abandonware games sorted by popularity

Midtown Madness turns the streets of Chicago into one enormous playground for chaotic driving, where racing is only one of several excellent excuses to ignore traffic laws. Players...

F-15 Strike Eagle III is a combat flight simulation video game released in 1992. It was developed by MicroProse and is the third installment in the F-15 Strike Eagle series. T...

Empire Earth asks a bold question: what if we took all of human history and turned it into one very long real-time strategy match? From cavemen to mech-wielding future armies, this...

A remake with ambition and tragedy, Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded promised to bring the king back in modern glory. It looked great, played smooth, and... was never officially released. W...

The Dig is a thoughtful science-fiction adventure from LucasArts that sends a small group of explorers to an alien world after a mysterious object is discovered near Earth. What be...

In Corruption, you’re a businessman trapped in a web of deceit, murder, and paperwork. It’s an interactive fiction game where every conversation could be a clue—o...

Yu-Gi-Oh! Online takes the collectible card game into a persistent digital environment where players can build decks, duel opponents, and spend a suspicious amount of time discussi...

If holiday cheer could be bottled into pixels, HappyLand Adventures: X-mas Edition would probably come with a candy cane aftertaste and a mild sugar rush. This cheerful platformer ...

By the time Goblins 3 rolls around, the formula gets a shake-up, introducing a single controllable character who can summon others as needed. It’s a clever twist, though it t...

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...

F29 Retaliator is what happens when a flight simulator decides it wants to be a blockbuster action movie. You’re piloting a fictional next-generation stealth fighter through ...

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...

Vette! is a driving game built around the unmistakable spectacle of cruising a high-performance Corvette through San Francisco. Instead of confining you to a neat racing circuit, t...

Superfrog is a cheerful platform adventure starring a frog who has somehow found himself in a world filled with enemies, obstacles, coins, and enough dangerous gaps to make amphibi...

In APB (1989), you’re a cop in a little squad car with a huge attitude problem. Your job? Pull over criminals, avoid donuts, and try not to smash into every tree, wall, and p...

Igor: Objective Uikokahonia—or however many vowels you can fit into that kingdom's name—arrived in 1995 as a delightfully oddball adventure game. Its humor leans absurd, its pu...

Marble Cooking is one of those wonderfully unusual puzzle games whose premise sounds completely normal until you actually begin playing. Guiding marbles through increasingly elabor...

By 1992, Dragon’s Lair 3: The Curse of Mordread continued Dirk’s tradition of “failing spectacularly until you don’t.” Once again, you guide the world...

World Class Leader Board is a classic golf simulation that takes a fairly serious approach to the ancient art of hitting a tiny ball into a distant hole. Rather than turning golf i...

Hugo’s House of Horrors is a classic example of early adventure gaming, complete with pixelated graphics and puzzles that require a mix of logic and guesswork. Released in 1990, ...

By 1996, Legend of the Silver Talisman delivered a more traditional RPG adventure, though with a decidedly old-school feel. It’s a game that doesn’t bother holding your...

Iznogoud from 1987 adapts the famous comic into an adventure-platform hybrid filled with traps, puzzles, and cartoon mischief. Its humor carries much of the charm, while the gamepl...

The Legacy: Realm of Terror is a dark first-person RPG that throws you into a genuinely unpleasant supernatural world. Rather than offering heroic castles and cheerful fantasy vill...

As its title boldly suggests, Late Night Sexy TV Show arrived in 1994 as an adult-themed trivia and quiz game that relies more on playful humor than genuine scandal. Players answer...

In Lucky Luke (1997, Windows), the fastest gun in the West is also the funniest. Based on the beloved Belgian comic, the game mixes platforming and slapstick as Luke outsmarts band...

Set in a foggy, postcard-perfect version of the British capital, Eagle Eye Mysteries in London takes the educational detective formula and gives it a polite accent. You play a youn...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Wasteland is the kind of game that quietly changed history while pretending to be just another post-apocalyptic RPG. Long before wastelands were fashionab...

The Incredible Toon Machine brings the familiar contraption-building formula into a world populated by cartoon characters and considerably less respect for the laws of physics. As ...

In Chicago 90, you either play as the cops or the crooks in a top-down, crime-infested, vaguely Windy City-esque setting. Think of it as a proto-GTA with more sirens and fewer mora...

Transarctica presents a wonderfully bleak vision of the future in which Earth has frozen over and surviving civilization depends on enormous trains crossing the icy wilderness. The...