abandonware games sorted by popularity

Finally, a game where you don’t blast aliens—you launch real people into space, with all the white-knuckled tension of 1960s NASA. Buzz Aldrin’s Race into Space i...

One Must Fall: 2097 is a fighting game released in 1994 by Epic MegaGames. Set in a futuristic world, the game features giant humanoid robots known as HARs (Human-Assisted Robots) ...

When Little Big Adventure appeared in 1994, it immediately stood out thanks to its imaginative world, memorable storytelling, and charming protagonist Twinsen. Blending action, adv...

Based on a book series almost nobody remembers, Below The Root drops you into a serene world of treehouses, talking children, and deeply philosophical moral choices. Combat does no...

By the time Premier Manager 3 rolled around, the series had cemented its reputation as the thinking fan’s football fix. Released in 1994, it refined the formula once again, o...

Night Breed is a 1990 action game based on the dark, unsettling world of Clive Barker, which means players should not expect a cheerful stroll through a particularly friendly neigh...

Ah yes, the game that crawled so Ultima could run. Akalabeth is a wireframe dungeon crawl where you descend into monster-infested labyrinths with the elegance of a lost spreadsheet...

Based on the fantasy novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Death Gate (1994) throws you into an epic, puzzle-heavy adventure. Imagine Myst, but with more dragons and a script ...

Ford Simulator 3 (1992, DOS) pushes the formula further, polishing visuals and adding enough variety to feel like a modest evolution rather than a simple update. The driving segmen...

Karadoc’s back, and apparently inflation hit the dungeon economy hard—he wants his gold! Cadaver: The Payoff is less a sequel and more a direct continuation, like findi...

Operation Wolf is a 1989 arcade-style military shooter that puts the player directly into the middle of a dangerous rescue mission. The objective is simple enough: shoot enemies, p...

Panza Kick Boxing is a 1991 sports simulation that takes the brutal world of kickboxing seriously enough to reward technique while still remaining accessible to determined newcomer...

The Geekwad: Games of the Galaxy is a collection of bizarre mini-games aimed squarely at players who enjoy their arcade action with a generous helping of nonsense. Rather than buil...

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is a landmark open-world RPG that drops players into the strange island of Vvardenfell, a place filled with volcanic landscapes, ancient ruins, pol...

In King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne, King Graham trades royal paperwork for a perilous journey to find the woman destined to become his queen. The adventure expands upon its p...

Released in 2000, Extreme Shopper is one of those games that sounds like a joke—until you realize it fully commits to the premise. You play as a shopper navigating a chaotic ...

You thought the first one was hard? Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty laughs at your pain and then asks you to infiltrate a Gestapo HQ with a knife and a prayer. This standalone e...

Circuit's Edge is a cyberpunk-themed role-playing game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom. It was released in 1990 for MS-DOS. Set in a dystopian future, Cir...

Indianapolis 500 in 1989 was one of the earliest racing simulators to take itself very seriously, and that seriousness paid off. Rather than arcade thrills, it focused on realism, ...

DOSBox is an open-source emulator that allows you to run software and games designed for the MS-DOS operating system on modern computers. As you probably already know, MS-DOS was a...

Snake Logan is back, and this time the lab is... hidden! The Hidden Lab cranks up the challenge with more grotesque mutants, more lethal traps, and slightly improved sarcasm. It&rs...

Ultimate Soccer Manager taps into the irresistible fantasy of running a football club without ever leaving your chair. Instead of flashy graphics, it offers spreadsheets, statistic...

Amberstar is a fantasy old school RPG very similar to Ultima 6 that uses a top-down view for interiors and small locations and a first person pseudo 3D view for everything else. Un...

Before Command & Conquer, there was Command HQ (1990, DOS/Mac)—an early RTS that said “what if we made World War III playable?” It’s global domination m...

Step into a dungeon, take a left at the creepy skeleton, and say hello to Bloodwych, the 1989 DOS game that proves co-op first-person dungeon crawling can be both confusing and odd...

Just when you thought Keen could catch a break, Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle drops him into a mystical realm full of bouncing jelly beans and sentient toasters. This is w...

Wing Commander 2: Vengeance of the Kilrathi builds on its predecessor with a larger story, more elaborate missions, and an even stronger sense that your career as a fighter pilot i...

Mixed-up Fairy Tales takes the familiar world of classic fairy tales and gives it a playful shake, scattering characters, objects, and stories into a wonderfully confused adventure...

Balance of Power: The 1990 Edition is a geopolitical strategy game developed by Chris Crawford and released in 1985. It is considered a classic in the genre of political and strate...