abandonware games sorted by popularity

Ascii Sector is what happens when someone takes Privateer, removes the graphics, and replaces them with pure ASCII and sheer willpower. It’s open-world space sim meets roguel...

Shufflepuck Café is a 1989 DOS and Macintosh arcade game that takes air hockey into a wonderfully eccentric science-fiction setting. Instead of playing against ordinary humans in ...

The Great Giana Sisters is a colorful platformer that became famous for wearing its Mario-like influences rather boldly, while still developing its own distinctive personality. The...

Alien Rampage (1996) is what happens when Duke Nukem gets stranded on a hostile alien planet and decides subtlety is for cowards. It’s a side-scrolling shooter dripping with ...

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...

Boulder Dash is a classic action-puzzle video game that was first released in 1984 by First Star Software. In Boulder Dash, players control a character named Rockford as he di...

Strip Poker: A Sizzling Game of Chance is an early example of the adult computer-game genre, taking ordinary poker and adding a rather more provocative incentive to win. The card g...

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 ...

The Colonel's Bequest is a classic Sierra mystery adventure built around a suspicious mansion, a wealthy family, and enough secrets to make an ordinary dinner party look positively...

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game from 1989 takes the same beloved film and asks a crucial question: what if archaeology required more jumping? This adaptation tr...

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...

Norton Utilities 8 is a substantial collection of maintenance and diagnostic tools designed to keep DOS computers healthy, organized, and recoverable. Rather than being a single ap...

Quattro Pro v4 is a mature DOS spreadsheet application from Borland, designed for serious number crunching and business work at a time when spreadsheets were becoming indispensable...

The Bard's Tale 2: The Destiny Knight expands the original formula with a larger world, tougher enemies, new locations, and another opportunity to discover that adventuring is most...

The Amazon Trail is an educational adventure that sends you down the Amazon River with considerably less certainty about what you are doing than the title might suggest. Released i...

Thief: The Dark Project helped redefine the stealth genre by making shadows, sound and patience more important than raw firepower. You play Garrett, a professional thief who would ...

If you ever wanted to feel like you were trapped in a washing machine armed with lasers, Descent is your game. Released in 1995, this claustrophobic, six-degrees-of-freedom shooter...

Before Worms made artillery games cute, Bang! Bang! let you and a friend lob cartoonish shells at each other using nothing but angles, wind speed, and pure spite. It's a math lesso...

Borland Turbo Pascal 2.0 continued the remarkably successful formula established by the original Turbo Pascal, providing DOS programmers with a fast compiler and integrated program...

EcoQuest 2 takes its environmental message seriously but packages it in a way that’s engaging rather than preachy. You explore lush rainforest environments, solving puzzles t...

Released in 1996 for DOS, The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo brings you back to foggy Victorian London, where murders, morphine, and moustaches abound. ...

Star Wars: Dark Forces is a 1995 first-person shooter that brought the Star Wars universe into a darker, more action-oriented setting. Players control Kyle Katarn, a mercenary work...

Master of Magic remains one of the finest fantasy strategy games ever created, blending empire building with spellcasting in a world where powerful wizards compete for absolute dom...

Treasure Island turns Robert Louis Stevenson's famous pirate adventure into a compact computer game, giving you the chance to chase buried treasure without having to spend several ...

By 1992, The Magic Candle 3 refined everything the series had built — a deep fantasy world, intricate character management, and enough side quests to last you until retiremen...

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...

Rambo 3 is a 1988 action game inspired by the popular film, putting players in the role of John Rambo during a dangerous military mission. The gameplay combines shooting, movement,...

Word Perfect 5 is one of the defining DOS word processors of its generation, offering a remarkably powerful writing environment while remaining firmly rooted in keyboard-driven com...

Imagine Marble Madness had a caffeine overdose and fell into a platformer. That’s Bumpy’s Arcade Fantasy. You control a perpetually bouncing ball named Bumpy (creative,...