging an axe and saving the world before second breakfast, Bloodstone: an Epic Dwarven Tale is your jam. Released in 1...

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...

Ah yes, the game that crawled so Ultima could run. Akalabeth is a wireframe dungeon crawl where you descend into monster-infested labyrinths with the elegance of a lost spreadsheet...

Gruntz looks cute at first glance, like a game that might politely ask you to solve a few puzzles and then let you relax. It is lying. In Gruntz, you control small clay creatures t...

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...

Deluxe Paint, often abbreviated as DPaint, was a popular bitmap graphics editor and animation software package. It was developed by Electronic Arts (EA) and released in the mid-198...

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...

Police Quest 3: The Kindred is a 1991 adventure game that continues the story of the police simulation series with improved graphics and a more cinematic presentation. Players inve...

Frederik Pohl’s Gateway is science fiction that doesn’t hold your hand—or particularly care if you survive. Based on Pohl’s novel, this 1992 adventure drops...

Project-X is a 1994 shoot 'em up that delivers intense arcade action with fast gameplay, powerful weapons, and waves of enemies determined to fill the screen. Players control a spa...

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 1993 and designed by Jane Jensen. The game is ...

Panzer Battles is a 1990 historical strategy game that places players in command of armored forces across challenging military engagements. Every movement, attack, and defensive po...

F-15 Strike Eagle III is a combat flight simulation video game released in 1992. It was developed by MicroProse and is the third installment in the F-15 Strike Eagle series. T...

Step into the polygonal shoes of Edward Carnby (or Emily Hartwood, if you're feeling bold) in Alone in the Dark, the grandfather of survival horror games. Released in 1992 for DOS,...

The Humans is a puzzle game built around a charmingly simple idea: you control a group of tiny prehistoric people and must help them reach safety by making use of their different a...

By the time Premier Manager 3 rolled around, the series had cemented its reputation as the thinking fan’s football fix. Released in 1994, it refined the formula once again, o...