abandonware games sorted by popularity

Pharaoh is a city-building strategy game released in 1999 by Impressions Games and published by Sierra Studios. It is set in ancient Egypt and is heavily inspired by Caesar III, an...

With Chess88, you’re entering the elite club of DOS chess nerds who appreciate ASCII art and precision time controls. Compared to its 1981 predecessor, it’s a leap forw...

Karateka is a martial arts themed action / fighting game released by Broderbund in 1986 for DOS. Karateka is the first game designed by Jordan Mechner, the father of the ...

Cosmic Spacehead is a cheerful point-and-click adventure wrapped in platformer segments, starring a purple alien who’s equal parts explorer and goofball. You’ll travel ...

If Saturday-morning cartoons and B-movies fused into a pixelated arcade blast, you’d get Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters. This action shooter throws you onto a d...

With a name that sounds like an interstellar pirate greeting, Spaceward Ho! is actually a strategic space colonization game, not an intergalactic dating sim. It's got a simple inte...

A moody sci-fi adventure drenched in neon gloom, The Orion Conspiracy (1995, DOS) tosses you into a futuristic murder mystery where everyone seems to be hiding something—ofte...

Ah, Budokan, the game where patience and discipline meet awkwardly slow combat and the occasional flying kick. You play as a martial arts student training in various dojos, culmina...

If Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon were a person, it would be that eccentric uncle who insists he once met a genie “for real.” This 1988 Arabian-fantasy adventure m...

This one's not for the faint of heart. Conflict in Vietnam tries to simulate the complexity and chaos of guerrilla warfare in a game where every click can cost lives. The graphics ...

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...

Aces of the Pacific (1992, DOS) takes to the skies over WWII’s Pacific Theater, where you can dogfight in legendary aircraft and prove your piloting prowess — or spin i...

Ascii Sector is what happens when someone takes Privateer, removes the graphics, and replaces them with pure ASCII and sheer willpower. It’s open-world space sim meets roguel...

Ghosts 'n Goblins is an iconic arcade game developed by Capcom, first released in 1985. It’s widely remembered for its challenging gameplay and its distinct horror-fantasy ae...

Lincity-NG is an open-source city simulation game and a continuation of the original Lincity game. The "NG" stands for "New Generation." The game is designed to be a city-building ...

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...

Anvil of Dawn is what happens when 1995 tries to reinvent the fantasy RPG and ends up creating something strangely beautiful. It’s first-person, it’s real-time, and it&...

Before the shades, the muscles, and the one-liners, Duke Nukem was just a guy in a 2D platformer trying to save the world from an evil scientist. It’s bright, fast, and glori...

By 1992, Vol. 3 wrapped up the trilogy with even more complex scenarios. At this point, the series had become less of a game and more of an interactive textbook—though that&r...

Beyond Columns is what happens when someone looks at Tetris and says, “What if we made it... slightly fancier?” This match-three puzzle game involves dropping shiny col...

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...

The Legend of Kyrandia: Hand of Fate is the second installment in the Legend of Kyrandia point and click adventure game series developed by Westwood Studios. It was released in 199...