abandonware games sorted by popularity

Westwood Studios decided to take a break from commanding and conquering to give us Nox, a fast-paced action RPG with more personality than it has any right to. You can play as a wa...

If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a 19th-century merchant sailing the high seas with a suspiciously optimistic outlook on international trade, 1869 is your jam. It throws yo...

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is a science fiction real-time strategy game set in the Star Wars universe, focused both on the first and the second Star Wars trilogy. Star Wars:...

Part puzzle, part platformer, part “what is even happening,” Bombuzal (1989, DOS) is a game where your job is to blow up every bomb on the screen—while not accide...

Aaargh (1988) is exactly what you’ll scream as your giant monster stomps through cities with all the grace of a drunk kaiju. On DOS, this arcade-ish game lets you smash stuff...

Black Monday (1987) combines economic panic with the thrill of—wait for it—spreadsheet navigation. It's like Wolf of Wall Street without the fun, drugs, or DiCaprio. Yo...

Flight of the Intruder aims for authenticity, placing you in the tense skies of Vietnam-era missions. This isn’t a carefree joyride; every sortie carries weight, from meticul...

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 ...

By the time Ultima 9 rolled around, expectations were sky-high—and the result was… divisive. It looked gorgeous for 1999, with sweeping 3D landscapes and dramatic voic...

ADOM is what happens when a rogue, a wizard, and a hungry troll walk into a dungeon and never come out. Released in 1996, this roguelike classic is brutal, brilliant, and unapologe...

The sequel no one expected takes our trench-coated hero from gothic horror to gangster ghost story. Yes, Alone in the Dark 2 (1993, DOS) swaps Lovecraftian horror for Tommy guns an...

Life & Death is a medical simulation game developed by Software Toolworks and released in 1988 for MS-DOS computers. It aimed to provide players with a realistic simulation of ...

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—...

Police Quest 3: The Kindred is an adventure video game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1991. It is the third installment in the Police Quest series, which was designed...

HeroQuest is a classic video game adaptation of the popular board game HeroQuest, released in 1991 by Gremlin Interactive. HeroQuest faithfully recreates the turn-based, ...

Another World (1991) is a cinematic platformer with big ideas, minimal UI, and a shocking willingness to let you die within five seconds of starting. You play as a scientist who ge...

If you like your RPGs verbose, Betrayal at Krondor is basically a fantasy novel you play. Set in Raymond E. Feist’s Midkemia, the game oozes with narrative depth, detailed ch...

Enchanter is interactive fiction with teeth. As a text adventure, it relies entirely on imagination, yet it manages to feel richer than many graphical games of its era. You play as...

Imagine Tetris but in three dimensions and your brain slowly melting into a puddle of confusion. That is Blockout. You drop 3D shapes into a pit and try to line them up, but nothin...

Do you find spreadsheets thrilling? Does the idea of profit margins make your heart race? Then Business Simulator is your kind of party. It’s all about running a faceless com...

Ah, Chessmaster 3000. The title alone sounds like it should have lasers and robot arms, but what you get is a thoughtful, elegant chess sim that finally brings charisma to the game...

Now with 27% more diplomacy and 300% more frustration! Axis and Allies: Iron Blitz (1999) takes everything from the original game and throws in extra scenarios, improved AI, and mo...

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...

Released in 1983, this classic arcade-style shooter has you defending humanoids from alien abductions. Fly your ship across a scrolling landscape, blasting enemies and saving innoc...