abandonware games sorted by popularity

Before heroes had inventory screens and voice acting, there was Adventure in Serenia, the lovechild of a text parser and a fever dream. Released in 1982, this proto-graphic adventu...

Hoyle Classic Card Games is the digital equivalent of a well-stocked card table, offering a variety of games to suit different tastes. Released in 1993, it combines accessibility w...

Times of Lore is an action-oriented fantasy adventure that sends the player into a medieval world filled with monsters, villages, quests and plenty of reasons to keep a sword withi...

The all new Family Feud brings the classic TV game show into your home, complete with survey questions and the eternal struggle to guess what other people are thinking. It’s simp...

Released in 2001 for PC, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is what happens when someone looks at Age of Empires II and says, “This is good, but what if there were AT-ATs stom...

Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0 expands the already impressive flight simulation experience with improved graphics, more detailed environments, and a greater sense of realism. Playe...

Thomas the Tank Engine 2 continues the computer adventures of the famous blue locomotive with another collection of simple activities designed around the world of the television se...

If Shakespeare wrote video games and then decided, “You know what this needs? A parser and some pixelated drama,” you'd get Avon. In this interactive fiction gem from 1...

Space Ace 2: Borf’s Revenge (1991, DOS) doubles down on everything that made the first one iconic — and maddening. Borf is back, still blue, still obnoxious, and once a...

SimuSex is an unusual 1992 DOS simulation built around adult-themed experimentation rather than the conventional goals found in most games of the period. It treats relationships an...

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...

Microsoft Hearts is a digital adaptation of the classic trick-taking card game, and it became another famously distracting member of the Windows software family. The objective is s...

Worms takes the basic concept of turn-based artillery and replaces the soldiers with tiny worms carrying an almost irresponsible quantity of weaponry. The result is one of those ga...

DX-Ball 2 is a popular brick-breaking game that was first released in 1998 by Longbow Digital Arts. It serves as a sequel to the original DX-Ball, which was inspired by the classic...

This one’s a flight sim for people who think Top Gun didn’t have enough fuel gauges. 1942: The Pacific Air War puts you in the cockpit of World War II fighter planes, c...

Expectations were understandably enormous for Master of Orion 3, a sequel to one of strategy gaming's most beloved series. The game introduces ambitious ideas, including highly aut...

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game from 1989 takes the same beloved film and asks a crucial question: what if archaeology required more jumping? This adaptation tr...

Pinball Illusions is a 1995 pinball game that represents another impressive step forward in the famous digital pinball series. It features beautifully designed tables, smooth anima...

Welcome to the Ys series, where you swing swords by running headfirst into enemies. The Vanished Omens introduces Adol Christin, red-haired hero extraordinaire, as he embarks on a ...

Released in 1991, Free D.C.! is one of those games that feels like a time capsule of early PC experimentation. It mixes political satire with arcade-style action, letting you fight...

King's Quest III: To Heir is Human takes an unexpected turn by casting players as Gwydion, a servant trapped under the watchful eye of an evil wizard. Escaping requires careful pla...

Wall Street Raider is less a game about buying a nice office and more an uncompromising simulation of corporate warfare. Released in 1986, it puts you in the role of an ambitious i...

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...

Shadow of Yserbius is a 1993 online role-playing game set in a fantasy world filled with dungeons, monsters, treasure, and enough corridors to make a cartographer nervous. Players ...

In Dragon’s Lair 2: Time Warp (1990), Dirk doesn’t just fight dragons—he bungles his way through time itself. Want to rescue your wife Daphne? Prepare to stumble ...

Released in 1988, Jinxter is a whimsical text adventure overflowing with clever writing, bizarre situations, and puzzles that often seem determined to test the limits of human logi...

Styx is a compact arcade-style adventure built around exploration, hazards, and the sort of unforgiving design that older computer games considered perfectly normal. The action tak...

By 1994, point-and-click adventures were everywhere, but Dragonsphere carved out its niche with lush graphics, an intriguing plot, and plenty of puzzles. You play a young king task...

The Great Escape is an adventure game inspired by the classic prison-break movie, placing the player inside a World War II prisoner-of-war camp where freedom depends on observation...

Take Eddie Murphy’s swagger, remove the charm, add some DOS chiptunes, and you get Beverly Hills Cop—a game adaptation that asks: “What if being a wisecracking de...