abandonware games sorted by popularity

Before Worms made artillery games cute, Bang! Bang! let you and a friend lob cartoonish shells at each other using nothing but angles, wind speed, and pure spite. It's a math lesso...

In Space Quest 1: The Sarien Encounter, the galaxy’s least qualified hero, Roger Wilco, begins his long tradition of surviving disasters mostly by accident. Released in 1986,...

By 1996, Sensible World of Soccer 96/97 had evolved into something much larger than a simple football game. Players could dive into leagues from around the globe, manage transfers,...

Police Quest 3: The Kindred is an adventure video game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1991. It is the third installment in the Police Quest series, which was designed...

Another World (1991) is a cinematic platformer with big ideas, minimal UI, and a shocking willingness to let you die within five seconds of starting. You play as a scientist who ge...

Take American football, remove the rules, add swords and fireballs, and throw in some screaming. That is Brutal Sports Football. This is not about touchdowns. This is about surviva...

Forget Sonic. Forget Mario. Zool is a ninja from the Nth Dimension, which is apparently a place where hyperactive insects fight sentient sweets. Speed is the name of the game, and ...

Ultima 5 takes a darker turn. Lord British is missing, and his regent, Lord Blackthorn, has turned Britannia into a police state where virtues are enforced at sword-point. You know...

King’s Bounty is a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements, originally released in 1990 by New World Computing. It was created by Jon Van Caneghem, also known for the Migh...

Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures is a charmingly odd experiment that shrinks globe-trotting archaeology into bite-sized missions designed for quick play sessions. Viewed fr...

Gunship is a landmark helicopter simulation that treats you less like a player and more like a trainee pilot who forgot to read the manual. It demands attention to instrumentation,...

Eishockey Manager is proof that spreadsheets can, in fact, be thrilling—if you really love ice hockey. Released in 1993, this is a hardcore management sim that skips the flas...

Released in 1988, Life & Death offers an unusually serious medical simulation where players assume the role of a surgeon responsible for diagnosing illnesses and performing delicat...

Gorillas, also known as "Gorillas.bas," is a turn-based artillery game that was included as a sample program with Microsoft QBasic, an IDE and interpreter for a variant of the...

If you ever wanted to run a football club without leaving your chair, The Manager (1991, DOS) delivers. This early management sim lets you buy players, balance budgets, and suffer ...

Ah yes, Blood (1997)—the cheerful little game where you rise from the grave, wield a pitchfork, and quote evil-sounding movie lines while setting cultists on fire. It’s...

Released in 1991, Lemmings introduced one of the most unforgettable puzzle concepts ever created. Players must guide an army of tiny green-haired creatures toward safety by assigni...

Supremacy: You Will Be Done (also known simply as Overlord) is a rare example of mix between real-time strategy and science fiction themed 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploid, eXterm...

In Black Gold (1989), you're in the cutthroat world of oil barons. It’s like Dallas, but with more charts and fewer cowboy hats. You build rigs, negotiate deals, and try to o...

By the time Space Quest 3: The Pirates of Pestulon arrived in 1989, Roger Wilco had become something of a professional survivor. This time he starts the game stranded in a garbage ...

Emmanuelle: A Game of Eroticism is less about eroticism and more about awkward curiosity. Released in 1989, it’s a slow, text-heavy experience filled with suggestion, innuend...