abandonware games sorted by popularity

Police Quest 3: The Kindred is an adventure video game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1991. It is the third installment in the Police Quest series, which was designed...

Before Wake of the Ravager, there was Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, the first CRPG to bring Athas to life. It was a bold departure from the usual Gold Box formula, with more freedom i...

Emmanuelle: A Game of Eroticism is less about eroticism and more about awkward curiosity. Released in 1989, it’s a slow, text-heavy experience filled with suggestion, innuend...

Westwood Studios decided to take a break from commanding and conquering to give us Nox, a fast-paced action RPG with more personality than it has any right to. You can play as a wa...

With a title that sounds like a deep-sea motivational poster, Big Sea: The Better One Will Win is a maritime strategy game where the stakes are high and the water’s pixelated...

Step into Crazy Nick’s Leisure Suit Larry Casino and leave your wallet safe—only your pride is at stake here. Larry Laffer, king of questionable fashion, hosts a digita...

Welltris is a puzzle video game designed by Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris. Released in 1989, Welltris offers a fresh take on the block-dropping mechanics of Tetris, expand...

ADOM is what happens when a rogue, a wizard, and a hungry troll walk into a dungeon and never come out. Released in 1996, this roguelike classic is brutal, brilliant, and unapologe...

In Castle Master, you get dropped into a spooky polygonal castle and told, “Figure it out.” And that’s it. Early 3D graphics make every wall look like it was pain...

The 2006 DOS revival of Ghostbusters tries to bottle the movie’s charm, with proton packs, traps, and a healthy dose of spectral chaos. The graphics may not make you scream, ...

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...

X-Men: Children of the Atom is a fighting video game developed by Capcom and released in arcades in 1994. The game features characters from Marvel Comics' X-Men series, including p...

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...

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 ...

Before there was Baldur’s Gate or Skyrim, there was DND. This 1984 DOS dungeon crawler is as old-school as it gets, complete with ASCII graphics, endless hallways, and monste...

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games (now known as LucasArts). It was first released in 1988 for various p...

Caution: subtlety not included. Blue Angel 69, released in 1989 for DOS, is basically what happens when a programmer tries to mix erotic art with a tile-based puzzle game and ends ...

From the people who brought you Dungeons & Dragons, here's Blood & Magic (1996), the RTS that nobody remembers but definitely deserves a second glance. You summon golems fr...

With Might and Magic 4: Clouds of Xeen, the series heads to the colorful world of Xeen, where the sky is bright, the monsters are plentiful, and the sense of adventure is delightfu...

Crescent is a mysterious blend of action and intrigue set in a pixelated sci-fi world. The plot is sparse, dropped in cryptic hints as you battle your way through hostile landscape...

Car Builder is less about speed and more about spreadsheets—just with axles. In this 1982 gem, you don’t race cars, you design them. From gear ratios to weight distribu...

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 ...

Bigger, darker, and just as merciless, Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep doubled down on everything that made the first game great—and slightly unhinged. Released in...

This one’s a flight sim for people who think Top Gun didn’t have enough fuel gauges. 1942: The Pacific Air War puts you in the cockpit of World War II fighter planes, c...

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993) is a classic first-person RPG that understands pacing better than many of its peers. It offers a rich fantasy world, memorable characters,...

Before its sequel, there was Dark Reign: The Future of War (1997), a forward-thinking RTS that introduced mechanics ahead of its time, like customizable AI scripts for units. The r...