abandonware games sorted by popularity

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games (now known as LucasArts). It was first released in 1988 for various p...

Released in 1987, this game has you waking up in a toilet stall with no memory of who you are. As detective Ace Harding, you must clear your name and restore your memories. It's li...

Railroad Tycoon Deluxe feels like someone took the original game, showered it with confetti, tuned the engine, and handed it back with a wink. Better colors, refined scenarios, and...

Atomix is a tile-based puzzle game released in 1990 by Thalion Software for platforms like Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64. The objective of Atomix is to assemble mo...

If Clouds of Xeen was the sunny side of the adventure, Might and Magic 5: Darkside of Xeen gleefully flips the map over and shows you the other half. The tone is a bit darker, the ...

Afterlife is a simulation strategy game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1996 for Microsoft Windows and later made available on other platforms. The game wa...

Heart of the Maelstrom brings epic dungeon crawling to dizzying heights, challenging players with sprawling levels, fiendish enemies, and puzzles that seem to require a PhD in pati...

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is a graphical point and click adventure game created by LucasArts and published in 1992, based on the popular movie character. As the famous...

In Castle Master, you get dropped into a spooky polygonal castle and told, “Figure it out.” And that’s it. Early 3D graphics make every wall look like it was pain...

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 ...

Before Command & Conquer, there was Command HQ (1990, DOS/Mac)—an early RTS that said “what if we made World War III playable?” It’s global domination m...

Space Hulk is an abandoned real-time tactical strategy game set in the Warhammer  40000 universe, developed and released by Electronic Arts in 1993 for DOS and Amiga systems. ...

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...

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...

Dungeon Keeper 3: War for the Overworld is the ghost of a game that never was. Announced, teased, and then buried alive by shifting studio priorities, it exists only in the fever d...

The proto-fighting game that walked so Street Fighter could punch. Yie Ar Kung Fu is pure arcade joy: a brave martial artist named Oolong fights a rogue’s gallery of opponent...

X-Men: Children of the Atom is a fighting video game developed by Capcom and released in arcades in 1994. The game features characters from Marvel Comics' X-Men series, including p...

1893: A World's Fair Mystery is an interactive fiction game developed by the American studio Illuminated Lantern and released in 2002. Set during the Chicago World's Columbian Expo...

Ajax (1989) is like an arcade fever dream: vertical shooter, transforming vehicles, lasers everywhere, and a soundtrack that yells “blast stuff!” every few seconds. One...

Ninja Gaiden, released in 1988 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and later to other platforms, is a side-scrolling action-platformer developed by Tecmo. It follows the st...

If spreadsheets are your love language, Capitalism 2 is pure romance. This brutally detailed simulation lets you create your own corporate empire from scratch—manufacturing, ...

Stronghold, released in 1993, is a strategy simulation game developed by Stormfront Studios and published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI). Players assume the role of a lo...

Free Enterprise from 1996 is business simulation with a distinctly ’90s sense of ambition. You’re tasked with building and managing a corporate empire, juggling finance...