abandonware games sorted by popularity

Based on a book series almost nobody remembers, Below The Root drops you into a serene world of treehouses, talking children, and deeply philosophical moral choices. Combat does no...

One Must Fall: 2097 is a fighting game released in 1994 by Epic MegaGames. Set in a futuristic world, the game features giant humanoid robots known as HARs (Human-Assisted Robots) ...

The Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America in Dr. Doom's Revenge! is a crossover that feels like a comic book come to life, complete with iconic heroes and a villain who clearly en...

SkyGlobe is an astronomy software that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a DOS-based planetarium program that allowed users to explore the night sky in real-tim...

Midtown Madness is a car racing game developed by Angel Studios (later known as Rockstar San Diego) and released by Microsoft in 1999 for Windows. Midtown Madness is know...

BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge is a turn-based strategy game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom in 1990. It is the sequel to "Crescent Hawk's I...

Gremlins 2: The New Batch leans into the chaos of its source material and then adds a layer of video game unpredictability on top. In Gremlins 2, you deal with enemies that are as ...

Monopoly Deluxe is an abandoned turn-based top-down Monopoly adaptation  of the classic board game, developed by Parker Brothers and released by Virgin Interactive in 1992. Mo...

BloodNet combines vampires, cyberspace, and noir in a cocktail so strange it probably shouldn’t work but somehow does. You are a hacker who just got bitten by a vampire and n...

FlixMix feels like someone took a film editor’s desk, scattered it across a computer screen, and invited you to tidy up at speed. The premise is deceptively simple: assemble ...

Ah, Budokan, the game where patience and discipline meet awkwardly slow combat and the occasional flying kick. You play as a martial arts student training in various dojos, culmina...

If Frontier: Elite 2 opened the door to a vast universe, Frontier: First Encounters in 1995 basically kicked it wide open and invited you to wander in. This sequel expands the form...

Inner Worlds is the kind of side-scroller that sneaks up on you. At first, it’s a fantasy action-platformer—monsters, dungeons, the usual—but then you discover th...

Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals is a comedic adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 1989 as the t...

Released in 1993, Jurassic Park allows players to experience the dangers of a dinosaur-filled island without the inconvenience of signing legal waivers. Based on the blockbuster fi...

ARJ is a file compression utility and file format created by Robert K. Jung. The name "ARJ" stands for "Archived by Robert Jung." It was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s a...

Lemmings is a classic puzzle-platformer video game developed by DMA Design (now known as Rockstar North) and published by Psygnosis. It was originally released in 1991 for the Amig...

Premier Manager 2 polished the formula, giving football nerds even more stats to obsess over. If you thought juggling line-ups and balancing books was fun in the first game, this s...

Back in 1992, The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel set the bar for pixelated deduction. A famous actress is dead, and every gentleman in London seems...

Environmental doom simulator? Check. Grim statistics? Double check. Balance of the Planet lets you tinker with carbon emissions, wildlife extinction, and deforestation until you ei...

Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0 (MSFS 4.0) is a flight simulation game released by Microsoft in 1989 for MS-DOS. It was the fourth major version of the Microsoft Flight Simulator se...

Based on the cult comedy film, Wayne’s World (1993, DOS) is loud, weird, and occasionally frustrating—much like its source material. This platformer throws Wayne and Ga...

Frederik Pohl’s Gateway is science fiction that doesn’t hold your hand—or particularly care if you survive. Based on Pohl’s novel, this 1992 adventure drops...

Mutants! Explosions! Green slime! Bio Menace kicks off with Dr. Mangle’s Lab, a side-scrolling blast of carnage where you, Snake Logan (yes, really), shoot your way through a...