abandonware games sorted by popularity

It Came from the Desert is an abandonware action-adventure game developed by Cinemaware and released in 1990 for PC (DOS) and Amiga. It Came From the Desert is an action-adventure ...

Before Street Fighter became a cultural juggernaut, it was this humble 1988 DOS brawler where Ryu’s fists felt more like sluggish bricks than blazing fireballs. The controls ...

By 1996, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition on DOS felt like the veteran fighter returning for one last round. You could finally play as the bosses, which was a childhood dream...

ATAC (1992) is what you get when someone says, “What if we made SimCity, but for waging the War on Drugs?” You play as the head of an anti-narcotics task force, deployi...

Ah, Budokan, the game where patience and discipline meet awkwardly slow combat and the occasional flying kick. You play as a martial arts student training in various dojos, culmina...

Ardentryst is the indie platformer that tried really hard to be a Metroidvania and kinda pulled it off. With anime-style art, RPG elements, and two playable characters, it’s ...

In the 25th century, bureaucracy is still awful—but now you also have laser guns. Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday is a surprisingly solid sci-fi RPG that blends space oper...

Space Harrier is a 3rd-person view rail-shooter developed by Sega in 1985. Space Harrier was a hit in the arcades, and later it was converted for a number of platforms, including D...

Welcome to Z, the real-time strategy game where psychotic robots with British accents duke it out over territory in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Think Command & Conquer if the...

Long before Minecraft let us build worlds, Adventure Construction Set handed you a digital Lego box and said, “Go nuts.” Want to make a dungeon full of orcs and ham san...

Archon Ultra is what happens when you smash chess into an arcade cabinet and call it a day. This updated version of the original Archon throws in jazzed-up graphics and faster game...

Monkey Island 2 is the second game of the Monkey Island series, a point and click adventure game set in a world of pirates and mysterious treasures. Monkey Island 2 utilizes a comm...

Ah, Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior—the game where loincloths are tiny and sword swings are deadly. This 1989 fighter slashed its way onto DOS with decapitations, grunts, and...

American Conquest is the kind of game that throws hundreds of little soldiers at you and says, "Good luck, General!" Set during the early colonization of the Americas, this RTS ble...

Before Indiana Jones had a whip, Chagunitzu had block puzzles. Released in 1990 by Softdisk (and developed by a young John Romero), this game is a precursor to God of Thunder and p...

Step into the polygonal shoes of Edward Carnby (or Emily Hartwood, if you're feeling bold) in Alone in the Dark, the grandfather of survival horror games. Released in 1992 for DOS,...

Before Football Manager consumed the souls of soccer nerds everywhere, there was Club Football: The Manager. It’s all spreadsheets, transfers, and managing egos with egos. Th...

Imagine stepping into a sci-fi fever dream written during a caffeine crash, and you’ll get Bargon Attack (1992). This French point-and-click adventure is stylish, surreal, an...

Dangerous Dave is the kind of platformer that defined the early ’90s shareware scene: simple, fast, and just tricky enough to make you shout at your monitor. You guide Dave t...

Rome: Pathway to Power (also known as Rome AD 92) is an abandoned isometric adventure game with strategy elements set in ancient Rome. Rome was developed by Millennium Interactive ...

The Fool's Errand is a puzzle-adventure computer game created by Cliff Johnson and released in 1987 for Macintosh and later for MS-DOS. The game follows the journey of a namel...

Action Fighter (1989, DOS) is Sega’s way of saying, “Why choose between car chases and aerial dogfights when you can have both?” You start in a motorcycle, grab s...

Castles 2 took everything the first game did and cranked it up with actual diplomacy, espionage, and conquest mechanics. Now you’re not just stacking bricks—you’r...

Dark Side (1988) is a first-person sci-fi adventure set on a moon orbiting a planet that’s about to be destroyed. No pressure. The gameplay combines exploration with puzzle-s...

R-Type is a horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up developed and published by Irem in 1987. The game quickly gained popularity for its challenging gameplay and impressive graphics at ...