abandonware games sorted by popularity

A Personal Nightmare (1989) blends horror and detective work into one spooky little cocktail of 1980s DOS game design. You return to your hometown to find it overrun by demonic pos...

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...

The sequel no one expected takes our trench-coated hero from gothic horror to gangster ghost story. Yes, Alone in the Dark 2 (1993, DOS) swaps Lovecraftian horror for Tommy guns an...

Panza Kick Boxing is a video game released in 1990 for the Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, DOS, and ZX Spectrum platforms. It was developed and published by Loriciel. T...

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 ...

ADOM is what happens when a rogue, a wizard, and a hungry troll walk into a dungeon and never come out. Released in 1996, this roguelike classic is brutal, brilliant, and unapologe...

In Command Adventures: Starship (1995, DOS), you’re the captain, the admiral, and occasionally the guy who has to fix the hyperdrive when it’s on fire. This obscure gem...

Hugo III: Jungle of Doom is a point-and-click adventure game released in 1992. It is the third game in the Hugo adventure series, developed by David P. Gray for MS-DOS. Hugo a...

DOSBox is an open-source emulator that allows you to run software and games designed for the MS-DOS operating system on modern computers. As you probably already know, MS-DOS was a...

Drakkhen (1989) was weird—wonderfully, gloriously weird. A 3D RPG before 3D was really ready, it let you roam a strange fantasy world full of surreal landscapes, bizarre enem...

WordStar 4 was a popular word processing software program during the early days of personal computing. WordStar 4 included features typical of word processors in that era, all...

Gal Pani X is an action-puzzle game reminiscent of the classic arcade Qix, developed by D2 and released in 2000 for Windows. Gal Pani X is an adult-themed Doujin game: it was made ...

Questprobe Featuring Spider-Man is an abandoned text-based adventure game designed by Scott Adams, developed and released by Adventure International in 1986 for DOS but was also pu...

Motorcycle racing has never looked so… polygonal. Team Suzuki puts you in the leather suit of a professional racer hurtling around pixel-perfect tracks. The controls are twi...

The spiritual sequel to SimTower, Yoot Tower asks the important question: what if you were god, but only over elevators, sushi bars, and the occasional alien invasion? It’s a...

Flying Tigers 2 (1994, DOS) doubles down on the formula of its predecessor and adds a bit more bite to the bark. The action is still brisk, but the skies feel busier, the stakes sl...

Oil's Well is an action-puzzle game released by Sierra On-Line in 1983/84. It was originally made for platforms like the Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS, but was la...

Syndicate is a cyberpunk-themed tactical action game developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1993. The game is set in a dystopian future where corpora...

Times of Lore is an abandoned action RPG designed by Chris Roberts, developed and released by Origin Systems in 1989 for DOS and many more 8 bit and 16 bit platforms. Compared to U...

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...

Fairy Nights (2000) is a late-era fantasy title that leans heavily into charm rather than spectacle. Built for Windows XP, it feels like a cozy bedtime story turned into an interac...

Sam & Max Hit the Road is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1993 and is based on the characters Sam and Max created by c...