abandonware games sorted by popularity

Before “yippee-ki-yay” became gaming shorthand for chaos, Die Hard (1989) tried to capture the movie’s skyscraper shootout on DOS. You play as John McClane, trapp...

Police Quest 2: The Vengeance is a graphical point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 1988 as the second installment in the...

Released in 1989 for DOS, The Magic Candle is a classic RPG with more depth than a wizard’s library. You must keep a sacred candle burning to prevent evil from escaping &mdas...

Think Indiana Jones meets 90s daytime TV. Amazon: Guardians of Eden is a cinematic point-and-click adventure filled with jungles, conspiracies, and more hair gel than any explorer ...

Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0 (MSFS 4.0) is a flight simulation game released by Microsoft in 1989 for MS-DOS. It was the fourth major version of the Microsoft Flight Simulator se...

Templars, assassins, and a clueless American tourist named George. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a 2D point-and-click masterpiece with more intrigue than a Vatican ba...

Supaplex is a classic puzzle game released in 1991 by Think!Ware Development for MS-DOS and Amiga. It is heavily inspired by Boulder Dash but introduces more complex mechanics.&nbs...

F-19 Stealth Fighter is all about sneaking in, doing your job, and getting out before anyone realizes what just happened. Instead of brute-force dogfighting, this game focuses on s...

Ah, Black Sect (1993), where the puzzles are cryptic, the villagers are creepy, and the atmosphere is so thick you could spread it on toast. A classic first-person point-and-click ...

Great Naval Battles vol. 3: Fury in the Pacific expands the scope and the intensity, throwing you into larger conflicts with even more to manage. In Great Naval Battles vol. 3, the...

The Smurfs is a bright and cheerful platformer that brings the tiny blue heroes to life in a world full of mushrooms, forests, and cartoon danger. You run, jump, and bounce your wa...

Commander Keen 3: Keen Must Die! is the kind of title that makes you wonder what this kid did to tick off an entire alien race. After foiling their plans twice, Keen takes the figh...

Tetris (Academysoft) from 1996 feels like the classic puzzle formula got a slightly more polished suit but kept the same addictive soul. The gameplay is instantly familiar: blocks ...

If you ever wanted to feel like you were trapped in a washing machine armed with lasers, Descent is your game. Released in 1995, this claustrophobic, six-degrees-of-freedom shooter...

SimEarth is a simulation in which you can shape and mold a planet in almost every way you can imagine. In SimEarth our planet is simulated as a whole: life, climate, atmosphere are...

A remake with ambition and tragedy, Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded promised to bring the king back in modern glory. It looked great, played smooth, and... was never officially released. W...

Super Mario Fusion: Revival is a freeware fan-made game project that aims to combine elements from various classic video games, primarily the Super Mario series and the Sonic ...

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...

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...

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...

EcoQuest 2 takes its environmental message seriously but packages it in a way that’s engaging rather than preachy. You explore lush rainforest environments, solving puzzles t...

Nebulus, also known as Tower Toppler in some regions, is a classic video game released in the 1980s. It was developed by John M. Phillips and published by Hewson Consultants. The g...

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...

Released in 1988, Alien Fires 2199 AD looks and plays like someone tried to translate a fever dream into a sci-fi RPG. You control some dude with a chin of steel and a crew that se...

Monopoly Deluxe is an abandoned turn-based top-down Monopoly adaptation  of the classic board game, developed by Parker Brothers and released by Virgin Interactive in 1992. Mo...