abandonware games sorted by popularity

Ah yes, Blood (1997)—the cheerful little game where you rise from the grave, wield a pitchfork, and quote evil-sounding movie lines while setting cultists on fire. It’s...

Ah, the late '90s: when cars exploded for no reason and acronyms made everything cooler. Axelerator: Have a N.I.C.E. day! is a 1997 Windows racer that asks, “What if racing w...

Robocop 3 is a 1992 DOS action game based on the third Robocop movie, expanding the familiar formula with shooting, platforming, and vehicle-based sequences. Players control the ar...

Flight of the Amazon Queen is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Interactive Binary Illusions and originally released in 1995. The game is heavily inspired by the likes ...

Sango Fighter is a 1993 fighting game inspired by the historical Three Kingdoms period of China, transforming famous generals and warriors into combatants for one-on-one battles. P...

Welcome to Alter Ego: Male Version, where your life begins with a cry and a diaper and only goes downhill - or uphill, depending on your choices. This text-based simulation lets yo...

NASCAR Racing is a 1994 racing simulation that takes the world of stock-car racing seriously enough to make players appreciate just how much can go wrong while driving in a circle....

Ultimate Soccer Manager 2 refines the original formula, adding more depth, more leagues, and a slightly more approachable interface. It still revolves around data, decisions, and d...

In Curse of Enchantia, a young boy is whisked away to a magical world full of bizarre creatures, tricky puzzles, and an alarming number of ways to die. The game’s whimsical a...

Sid Meier took one look at Earth and said, “Let’s leave this dump.” Thus, Alpha Centauri (1999, Windows XP) was born - a 4X strategy game that takes Civilization ...

Explosions? Check. Missiles? Check. Graphics that look like someone spilled gray soup on your monitor? Double check. A-10 Tank Killer lets you pilot a flying war machine and rain c...

Released in 1995, Psycho Pinball is what happens when traditional pinball eats too much sugar and loses its mind. It’s loud, colorful, and gleefully unhinged, with four disti...

This one’s a flight sim for people who think Top Gun didn’t have enough fuel gauges. 1942: The Pacific Air War puts you in the cockpit of World War II fighter planes, c...

Borland Turbo C v2 built on the foundations of the first Turbo C release and became another popular tool for DOS programmers who wanted a fast, compact C development environment. T...

Based on the legendary Argentine comic, L'Eternauta: Gli Invasori della Città Eterna (1994) is bleak, atmospheric, and proudly uninterested in holding your hand. Set in a sn...

Pong v.2.1 clone is a 1984 recreation of the legendary arcade game that helped start the video game industry. The concept remains wonderfully simple: two players control paddles an...

Warlords is a fantasy strategy game that turns the world into a massive board game of conquest. You command heroes, raise armies, capture cities, and summon mythical creatures in a...

Released in 1993 for DOS, A320 Airbus is less “Top Gun” and more “Intro to Aeronautical Bureaucracy.” It’s a flight simulator so realistic, even real ...

Adventure meets archaeology in Pyramids of Egypt (1989), a classic maze platformer where you loot tombs, dodge snakes, and pray the ceiling doesn’t collapse on you. You play ...

Exile: Escape from the Pit, released in 1995, is where the whole strange, subterranean saga begins. You’re exiled—literally—thrown into an underground world and t...

Darklands is what happens when medieval Europe gets even darker than it already was. This 1992 RPG drops you into the Holy Roman Empire, but don’t expect knights in shining a...

Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion turns up the difficulty (and the body count) by tossing Dave into a gothic nightmare of zombies, ghosts, and bloodthirsty critters. Armed with...

Hard Nova blends space exploration with role-playing elements, creating an experience that feels like a tabletop campaign decided to go digital and slightly unpredictable. You mana...

Before James Bond was saving the world with cinematic flair, he was crashing pixelated helicopters in 007: License to Kill. This top-down action game takes the movie and crams it i...

Microsoft Decathlon challenges players to compete in ten demanding track-and-field events, including running, jumping, throwing, and several activities specifically designed to mak...

A-Train (1992) is the game that proves building a railroad empire can be just as stressful as running an actual train. Available on DOS and Mac, it’s a complex economic simul...

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...

In 1983, Battlezone asked: what if vector graphics could give you war-induced vertigo? You’re in a tank, in a wireframe world, fighting other tanks. That’s it. But it&r...

Gorillas, also known as "Gorillas.bas," is a turn-based artillery game that was included as a sample program with Microsoft QBasic, an IDE and interpreter for a variant of the...

Running a television station sounds glamorous until every program threatens to destroy your ratings. Mad TV cleverly blends business simulation, humor, and sabotage into an addicti...