abandonware games sorted by popularity

Stunt Car Racer takes the humble racing game and removes almost everything sensible about it. Instead of ordinary tracks, you get enormous elevated circuits filled with ramps, jump...

Wolfsbane is a dark fantasy action game that sends the player into a hostile world filled with monsters, dangerous environments, and the usual medieval assortment of things that re...

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...

TV Sports: Basketball is one of those games that feels like it really wanted to impress you with its presentation—and honestly, it does a decent job. Released in 1990, it blends ...

Just like the movie, Batman Returns (1992) is dark, gritty, and full of dudes in clown makeup getting punched in the face. You play as the Caped Crusader in a beat-‘em-up sid...

Silent Service is a 1985 submarine simulation that puts players in command of an American submarine during World War II. The game combines navigation, sonar, targeting, torpedo att...

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...

Supaplex is a deceptively simple puzzle game that takes the basic idea of moving objects around a maze and turns it into a surprisingly demanding exercise in planning. Inspired by ...

Amberstar is a fantasy old school RPG very similar to Ultima 6 that uses a top-down view for interiors and small locations and a first person pseudo 3D view for everything else. Un...

Night Shift is a 1990 action game with a wonderfully unusual premise: instead of saving the world, the player is busy working a night shift. Naturally, this is not an ordinary job,...

Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion turns up the difficulty (and the body count) by tossing Dave into a gothic nightmare of zombies, ghosts, and bloodthirsty critters. Armed with...

Caution: subtlety not included. Blue Angel 69, released in 1989 for DOS, is basically what happens when a programmer tries to mix erotic art with a tile-based puzzle game and ends ...

Zeliard is a fantasy platformer/RPG hybrid that has all the trappings of a classic quest: a brave knight, an evil demon, a princess in distress, and an unreasonable number of bats....

Circuit's Edge is a cyberpunk-themed role-playing game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom. It was released in 1990 for MS-DOS. Set in a dystopian future, Cir...

Based on the fantasy novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Death Gate (1994) throws you into an epic, puzzle-heavy adventure. Imagine Myst, but with more dragons and a script ...

Harley-Davidson: The Road to Sturgis is less about racing and more about the journey, which sounds poetic until you realize the road can be quite unforgiving. You ride across the U...

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...

City of Lost Children is as beautiful as it is bewildering. Based on the surreal 1995 film, this adventure game drops you into a dark, oily dystopia filled with creepy orphans, biz...

3-Demon from 1983 is basically Pac-Man with a taste for LSD. You’re in a first-person maze, munching dots while glowing ghosts try to ruin your day. It’s surprisingly c...

Space exploration reaches impressive heights in Master of Orion, a strategy classic that challenges players to guide an interstellar civilization toward galactic supremacy. Coloniz...

Might and Magic 7: For Blood and Honor marks the series’ leap into full 3D exploration, and the result feels like stepping from a dusty library of spellbooks into a bustling ...

Elvira: The Arcade Game trades puzzles for action and subtlety for pure chaos. This is fast, brutal, side-scrolling combat with monsters pouring in from every direction. Elvira&rsq...

Ninja Rabbits is a 1992 platform game that takes the concept of the ninja and adds a rabbit, because apparently the genre had not yet reached its full potential for unusual protago...

Block O Mania is what happens when a Rubik’s Cube and a sliding puzzle fall in love during a rave. Released in 1989 for DOS, this game will twist your brain into shapes it wa...

Remember ALF? The sarcastic alien who really had it in for cats? Well, in ALF: The First Adventure, you get to live the dream—or nightmare—of controlling the furry mena...

The Legend of Kyrandia: Hand of Fate is the second installment in the Legend of Kyrandia point and click adventure game series developed by Westwood Studios. It was released in 199...

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...

Fast Food Tycoon turns the humble hamburger restaurant into a full management challenge. You must choose locations, design your business, manage staff, handle finances, and keep cu...

Alien Syndrome (1989) is a top-down shooter where you save hostages, shoot aliens, and scream internally because you’re always out of time. It’s frantic arcade action a...

Sid Meier's Pirates! is one of those games that refuses to fit comfortably into a single genre. Originally released in 1987, it lets players become a pirate captain, sail the Carib...