abandonware games sorted by popularity

Skate or Die is the embodiment of late-’80s “cool,” complete with neon chaos, absurdly dangerous skate events, and characters who look like they stepped out of a ...

Big Red Racing is what happens when you combine arcade mayhem with zero regard for realism and lots of British sarcasm. Drive everything from dump trucks to hovercrafts, insult you...

Gremlins is what happens when someone decides that cute, chaotic movie creatures should be turned into a game that is slightly less cute and a lot more confusing. In Gremlins, you ...

Part strategy, part slapstick cartoon, North and South makes the American Civil War look like a Saturday morning show. You juggle troop movements, train robberies, and spontaneous ...

Ah, 2400 A.D. A game where you can rebel against a robot police state… by slowly walking around in beige. Released in 1988, it’s what happens when you mix Orwellian dy...

Pharaoh is a city-building strategy game released in 1999 by Impressions Games and published by Sierra Studios. It is set in ancient Egypt and is heavily inspired by Caesar III, an...

Rick Dangerous 2 is a clear example of a sequel done right. Developed by Core Design and released in 1990 on a plethora of platforms, Rick Dangerous 2 is a classic platform game wi...

MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1990. The Zhodani Conspiracy is the first installment in the MegaTraveller ser...

If Speedball was a fistfight on skates, Speedball 2 is a televised riot with endorsements. More teams, more power-ups, more everything. The game’s slogan might as well be &ld...

If spreadsheets are your love language, Capitalism 2 is pure romance. This brutally detailed simulation lets you create your own corporate empire from scratch—manufacturing, ...

Turns out war is a lot tidier when it’s turn-based. Battle Isle (1991) gives you neat little hexagons to move your units on, like a very angry board game. It’s got stra...

PGA Tour Golf is an abandoned golf game - the first in the PGA Tour series - designed by Lee Actor and Dennis Koble, developed by Sterling Silver Software and released by Electroni...

By the time Alone in the Dark 3 (1994, DOS) rolls around, Edward Carnby has seen it all - so now it’s off to the Wild West, because of course it is. Zombies? Check. Cowboys? ...

In 1983, Battlezone asked: what if vector graphics could give you war-induced vertigo? You’re in a tank, in a wireframe world, fighting other tanks. That’s it. But it&r...

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...

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. ...

The year is 1995, and Abuse brings us one of the slickest, darkest run-and-gun shooters ever to crawl out of a DOS/Linux/Mac basement. You play a guy in prison for a crime he didn&...

In 1989, Deathtrack tried to answer a question nobody asked: “What if NASCAR had machine guns?” The result is a futuristic racer where speed and firepower go hand in ha...

Known as Exhumed in some regions, Powerslave is a first-person shooter with a heavy dose of Egyptian flavor. Think mummies, scarabs, and plenty of mystical traps, all wrapped up in...

Also known as Puzzle Bobble, this bubble-popping classic stars those cute dragons from Bubble Bobble, now in competitive puzzle mode. Match three colors, clear the screen, panic as...

A game with a name like Battle Isle 93: The Moon of Chromos clearly means business. Released in 1993, it’s an expansion-slash-standalone with new missions, harder AI, and an ...

Jetpack is a classic 2D platformer video game developed by Adept Software and released for MS-DOS computers in 1993. Created by Adam Pedersen, it became popular for its addictive g...