abandonware games sorted by popularity

Sword of Fargoal remake takes the classic dungeon-crawling idea and gives it another chance to tempt reckless adventurers underground. The objective sounds straightforward enough: ...

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...

Forget Freddy’s razor glove for a second - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1989) for DOS is terrifying in its own way. Mostly because of the controls. You play as a teen trying to...

Turbo Pascal 7 (TP7) is a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was developed by Borland as an ev...

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...

Grim Fandango is an adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1998 and is known for its unique setting and distinctive art style. The game was directe...

Epic (1992, DOS) lives up to its name—or at least tries very, very hard. It’s a space combat game bursting with ambition, tossing you into dogfights that feel massive e...

Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon mixes detective fiction, science fiction, comedy, puzzles, and full-motion video into one gloriously eccentric adventure. Tex Murphy is a private i...

Alien Legacy (1994) is like SimCity crashed into Star Trek and nobody called the insurance company. It’s a real-time strategy/simulation game that has you managing a colony i...

Italicized title: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I. Bringing Tolkien’s legendary novel to computers was never going to be an easy task, but this role-playing ad...

King’s Bounty is a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements, originally released in 1990 by New World Computing. It was created by Jon Van Caneghem, also known for the Migh...

For the first time, the spotlight falls on Princess Rosella in King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella, an adventure that combines fairy tales with genuine danger. Her quest to save...

Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive is a delightful blend of detective noir, sci-fi weirdness, and FMV acting that swings between charming and unintentionally hilarious. You step int...

Alternate Reality: The City is a role-playing video game developed by Paradise Programming for various platforms including Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, and Commodore 64. It was released ...

With Zork Zero, Infocom decided to throw everything into the cauldron: graphics, mouse support, and a jester who won’t shut up. A prequel to the original trilogy, it’s ...

Hi-Octane is exactly what the title suggests, a fast-paced racing experience that prioritizes speed and chaos over realism. The vehicles feel more like futuristic experiments than ...

Banner Mania is a DOS graphics utility devoted to the surprisingly important art of making banners, signs, headings, and other large pieces of text. Before modern desktop publishin...

There’s something oddly admirable about a game that hands you a polyester-clad disaster like Larry and says, “Go on, make him succeed.” Leisure Suit Larry 1: In t...

If Shakespeare wrote video games and then decided, “You know what this needs? A parser and some pixelated drama,” you'd get Avon. In this interactive fiction gem from 1...

If Barbie was mildly passive in her 1992 debut, Barbie Super Model (1993) puts her on the runway—literally. You’ll practice walking, dodging obstacles, and matching out...

In Color Lines (1992, DOS), colors aren’t just pretty—they're plotting your demise. You match five or more balls in a row before your screen becomes a chaotic rainbow p...

Super Solvers: Treasure Mountain! is an educational adventure that sends players into a colorful mountain environment filled with puzzles, treasures, creatures, and questions desig...

Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion turns up the difficulty (and the body count) by tossing Dave into a gothic nightmare of zombies, ghosts, and bloodthirsty critters. Armed with...

Based on the film that made air guitar cool (briefly), Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is a time-traveling puzzler where history class meets stoner logic. Gather historical figu...

Elvira 2: The Jaws of Cerberus doubles down on everything that made the first game memorable: horror, humor, and puzzles that seem designed to mock you. Elvira herself steals the s...

PHM Pegasus is a 1987 naval simulation that places players in command of a modern hydrofoil missile ship. The game focuses on controlling the vessel, managing weapons, and completi...

X-COM: Terror from the Deep (also known as X-COM 2) is a DOS science fiction tactical strategy game and the sequel to one of the most popular DOS games in history, X-COM: UFO ...

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...

Released in 1997, Little Big Adventure 2 (Twinsen's Odyssey) expands nearly every aspect of its predecessor with a larger world, richer story, and even greater sense of exploration...

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...