abandonware games sorted by popularity

Running a television station sounds glamorous until every program threatens to destroy your ratings. Mad TV cleverly blends business simulation, humor, and sabotage into an addicti...

Hoyle Classic Card Games is the digital equivalent of a well-stocked card table, offering a variety of games to suit different tastes. Released in 1993, it combines accessibility w...

MDK (1997) is one of those games that feels like it came from another dimension — a dimension where sniper rifles, parachutes, and absurd humor coexist peacefully. You play a...

Creatures is an unusual life-simulation game built around the idea that virtual creatures should actually behave like living things. You hatch small Norns, teach them, feed them, p...

Alien Attack wastes little time explaining that Earth is having a very bad day. The premise is exactly the sort of thing science-fiction games love: hostile aliens have arrived, an...

Heart of the Maelstrom brings epic dungeon crawling to dizzying heights, challenging players with sprawling levels, fiendish enemies, and puzzles that seem to require a PhD in pati...

Tomb Raider introduced Lara Croft to a generation of players and combined third-person exploration, platforming, puzzle solving and gunplay into a remarkably atmospheric adventure....

Cosmic Spacehead is a cheerful point-and-click adventure wrapped in platformer segments, starring a purple alien who’s equal parts explorer and goofball. You’ll travel ...

A text/graphic adventure from 1986 for DOS and Mac, Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy is the precursor to Kobayashi Alternative but far more playable. You explore alien worlds, so...

This 1989 game is based on the animated movie where dogs die, go to heaven, then come back for revenge (sort of). The DOS adaptation? Well, it’s more like All Pixels Go Nowhe...

Manhunter 2: San Francisco continues the unsettling science fiction saga with another blend of investigation, puzzle solving, and dark storytelling. Once again humanity struggles b...

Transport Tycoon is one of the great classic transportation management games, turning the seemingly simple task of moving things from A to B into an obsession with timetables, rout...

Eye of Horus, released in 1989, is a puzzle-adventure that leans heavily into atmosphere and mystery. Drawing inspiration from ancient Egyptian mythology, the game challenges playe...

AutoCAD 2.5 represents an important stage in the development of computer-aided design software, arriving when personal computers were beginning to become genuinely useful for techn...

Chuck Yeager's Air Combat is a combat flight simulation video game released in 1991 by Electronic Arts. The game is named after and endorsed by the real-life aviation legend, Chuck...

A Personal Nightmare (1989) blends horror and detective work into one spooky little cocktail of 1980s DOS game design. You return to your hometown to find it overrun by demonic pos...

NASCAR Racing is a 1994 racing simulation that takes the world of stock-car racing seriously enough to make players appreciate just how much can go wrong while driving in a circle....

Anvil of Dawn is what happens when 1995 tries to reinvent the fantasy RPG and ends up creating something strangely beautiful. It’s first-person, it’s real-time, and it&...

Alien Trilogy is a first-person shooter video game released in 1996 for various platforms, including the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS. Developed by Probe Entertainment and ...

FIFA Soccer Manager is aimed at the football fan who would rather decide the lineup than actually run around a pitch for ninety minutes. The game puts you in charge of a club, with...

Released in 2001 for PC, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is what happens when someone looks at Age of Empires II and says, “This is good, but what if there were AT-ATs stom...

Pool of Radiance is a 1988 role-playing classic based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons universe, bringing tabletop fantasy adventures to the computer screen. Players create a par...

For those who think snooker is too posh and billiards too French, there's Archer Maclean's Pool, the most ‘90s way to simulate the timeless art of arguing over whether that s...

Mad Paradox embraces surrealism with remarkable enthusiasm, presenting an action-platform adventure where strange creatures and bizarre environments are perfectly normal. Players m...

Planetfall is a 1983 interactive fiction adventure created by Infocom that combines science fiction, humor, and clever writing into a memorable journey. Players explore an abandone...

In Ancients 1: Deathwatch, you gather your pixelated party and set off to cleanse a city of evil, or at least try not to get mugged by slimes. It's a dungeon crawler in classic DOS...

By Ultima 3, the series had discovered the magic of party-based adventuring. No longer a lonely trek, now you command a ragtag group of heroes who bicker only in your imagination. ...

Just like the movie, Batman Returns (1992) is dark, gritty, and full of dudes in clown makeup getting punched in the face. You play as the Caped Crusader in a beat-‘em-up sid...

Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion turns up the difficulty (and the body count) by tossing Dave into a gothic nightmare of zombies, ghosts, and bloodthirsty critters. Armed with...

In Avalon (1998, DOS), you are a wizard, possibly a hero, definitely confused. This fantasy RPG drops you into a world of magic, mayhem, and menu navigation straight out of a Tolki...