abandonware games sorted by popularity

Days of Thunder (1990) is what happens when Hollywood’s love affair with Tom Cruise collides with DOS racing. Based on the movie of the same name, it’s an attempt to ca...

Ultima 2 asks the pressing question: what if you mixed time travel with fantasy and a truly mean sorceress named Minax? The answer is chaos. You’ll bounce between eras—...

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...

The Colonel's Bequest is a classic Sierra mystery adventure built around a suspicious mansion, a wealthy family, and enough secrets to make an ordinary dinner party look positively...

Chessmaster 9000 is a chess game developed by Ubisoft and released in 2002. It's part of the Chessmaster series, which has been around since the 1980s. Chessmaster 9000 was known f...

Gold of the Americas: The Conquest of the New World is a strategy game that invites you to rewrite history, usually by making the same mistakes but with more confidence. You manage...

Galaxian is one of those early arcade classics that proved space shooters didn’t need complicated rules to be thrilling. Instead of aliens politely marching in formation, the...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Wasteland is the kind of game that quietly changed history while pretending to be just another post-apocalyptic RPG. Long before wastelands were fashionab...

Released in 1996, Discworld 2: Mortality Bytes! continues the misadventures of Rincewind, who once again proves that cowardice can be a powerful survival tool. This time, Death has...

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans is where Blizzard’s legendary fantasy saga began. This real-time strategy classic pits humans against orcs in a battle for control of a war-torn wor...

Wizardry 2: The Knight of Diamonds takes the classic dungeon crawl and adds a few extra twists, like more mazes to get lost in and puzzles designed to make you question your life c...

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom arrived in 1989 with a simple objective: survive collapsing mines, hostile cultists, and endless hazards without losing your fedora. Based on t...

Released in 1996, Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail sends Larry aboard a luxurious cruise where romance, mystery, and comedy collide with spectacular enthusiasm. The hand-drawn a...

Monopoly Deluxe gives the familiar property-trading classic a more polished computer presentation while preserving the essential combination of buying streets, collecting rent, and...

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...

Cool Spot proves that even a soft drink mascot can star in a surprisingly fun platformer. You’re a tiny, sunglasses-wearing red dot who surfs soda bubbles, rescues friends tr...

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...

Maniac Mansion changed adventure games forever by introducing multiple playable characters, each with unique abilities that influence puzzle solutions and story outcomes. The bizar...

Transarctica presents a wonderfully bleak vision of the future in which Earth has frozen over and surviving civilization depends on enormous trains crossing the icy wilderness. The...

Contra: Locked and Loaded is like caffeine in video game form—fast, explosive, and just a little dangerous for your health. You’re running, you’re gunning, and yo...

In Altered Destiny, a perfectly average guy named P.J. Barrett gets sucked into a bizarre alien dimension because he answered a phone call. Seriously. What follows is a classic poi...

Scorched Earth (1991) was the “mother of all games” long before Doom took the title. Two or more tanks face off on a randomly generated terrain, and your only mission i...

Super Solvers: Operation Neptune is an educational adventure that combines underwater exploration with lessons disguised as missions. Players take part in a submarine-themed journe...

Crescent is a mysterious blend of action and intrigue set in a pixelated sci-fi world. The plot is sparse, dropped in cryptic hints as you battle your way through hostile landscape...

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is one of the great comedy adventures, combining clever puzzles, unforgettable characters, and writing sharp enough to cut through a pirate ship'...

Star Wars is a 1988 DOS game based on the original Star Wars trilogy, bringing the familiar universe of starfighters, space battles, and Imperial enemies to the home computer. The ...

Marble Cooking is one of those wonderfully unusual puzzle games whose premise sounds completely normal until you actually begin playing. Guiding marbles through increasingly elabor...

Black & White (2001) is what happens when a god game gets a bit too literal. You play as a deity, complete with a giant hand, an enormous ego, and a giant pet that poops on vil...

Supaplex is a deceptively simple puzzle game that takes the basic idea of moving objects around a maze and turns it into a surprisingly demanding exercise in planning. Inspired by ...

Operation Stealth is a 1990 adventure game that combines international intrigue, espionage, and the sort of dangerous missions where the protagonist probably should have taken a qu...