abandonware games sorted by popularity

Fairy Tale Adventure 2: Halls of the Dead (1997) continues its predecessor’s tradition of sprawling fantasy exploration with a darker, more dangerous edge. Available on DOS a...

Back in 1984, Zaxxon was the future. Isometric graphics? Whoa. Shadow effects? Mind blown. But mostly, it was a game about flying a chunky spaceship through a heavily fortified spa...

By 1996, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition on DOS felt like the veteran fighter returning for one last round. You could finally play as the bosses, which was a childhood dream...

Think you’re good at making tough decisions under pressure? Advanced Civilization dares you to prove it by turning diplomacy into passive-aggressive warfare. Based on the cla...

The Temple of Apshai Trilogy is a series of classic role-playing games developed by Automated Simulations (later known as Epyx) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These games were ...

Aces of the Pacific (1992, DOS) takes to the skies over WWII’s Pacific Theater, where you can dogfight in legendary aircraft and prove your piloting prowess — or spin i...

Beetlejuice: Skeletons in the Closet is a video game based on the popular Beetlejuice franchise, which includes a 1988 film directed by Tim Burton and an animated television series...

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 Doom, there was Catacomb Abyss, where you throw fireballs down corridors at zombies who all apparently graduated from the same school of slow shuffling. It's a first-person ...

Zany Golf is what happens when someone says, “Let’s make miniature golf, but with teleporters, hamburgers, and anti-gravity pads.” Part mini-golf simulator, part ...

Lure of the Temptress (1992, DOS) is dark fantasy done right — with muddy streets, suspicious peasants, and a villainess who’s equal parts charm and cruelty. As Diermot...

Body Blows is a 2D fighting game developed and published by Team17, released in 1993. It was initially launched for the Amiga and later ported to MS-DOS. Body Blows was one of the ...

Action Soccer (1995, DOS) is what happens when you try to make a soccer game fun without worrying too much about realism, physics, or gravity. The ball bounces like it’s fill...

Master of Magic is a turn based 4x strategy game developed by SimTex and published by the well know Microprose, very similar to Civilization, with a fantasy twist. You play as a wi...

Flashback: The Quest for Identity feels like a playable sci-fi movie that misplaced its budget but kept its ambition. You wake up with amnesia, which is gaming shorthand for &ldquo...

Welcome to the squared circle of wireframe pain. Released in 1991 for DOS, this game puts you in the gloves of a boxer rendered entirely out of jagged geometry. The animation was r...

Taito’s Puzznic (1990) takes the idea of matching tiles and injects a surprising amount of strategy. You slide blocks to align pairs, but each move requires forethought&mdash...

The Aethra Chronicles is not a well know fantasy RPG, but it deserves some praise. It was developed by only one person (Micheal Lawrence) and, as the title implies, was intended to...

In The Hunt is a side-scrolling shooter that looks like Metal Slug took a deep breath and dove underwater. Released in arcades first and later ported to PC, it’s all about pi...

The Legacy: Realm of Terror is a first-person view survival horror RPG set in the modern world, in a haunted house. The Legacy was developed by Magnetic Scrolls and published by Mi...