abandonware games sorted by popularity

From 1987’s text adventure golden age, The Lurking Horror proves you don’t need graphics to be terrified. You’re a student trapped on a snowy university campus du...

Fascination, released in 1991 for DOS, is a point-and-click adventure that clearly wanted to be edgy, mysterious, and just a little bit scandalous. Set in a neon-soaked future full...

SimEarth is a simulation in which you can shape and mold a planet in almost every way you can imagine. In SimEarth our planet is simulated as a whole: life, climate, atmosphere are...

By Ultima 3, the series had discovered the magic of party-based adventuring. No longer a lonely trek, now you command a ragtag group of heroes who bicker only in your imagination. ...

Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? is an educational computer game and television game show franchise created by Broderbund. It focuses on teaching geography and history while playe...

Before Keen went full-on galactic hero, he had a Keen Dreams. Literally. This midquel drops him in a dreamscape ruled by King Boobus Tuber (yes, really), where vegetables are evil ...

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...

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...

Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance is an adventure game released in 1991, developed by Steve Meretzky and published by Legend Entertainment. It’s the second installme...

Flight of the Amazon Queen is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Interactive Binary Illusions and originally released in 1995. The game is heavily inspired by the likes ...

King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella is an adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1988. It is the fourth installment in the popular King's Quest series creat...

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...

Think Dungeon Master, but in space, and your party is made of four remote-controlled robot prisoners. Welcome to Captive, where the only thing more confusing than the plot is the m...

This 1989 game is based on the animated movie where dogs die, go to heaven, then come back for revenge (sort of). The DOS adaptation? Well, it’s more like All Pixels Go Nowhe...

Q*bert is a classic arcade game that was created by Warren Davis and Jeff Lee and was released by Gottlieb in 1982. The main goal of Qbert is to change the color of every...

Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe is a combat flight simulation game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games (later known as LucasArts) in 1991. It was designed for MS-DOS systems...

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...

Ah, Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior—the game where loincloths are tiny and sword swings are deadly. This 1989 fighter slashed its way onto DOS with decapitations, grunts, and...

Panger General is a turn based strategy wargame developed by SSI set in World War 2. The player can choose Axis or Allies and fight against the AI or another human player in more t...