abandonware games sorted by popularity

From the people who brought you Dungeons & Dragons, here's Blood & Magic (1996), the RTS that nobody remembers but definitely deserves a second glance. You summon golems fr...

Released in 1992, Barbie for DOS is what happens when someone asks, “What if pink could be a video game?” You play as Barbie on a quest to collect accessories and win K...

In Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail, you don’t just play King Arthur—you earn your role as the guy in charge of finding a cup with magical healing powers ...

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...

In Archimedean Dynasty, humanity did the logical thing after wrecking the surface world: moved underwater and started shooting each other in submarines. It's part tactical sim, par...

Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance is an adventure game released in 1991, developed by Steve Meretzky and published by Legend Entertainment. It’s the second installme...

By 1994, point-and-click adventures were everywhere, but Dragonsphere carved out its niche with lush graphics, an intriguing plot, and plenty of puzzles. You play a young king task...

Few games deserve the title of “classic” more than Day of the Tentacle (1993). It’s Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman at their weirdest, giving us time travel, mutant...

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...

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 ...

Prehistorik 2 builds on the first game’s formula but smooths out the rough edges. The controls are tighter, the levels more inventive, and the humor dialed up a notch. Once a...

BloodNet combines vampires, cyberspace, and noir in a cocktail so strange it probably shouldn’t work but somehow does. You are a hacker who just got bitten by a vampire and n...

Before Doom, there was Catacomb Abyss, where you throw fireballs down corridors at zombies who all apparently graduated from the same school of slow shuffling. It's a first-person ...

This 1996 point-and-click western is what you’d get if Lucky Luke and Monkey Island had an awkward but lovable baby. 3 Skulls of the Toltecs throws you into a spaghetti weste...

The year is 1995, and Abuse brings us one of the slickest, darkest run-and-gun shooters ever to crawl out of a DOS/Linux/Mac basement. You play a guy in prison for a crime he didn&...

Fascination, released in 1991 for DOS, is a point-and-click adventure that clearly wanted to be edgy, mysterious, and just a little bit scandalous. Set in a neon-soaked future full...

The final Championship Manager to grace DOS—and what a send-off. Season 97/98 is the fan-favorite for a reason: every transfer, every injury, every last-minute goal feels lik...

Ah, Championship Manager 93, the game that taught us yelling at pixels is a valid emotional outlet. It's you, a keyboard, and a list of players with stamina ratings. No fancy graph...

Circuit's Edge is a cyberpunk-themed role-playing game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom. It was released in 1990 for MS-DOS. Set in a dystopian future, Cir...

Amberstar is a fantasy old school RPG very similar to Ultima 6 that uses a top-down view for interiors and small locations and a first person pseudo 3D view for everything else. Un...

The Colonel's Bequest is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 1989 for various platforms, including MS-DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST. T...

Quake II is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and released in 1997. It is the sequel to the original Quake and was a significant milestone in the evolution...

Escape from Hell asks the important question: what if escaping the underworld were less Dante and more sarcastic road trip? You descend into a demon-infested landscape armed with d...

B.A.T. is a cyberpunk-themed adventure game released in 1989 by UBI Soft for various platforms, including Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and later the Commodore 64. It blends adventure, ...

Released in 1982, Deadline is one of Infocom’s classic text adventures, and it doesn’t pull punches. You’re a detective with twelve in-game hours to solve a murde...

Impossible Mission 2 proves that espionage is mostly about jumping carefully and avoiding suspicious furniture. Released in 1988 for DOS, this sequel expands on the original's plat...

In 1998, Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War decided the world needed fewer corridors and more cosmic dogfights. Instead of bumping into walls like a drunken astronaut, you&rs...