abandonware games sorted by popularity

One of the best licensed games of the '90s, Blade Runner (1997) puts you in the rain-soaked shoes of Ray McCoy, a detective tracking down replicants in a world where it's always ni...

Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound was an unreleased role-playing video game that was intended to be the sequel to the critically acclaimed Baldur's Gate series. It was initially a...

Utopia: The Creation of a Nation challenges you to build and manage a society, which sounds noble until everything starts going wrong at once. Released in 1992, it blends simulatio...

Alcatraz (1992) asks the question: what if Rambo got locked in prison and had to bust out while flexing dramatically the entire time? This top-down action game puts you in the very...

Think running an airline is easy? Airlines (1994) says “think again.” This old-school management sim hands you a failing fleet and a world map, then laughs quietly as y...

Cosmic Spacehead is a cheerful point-and-click adventure wrapped in platformer segments, starring a purple alien who’s equal parts explorer and goofball. You’ll travel ...

The Games: Winter Challenge takes the multi-event sports formula onto snow and ice, offering a collection of winter competitions where timing and control are considerably more impo...

Released in 1992, Sextris answered a question nobody had urgently asked by combining puzzle mechanics with cheeky adult themes. Beneath the eyebrow-raising presentation lay a surpr...

Karadoc’s back, and apparently inflation hit the dungeon economy hard—he wants his gold! Cadaver: The Payoff is less a sequel and more a direct continuation, like findi...

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York expands the formula by giving you a larger playground and more opportunities to cause cartoonish chaos. Released in 1992, it follows a similar struct...

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...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a famously peculiar interactive fiction adventure based on Douglas Adams's equally peculiar science-fiction comedy. Playing it is less about...

Tornado is a detailed combat flight simulator that asks considerably more from the player than simply pointing an aircraft at the nearest target. Based around the Panavia Tornado, ...

You are Sherlock Holmes, and someone has committed a crime, possibly because they couldn’t handle the game’s UI. 221B Baker Street is a detective board game where your ...

Released in 1992, Locomotion challenges players with increasingly complex railway-themed puzzles that require careful planning and impeccable timing. Guiding trains safely across i...

Billy’s babysitter has been abducted by aliens, and he’s not having it. Commander Keen 6: Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter! is the series at its most Saturday-morning-cartoon ...

F-22 Lightning II brings the flight sim genre into the late ’90s with faster action, flashier visuals, and a jet that feels like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. The F...

Often mistaken as a Dig Dug clone, Digger is more like its eccentric cousin who insists on bringing a disco soundtrack to every family gathering. Released in 1983 for DOS, it combi...

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...

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...

Autodesk Animator Pro was a serious animation package for DOS at a time when creating computer animation required considerably more patience than it does today. It provided tools f...

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...

Elvira 2: The Jaws of Cerberus doubles down on everything that made the first game memorable: horror, humor, and puzzles that seem designed to mock you. Elvira herself steals the s...

Pepper's Adventures in Time is a 1993 adventure game that sends players on a journey through history filled with puzzles, humor, and plenty of unusual situations. The story follows...

SimuSex is an unusual 1992 DOS simulation built around adult-themed experimentation rather than the conventional goals found in most games of the period. It treats relationships an...

If you ever wanted to play a video game that doubles as a philosophical think piece, A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985) is your ride. Released for DOS and Macintosh, this is one of Inf...

If your childhood involved model trains and elaborate setups that your cat kept destroying, 3D Ultra Lionel Traintown is digital therapy. Released in 2000 for Windows XP, it mixes ...

Comix Zone (1995, Windows XP) is what happens when a comic book artist gets pulled into his own creation and reacts by roundhouse-kicking everything in sight. Stylized to the max, ...

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...

Shadowlands (1992, DOS) hands you a party of adventurers and then expects you to coordinate them like a fantasy air-traffic controller. Instead of a single hero, you manage four ch...