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...

Released in 1984, Hack is one of those games that quietly shaped an entire genre while pretending not to care if you understood it or not. This early roguelike doesn’t bother...

The Terminator: Rampage puts you behind the controls of a combat vehicle in a future where humanity's relationship with Skynet has gone about as badly as expected. The game combine...

Worms takes the basic concept of turn-based artillery and replaces the soldiers with tiny worms carrying an almost irresponsible quantity of weaponry. The result is one of those ga...

Released in 1991, Lemmings introduced one of the most unforgettable puzzle concepts ever created. Players must guide an army of tiny green-haired creatures toward safety by assigni...

Time travel stories tend to get complicated quickly, and Future Wars: Adventures in Time embraces that chaos with enthusiasm. Released in 1990, this cinematic adventure casts you a...

It Came from the Desert is a cinematic masterpiece of giant ants, paranoia, and 1950s sci-fi homage. Released in 1990 for DOS, it blends action, strategy, and storytelling into a u...

Released in 1992, Dylan Dog: Murderers brings Italy’s most famous nightmare investigator to the DOS screen with all the moody atmosphere you’d expect. It’s part p...

_Jill of the Jungle 2: Jill Goes Underground_ expands on the successful formula established by its predecessor. Released in 1992, it sends Jill into subterranean environments packe...

Nobunaga's Ambition is a 1988 strategy game set during Japan’s turbulent Sengoku period, when political alliances were fragile, rival clans were everywhere, and peaceful retireme...

For those who think snooker is too posh and billiards too French, there's Archer Maclean's Pool, the most ‘90s way to simulate the timeless art of arguing over whether that s...

F-15 Strike Eagle II takes everything that made the original a classic and cranks it up like a jet engine at full throttle. The visuals are sharper, the missions are more varied, a...

Supaplex is a deceptively simple puzzle game that takes the basic idea of moving objects around a maze and turns it into a surprisingly demanding exercise in planning. Inspired by ...

Risk: The World Conquest Game is a 1989 DOS version of the famous strategy board game, offering players the familiar objective of controlling territories and eventually conquering ...

Night Shift is a 1990 action game with a wonderfully unusual premise: instead of saving the world, the player is busy working a night shift. Naturally, this is not an ordinary job,...

Heart of China is an adventure game that leans heavily into storytelling, weaving a tale of intrigue and danger across exotic locations. The narrative is its strongest asset, pulli...

Fast, colorful, and bursting with attitude, Jazz Jackrabbit became one of the most beloved shareware platformers of the 1990s. Released in 1994, it stars a green rabbit hero racing...

The Blues Brothers 2: Jukebox Adventure follows Jake and Elwood into another platforming adventure, this time with an even stronger emphasis on the colorful, chaotic style of the s...

DOS Navigator v1.5 is a classic file manager built for users who wanted something more capable than the standard DOS command line. It provides a text-based environment for browsing...

The Black Cauldron brings Disney's animated fantasy world to the computer in the form of an adventure game. Released in 1986, it follows the story and characters of the film while ...

Might and Magic 7: For Blood and Honor marks the series’ leap into full 3D exploration, and the result feels like stepping from a dusty library of spellbooks into a bustling ...

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...

Wolfenstein 3D is one of the landmark first-person shooters, placing players behind the eyes of an Allied soldier fighting through Nazi strongholds packed with guards, dogs, secret...

Silent Service is a 1985 submarine simulation that puts players in command of an American submarine during World War II. The game combines navigation, sonar, targeting, torpedo att...

Before Virtua Tennis, there was this: 4D Sports Tennis, where physics and pixels politely shake hands and then forget why they were introduced. Released in 1990 for DOS, this game ...

The Chessmaster 2000 brought serious computer chess to a huge audience while also making the rather bold suggestion that your humble home PC could become a terrifyingly patient opp...

Forget Rambo. Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines is what happens when you drop six experts behind Nazi lines and tell them to behave tactically… or else. Every mission is a deadl...

The sequel nobody asked for, but we’re still kinda glad happened. California Games 2 adds even weirder sports: jet-skiing, hang gliding, and bodyboarding, which is like surfi...

Planetfall is a 1983 interactive fiction adventure created by Infocom that combines science fiction, humor, and clever writing into a memorable journey. Players explore an abandone...

If Speedball was a fistfight on skates, Speedball 2 is a televised riot with endorsements. More teams, more power-ups, more everything. The game’s slogan might as well be &ld...