abandonware games sorted by popularity

By 1994, digging had evolved from arcade twitch action to full-on economic warfare. Diggers on DOS turned mining into a cutthroat competition between quirky alien races, each with ...

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...

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...

The Magic Candle 2 (1991, DOS) expands the world, story, and ambition of its predecessor. With forty heroes scattered across a sprawling realm, you’ll spend as much time mana...

Based on the Tom Clancy-inspired novel, Team Yankee puts you in charge of a tank platoon during World War III. It’s the Cold War gone hot, and you’re the unlucky comman...

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...

Visual Basic 3 (VB3) is a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) released by Microsoft in 1993. It is part of the Visual Basic (VB) series, which is know...

Part puzzle, part platformer, part “what is even happening,” Bombuzal (1989, DOS) is a game where your job is to blow up every bomb on the screen—while not accide...

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...

MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients is the sequel to MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy. It is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1991, developed by Par...

Extreme Pinball from 1995 takes a classic pastime and injects it with a generous dose of digital attitude. This isn’t a calm, gentlemanly pinball experience—it’s ...

Zany Golf is what happens when someone says, “Let’s make miniature golf, but with teleporters, hamburgers, and anti-gravity pads.” Part mini-golf simulator, part ...

Bolo Ball is a DOS game from the mid-1990s. It features a physics-based gameplay where the objective is to knock opponent balls out of an arena. When you start the game, you find y...

Atlantis: The Lost Tales is a graphic adventure game developed by Cryo Interactive and released in 1997. It is the first in a series of games set around the legendary lost city of ...

Before Worms made artillery games cute, Bang! Bang! let you and a friend lob cartoonish shells at each other using nothing but angles, wind speed, and pure spite. It's a math lesso...

Yes, Astrotit (1987) is really the name, and no, it’s not what you think — though it does feel like it was named by a bored teenager. This side-scrolling shooter puts y...

Myst is a classic puzzle-adventure video game that was first released in 1993. It was developed by Cyan, a small independent game development studio. The game was initially release...

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...

ZZT (1991, DOS) looks like it was drawn by an enthusiastic ASCII artist with too much time and not enough colors. And yet, it’s brilliant. Part action game, part puzzle adven...

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...

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet software for personal computers, and it played a pivotal role in the early history of personal computing. It was developed by Dan Bricklin and Bo...

SimCity 3000 is a city-building simulation game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in 1999 as the third major installment in the SimCity series, f...

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...

If Sorcerer Lord was about controlling armies, Sorcerian (1990, DOS) zooms in to the party level — a side-scrolling RPG that’s as odd as it is ambitious. You build a te...