abandonware games sorted by popularity

Think you’re good at making tough decisions under pressure? Advanced Civilization dares you to prove it by turning diplomacy into passive-aggressive warfare. Based on the cla...

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 ...

Released in 1993 for DOS, Fields of Glory is a turn-based strategy game that focuses on historical warfare with a refreshingly thoughtful pace. Instead of rushing you into constant...

Ultima 8 drops the Avatar into a grim, volcanic world where “fun” is defined as plummeting to your death from badly timed jumps. Yes, the infamous platforming mechanics...

The saga continues in Dark Ages Volume II: The Undead Kingdom, where your “Prince of Destiny” status doesn’t earn you a vacation, but instead throws you into a ki...

Space Rogue is what happens when Elite and Ultima decide to have a baby… in space. You’re dumped into a universe of hostile aliens, smugglers, and zero-g dogfights, an...

Scorched Earth (1991) was the “mother of all games” long before Doom took the title. Two or more tanks face off on a randomly generated terrain, and your only mission i...

Borland Reflex was a relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by Borland International, a software company that was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Reflex was rele...

With Might and Magic 4: Clouds of Xeen, the series heads to the colorful world of Xeen, where the sky is bright, the monsters are plentiful, and the sense of adventure is delightfu...

Domino’s Pizza once had a mascot called the Noid and someone decided he deserved his own video game. Avoid the Noid is about a heroic pizza delivery guy trying to bring food ...

Before Worms, before Scorched Earth, there was Tank Wars. Two or more tanks perched on random hills, firing explosive math problems at each other. Adjust your angle, set your power...

The 2006 DOS revival of Ghostbusters tries to bottle the movie’s charm, with proton packs, traps, and a healthy dose of spectral chaos. The graphics may not make you scream, ...

If you’ve ever wondered what professional wrestling would look like if it were coded on a calculator from the 1980s, Tag Team Wrestling has your answer. Two beefy sprites&mda...

Stunt Car Racer is an abandoned first-person 3D perspective racing game designed by Geoffrey J. Crammond, developed and released by Microstyle in 1989 for DOS and many other platfo...

Before its sequel, there was Dark Reign: The Future of War (1997), a forward-thinking RTS that introduced mechanics ahead of its time, like customizable AI scripts for units. The r...

BloodNet combines vampires, cyberspace, and noir in a cocktail so strange it probably shouldn’t work but somehow does. You are a hacker who just got bitten by a vampire and n...

Emperor of the Fading Suns is a grand strategy game that looks at you and assumes you’ve cleared your schedule. Politics, religion, warfare, economics—it’s all he...

Amerzone is like stepping into a dream where logic is optional and atmosphere is everything. You play a journalist unraveling the mystery of a dying explorer’s last journey, ...

Planetfall is an interactive fiction sci-fie game released in 1983 by Infocom, written by Steve Meretzky. It is often considered one of Infocom's best titles. You play as a lo...

Flashback: The Quest for Identity feels like a playable sci-fi movie that misplaced its budget but kept its ambition. You wake up with amnesia, which is gaming shorthand for &ldquo...

Before Space Invaders clones flooded arcades, there was Space Commanders (1983, DOS), a bare-bones but addictive shooter where your mission is simple: don’t die. Rows of alie...

Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur is a text adventure with occasional graphics, in which you, the not-yet-king, bumble your way through Camelot trying to prove you’re not just ...

If Lorna were a comic book, it would be the kind your parents warned you about. Based on the Spanish sci-fi heroine by Alfonso Azpiri, this 1990 action-platformer on DOS is a cockt...

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...