abandonware games sorted by popularity

Before Football Manager devoured your social life, there was Championship Manager. With graphics as bare as a locker room and stats as detailed as a tax form, it’s a numbers ...

After the success of Ultima 6: The False Prophet, Origin decided to "create worlds" not part of the popular Ultima series (strictly speaking) using the same engine of Ultima 6. The...

Released in 1988, BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception is part RPG, part strategy, part “did I just die in the tutorial again?” You’re a young MechWarrior on...

Deus Ex is a critically acclaimed action role-playing video game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released in 2000 and was designed by Warren Spect...

BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge is a turn-based strategy game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom in 1990. It is the sequel to "Crescent Hawk's I...

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...

Test Drive 3: The Passion takes the “driving simulator” label and adds just enough early-’90s flair to make you feel like a rebel with a V8. Forget endless racetr...

Mutants! Explosions! Green slime! Bio Menace kicks off with Dr. Mangle’s Lab, a side-scrolling blast of carnage where you, Snake Logan (yes, really), shoot your way through a...

If Star Trek: 25th Anniversary isn’t on your DOS nostalgia list, fix that now. Released in 1992, it’s a point-and-click adventure that actually feels like classic Star ...

Do you find spreadsheets thrilling? Does the idea of profit margins make your heart race? Then Business Simulator is your kind of party. It’s all about running a faceless com...

Super Space Invaders takes the old “shoot the aliens before they land” formula and pours a shot of espresso into it. The result? Faster, flashier, and mildly panic-indu...

Lamborghini: American Challenge (1992) is what happens when arcade racing meets a poster-covered teenage bedroom. You race exotic cars across the U.S., earn money, upgrade vehicles...

In Ambush at Sorinor, tactics meet fantasy in a land where ambushing people is apparently the national sport. You’re a mercenary commander picking the right team to win missi...

Stunt Car Racer is an abandoned first-person 3D perspective racing game designed by Geoffrey J. Crammond, developed and released by Microstyle in 1989 for DOS and many other platfo...

The sequel nobody asked for, but we’re still kinda glad happened. California Games 2 adds even weirder sports: jet-skiing, hang gliding, and bodyboarding, which is like surfi...

The Wizard's Castle is a classic text-based, dungeon-crawling adventure game released in 1980, designed by Joseph R. Power. The game was originally developed for the Exidy Sorcerer...

Tetris is the kind of game that looks harmless until you realize you’ve been staring at falling blocks for three hours straight. Released in 1987, this deceptively simple puzzle ...

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...

Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol is fantasy RPG game released in 1995 for Windows 3.x, but it runs flawlessy even Windows XP (see this faq if you want to play Mordor in a virtual...

ARJ is a file compression utility and file format created by Robert K. Jung. The name "ARJ" stands for "Archived by Robert Jung." It was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s a...

The classic bomb-defusing, platform-hopping, enemy-dodging chaos of Bomb Jack gets a fresh coat of pixels in this 2002 DOS remake. You’re still the tiny superhero hopping aro...

Mega lo Mania, also known as Mega-Lo-Mania: The Battle for Elysium in some regions, is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by Sensible Software and published by Image W...

Karnov is a classic side-scrolling action arcade game developed by Data East in 1987. The game features a unique protagonist named Jinborov Karnovski, or "Karnov", a fire-breathing...

Lemmings is a classic puzzle-platformer video game developed by DMA Design (now known as Rockstar North) and published by Psygnosis. It was originally released in 1991 for the Amig...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a humorous free text adventure game based on the novel of the same name written by Douglas Adams (if you never read it, shame on you!). The ...

Wipeout is a popular racing video game known for its high-speed gameplay, anti-gravity racing vehicles, and electronic music soundtracks. Wipeout was developed and published b...