abandonware games sorted by popularity

Transarctica presents a wonderfully bleak vision of the future in which Earth has frozen over and surviving civilization depends on enormous trains crossing the icy wilderness. The...

Castles is what happens when SimCity meets Game of Thrones. You design your own fortress, manage the budget, and tell unruly peasants why the walls are more important than food. Be...

L'Empereur (1991) is one of those games that looks at Napoleon and says, “Yes, but what if we made it complicated?” This DOS strategy title drops you straight into the ...

Star Goose! is a 1988 arcade-style space shooter with a wonderfully eccentric title and an equally straightforward mission: fly through hostile environments, shoot enemies, and try...

Striker is an early football game that captures the basic appeal of the sport while squeezing it into the limited technology available on home computers of the mid-1980s. Matches a...

Harley-Davidson: The Road to Sturgis is less about racing and more about the journey, which sounds poetic until you realize the road can be quite unforgiving. You ride across the U...

Robotron 2084 is a 1983 DOS adaptation of the legendary arcade shooter, throwing players into frantic battles against overwhelming waves of hostile robots. The objective is brutall...

In Gauntlet, four brave souls (or just you with an overworked space bar) hack, slash, and gobble food like medieval Pac-Men. This 1986 dungeon crawler is basically a family reunion...

Teresa: House Guest is an interactive experience that feels like a curious blend of storytelling and voyeuristic curiosity. The narrative unfolds through choices, often leading to ...

BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge is a turn-based strategy game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom in 1990. It is the sequel to "Crescent Hawk's I...

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...

Welcome to Tass Times in Tonetown, where the ‘80s collided with science fiction and nobody cleaned up the mess. It’s a bizarre adventure full of punk hairdos, neon colo...

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 expands the theme-park management formula with more attractions, construction options, scenarios, and creative possibilities. Players design elaborate amusem...

Imagine being the captain of a space freighter crewed entirely by neurotic aliens, each with a personality straight out of a sitcom. That’s Psi 5 Trading Company in a nutshel...

Platoon is a 1987 action strategy game based on the famous Vietnam War film, placing players in a dangerous military environment where survival depends on careful decisions. The ga...

Hostage: Rescue Mission puts you in a high-stakes situation where planning and precision matter far more than reflexes. Released in 1989, it blends strategy with action, asking you...

Nuclear War is an abandoned turn-based strategy game designed by Eric Hyman and Jon Van Caneghem. Nuclear War was developed and released by New World Computing in 1989 for Amiga an...

Released in 1991, Free D.C.! is one of those games that feels like a time capsule of early PC experimentation. It mixes political satire with arcade-style action, letting you fight...

F-22 Lightning II brings the flight sim genre into the late ’90s with faster action, flashier visuals, and a jet that feels like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. The F...

Back when PC shoot-’em-ups were still proving they could match arcades, Raptor: Call of the Shadows landed like a missile. Fast, crunchy, and blessed with explosions that fee...

Wall Street Raider is less a game about buying a nice office and more an uncompromising simulation of corporate warfare. Released in 1986, it puts you in the role of an ambitious i...

Qix is a 1989 arcade-style puzzle game built around the strangely satisfying task of claiming territory while avoiding a dangerous moving shape. Players guide a marker across the s...

Laura Bow 2: The Dagger of Amon Ra is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1992. The game is a sequel to The Colonel's Bequest and follows ...

Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon trims the team down to two goblins but doubles down on personality and puzzle complexity. The interactions between the characters add a layer of char...

In Amnesia, you wake up in a hotel room with no idea who you are, where you are, or why someone wants you dead. And no, this isn’t a gritty FPS—it’s a text advent...

Xenon 2000: Project PCF is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up video game and originally released in 2000. It is a sequel to the earlier game "Xenon 2: Megablast," which was develope...

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...

Deadly Racer is basically what happens when someone at the office said, “What if racing, but everyone might die?” Released in 1994 for DOS, it’s a fast-paced, rou...

Ultima 2 asks the pressing question: what if you mixed time travel with fantasy and a truly mean sorceress named Minax? The answer is chaos. You’ll bounce between eras—...

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game from 1989 takes the same beloved film and asks a crucial question: what if archaeology required more jumping? This adaptation tr...