abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Aethra Chronicles is a fantasy RPG that leans heavily into its world-building, offering players a rich setting filled with lore, quests, and plenty of opportunities to get lost...

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...

Strategy enthusiasts looking for a detailed World War II simulation will find plenty to appreciate in MacArthur's War. Focusing on the Pacific theater, the game challenges players ...

Few adventure games establish their unsettling atmosphere as quickly as Manhunter: New York. Set in a future where alien overseers dominate Earth, the story places you in the uncom...

PKzip is one of the most recognizable compression utilities from the DOS era and became almost unavoidable in the world of downloadable software. Its main job is simple: compress f...

Italian noir meets circus mystery in Yellow Kid: Giallo al Circo, where you play a journalist with a yellow trench coat and more curiosity than self-preservation. The game’s ...

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...

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 ...

Also known as Puzzle Bobble, this bubble-popping classic stars those cute dragons from Bubble Bobble, now in competitive puzzle mode. Match three colors, clear the screen, panic as...

Titus the Fox is a colorful platform game starring Titus, a determined fox who must travel through hazardous environments to rescue his girlfriend. The game throws obstacles, enemi...

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 expands the theme-park management formula with more attractions, construction options, scenarios, and creative possibilities. Players design elaborate amusem...

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...

Skale Tracker is a music tracker designed for composing and arranging electronic music on a computer, continuing a tradition that began with classic tracker software on Amiga and D...

Elite Plus takes everything intimidating about Elite and polishes it just enough to feel slightly less hostile. The visuals are improved, the interface smoother, but the soul remai...

Released in 1997, Extreme Assault is a bold and ambitious hybrid that blends flight simulation with ground combat in a futuristic setting. You pilot advanced military hardware acro...

Borland Turbo C v1 introduced one of the classic programming environments of the personal-computer era. Released when C development on DOS could be a rather intimidating affair, Tu...

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...

Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol is a deep dungeon-crawling role-playing game designed for players who enjoy building powerful characters one dangerous expedition at a time. The under...

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...

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...

Elvira 2: The Jaws of Cerberus doubles down on everything that made the first game memorable: horror, humor, and puzzles that seem designed to mock you. Elvira herself steals the s...

If you like your RPGs verbose, Betrayal at Krondor is basically a fantasy novel you play. Set in Raymond E. Feist’s Midkemia, the game oozes with narrative depth, detailed ch...

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 ...

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...

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 Grand Theft Auto had a German uncle who worked in finance, it might look a lot like Dime City. Released in 1995 for DOS, this oddball title blends business simulation with under...

The adventures of Willy Beamish is a point-and-click adventure that perfectly captures the chaos of being a kid with too much imagination and not enough discipline. Willy is consta...

DOS Navigator v1.5 is a classic file manager built for users who wanted something more capable than the standard DOS command line. It provides a text-based environment for browsing...

Neuromancer is a 1989 adventure game inspired by William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel, and it takes players into a world of hackers, corporations, artificial intelligence, cyberspace...

If Clouds of Xeen was the sunny side of the adventure, Might and Magic 5: Darkside of Xeen gleefully flips the map over and shows you the other half. The tone is a bit darker, the ...