abandonware games sorted by popularity

Castle of Dr. Brain is a puzzle lover’s fever dream. It’s like someone crammed a Mensa test into a haunted house and added robot arms. You’re solving logic grids,...

Released in 2005, Lincity NG modernizes the classic city-building formula by placing equal emphasis on economic growth, environmental responsibility, and long-term sustainability. ...

You are Sherlock Holmes, and someone has committed a crime, possibly because they couldn’t handle the game’s UI. 221B Baker Street is a detective board game where your ...

ELIZA, created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT, was one of the first computer programs to simulate human conversation. Designed as a natural language processing demons...

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? ...

One Must Fall: 2097 is a fighting game released in 1994 by Epic MegaGames. Set in a futuristic world, the game features giant humanoid robots known as HARs (Human-Assisted Robots) ...

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...

Often regarded as the high point of the series, King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow follows Prince Alexander as he searches for Princess Cassima across the mysterious Land o...

Instead of another platform adventure, Mario's Game Gallery invites players to enjoy a collection of classic tabletop games alongside Nintendo's cheerful mascot. Chess, checkers, d...

Angel 3 is that kind of DOS game where you sit down thinking "I'll give it five minutes" and three hours later you're still trying to figure out what just happened. Released in 199...

Released in 1989, Ghostbusters 2 gives you another shot at wrangling ectoplasm with the world’s most overqualified exterminators. Inspired by the movie sequel, it’s equ...

The Crack of Doom is an old-school adventure with a title that sounds considerably more dramatic than the average Tuesday afternoon, and the game does its best to live up to it. Ex...

The Four Crystals of Trazere is a fantasy strategy and role-playing adventure in which magic, exploration, combat, and tactical planning all collide in a world that seems to have m...

Bad Street Brawler is a beat 'em up video game developed by Beam Software and published by Mindscape. Originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1987 and later for other platforms...

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...

A remake with ambition and tragedy, Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded promised to bring the king back in modern glory. It looked great, played smooth, and... was never officially released. W...

The Humans is a puzzle game built around a charmingly simple idea: you control a group of tiny prehistoric people and must help them reach safety by making use of their different a...

Released in 1990, Les Manley in: Search for the King introduces players to an offbeat adventure full of comedy, quirky characters, and classic point-and-click puzzles. Les embarks ...

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...

Transport Tycoon Deluxe expands the original transportation-management formula with more vehicles, larger maps, additional environments, and plenty of opportunities to turn an inno...

If Star Trek: 25th Anniversary isn’t on your DOS nostalgia list, fix that now. Released in 1992, it’s a point-and-click adventure that actually feels like classic Star ...

Prisoner of Ice is a 1995 adventure game inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, combining mystery, horror, and exploration into a chilling story. Players investigate strange even...

If you’ve ever thought, “What if Pac-Man got lost in a modernist art gallery?”, then A-Maze is your oddly specific dream come true. Released in 1989 for DOS, this...

If System Shock was a warning, System Shock 2 is the full-blown nightmare that follows. This time, the horror seeps into every corner of the experience, blending RPG mechanics with...

By the time Space Quest 3: The Pirates of Pestulon arrived in 1989, Roger Wilco had become something of a professional survivor. This time he starts the game stranded in a garbage ...

If Frontier: Elite 2 opened the door to a vast universe, Frontier: First Encounters in 1995 basically kicked it wide open and invited you to wander in. This sequel expands the form...

Strip Poker Professional gives the familiar poker-and-strip concept a more serious-sounding title, although “professional” may be doing some heavy lifting here. The game revolv...

Shadowlands (1992, DOS) hands you a party of adventurers and then expects you to coordinate them like a fantasy air-traffic controller. Instead of a single hero, you manage four ch...

CheckIt 3 is a DOS diagnostic utility designed to inspect the health and configuration of a personal computer. In an era when Windows could not necessarily tell you much about what...

Indianapolis 500 in 1989 was one of the earliest racing simulators to take itself very seriously, and that seriousness paid off. Rather than arcade thrills, it focused on realism, ...