abandonware games sorted by popularity

Before there were AAA games with 100GB installs, there was Amulet of Yendor, a rogue-like so old-school it might as well come with a floppy disk and a sandwich bag of D&D dice....

Step into the polygonal shoes of Edward Carnby (or Emily Hartwood, if you're feeling bold) in Alone in the Dark, the grandfather of survival horror games. Released in 1992 for DOS,...

Holiday World Tycoon is the sort of game that feels like it was designed after someone spent a bit too long staring at a postcard rack in an airport gift shop and thought, &ld...

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is a classic role-playing game developed by Troika Games and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 2001 for Microsoft Windows. T...

Think Dungeon Master, but in space, and your party is made of four remote-controlled robot prisoners. Welcome to Captive, where the only thing more confusing than the plot is the m...

Dungeon Keeper 3: War for the Overworld is the ghost of a game that never was. Announced, teased, and then buried alive by shifting studio priorities, it exists only in the fever d...

Paranormal agents, conspiracy theories, and point-and-click puzzles that would make even a ghost sigh in frustration. Bureau 13 is like The X-Files if Mulder and Scully spent more ...

Ah, 2400 A.D. A game where you can rebel against a robot police state… by slowly walking around in beige. Released in 1988, it’s what happens when you mix Orwellian dy...

For flight simulation enthusiasts, EF 2000 was nothing short of a revelation. It offers a deep, realistic portrayal of modern air combat, complete with complex avionics and demandi...

Mean Streets (1989) throws you into a gritty sci-fi detective story where neon lights, flying cars, and criminal conspiracies are just part of a normal workday. You play as a priva...

If Conan had a bad day and took it out on a few dozen goblins, you'd get something close to Axe of Rage. This 1989 DOS hack-n-slash isn't exactly subtle—you're a barbarian, t...

Maniac Mansion Deluxe is the unofficial sequel to the acclaimed point & click adventure game released by LucasFilm in 1987. Maniac Mansion Deluxe it's a fan-made adventure deve...

Fairy Tale Adventure 2: Halls of the Dead (1997) continues its predecessor’s tradition of sprawling fantasy exploration with a darker, more dangerous edge. Available on DOS a...

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...

Impulse Tracker was a popular music tracker software developed by Jeffrey Lim in the late 1990s. Impulse Tracker utilized a tracker-style user interface, which was common in t...

By 1996, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition on DOS felt like the veteran fighter returning for one last round. You could finally play as the bosses, which was a childhood dream...

Environmental doom simulator? Check. Grim statistics? Double check. Balance of the Planet lets you tinker with carbon emissions, wildlife extinction, and deforestation until you ei...

Based on Piers Anthony’s pun-filled fantasy world, Companions of Xanth is like walking into a joke book that got lost in a spellbook. You play a guy from the "real world" suc...

From the people who brought you Dungeons & Dragons, here's Blood & Magic (1996), the RTS that nobody remembers but definitely deserves a second glance. You summon golems fr...