abandonware games sorted by popularity

Released in 1987, this is less of a simulator and more of a fever dream where you pilot a flying box over a grid pretending to be terrain. 3-D Helicopter Simulator was ambitious fo...

Imagine Doom got abducted by aliens, experimented on, and sent back to Earth with a case of amnesia. That’s Alien Cabal (1997). It’s a weird mix of FPS action and X-Fil...

Arctic Adventure is the sequel nobody asked for to Pharaoh's Tomb, except this time you’re freezing your butt off. As Nevada Smith (not a typo, it’s his real name), you...

Escape from Hell asks the important question: what if escaping the underworld were less Dante and more sarcastic road trip? You descend into a demon-infested landscape armed with d...

Space Hulk is an abandoned real-time tactical strategy game set in the Warhammer  40000 universe, developed and released by Electronic Arts in 1993 for DOS and Amiga systems. ...

Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 1995 as a sequel to the original Gabriel Knight...

John Madden Football was the first of a series of american football sports games sponsored by the coach of the same name. The first John Madden Football is an abandoned game develo...

Bigger, deeper, and just as punishing, Gengis Khan 2: Clan of the Gray Wolf (1992) expands the formula with more maps, more rulers, and more ways to fail spectacularly. Want to uni...

Ah, 3D-Maze. If you used Windows 3.x, you probably saw this lurking in the corner of your screen savers like a digital minotaur. Released in 1991, it’s not quite a game, but ...

Beats of Rage is what happens when fans of Streets of Rage decide to stop waiting for Sega and just build their own game—with a side of King of Fighters for flavor. This DOS ...

Zeliard is a fantasy platformer/RPG hybrid that has all the trappings of a classic quest: a brave knight, an evil demon, a princess in distress, and an unreasonable number of bats....

Pyjamarama is an abandoned action adventure game released in 2004 for Windows; it's a remake of the original Pyjamarama. The original is a classic video game developed by Mikr...

Released in 1991, Les Aventures de Moktar - Vol 1: La Zoubida delivers a colorful platform adventure inspired by French comedy and packed with lively animation. Players guide Mokta...

When in Gaul, punch like the Gauls do. In Asterix and Obelix (1996), you control the iconic French duo on a globetrotting beat-‘em-up adventure that mostly involves sending R...

Welcome to Alter Ego: Male Version, where your life begins with a cry and a diaper and only goes downhill - or uphill, depending on your choices. This text-based simulation lets yo...

Eishockey Manager is proof that spreadsheets can, in fact, be thrilling—if you really love ice hockey. Released in 1993, this is a hardcore management sim that skips the flas...

Interstate '76 is what happens when vehicular combat, 1970s funk, and action-movie swagger collide magnificently. Released in 1997, it combines stylish storytelling with explosive ...

In The Hunt is a side-scrolling shooter that looks like Metal Slug took a deep breath and dove underwater. Released in arcades first and later ported to PC, it’s all about pi...

The Lost Vale is the great “what if” of the Ultima series. Developed as an expansion to Pagan but never officially released, it became the stuff of legend. Players were...

Fallout 2 takes everything that worked in the original and gleefully pushes it further, louder, and weirder. Released in 1998, it expands the world, the humor, and the sheer number...

The proto-fighting game that walked so Street Fighter could punch. Yie Ar Kung Fu is pure arcade joy: a brave martial artist named Oolong fights a rogue’s gallery of opponent...

In 1987, Driller arrived as a revolutionary 3D game that looked light-years ahead of its time. Using the Freescape engine, it let players explore a fully 3D world—on a DOS ma...

Part puzzle, part platformer, part “what is even happening,” Bombuzal (1989, DOS) is a game where your job is to blow up every bomb on the screen—while not accide...

The Temple of Elemental Evil is a computer role-playing game (CRPG) released in 2003 by Troika Games and published by Atari. The game is set in the World of Greyhawk, one of D...

F-15 Strike Eagle II takes everything that made the original a classic and cranks it up like a jet engine at full throttle. The visuals are sharper, the missions are more varied, a...

Galdregon's Domain drops players into a fantasy world that feels like it was stitched together from dungeon maps, spellbooks, and a suspiciously large number of monsters. The premi...