abandonware games sorted by popularity

Dylan Dog: Through the Looking Glass takes the surrealism of the comics and dives headfirst into nightmare territory. Imagine Carroll’s Wonderland rewritten by Lovecraft and ...

Captain Blood is a space exploration video game released in 1988. It was developed by the French company ERE Informatique, and it was designed by Philippe Ulrich and Didier Bouchon...

Simple concepts often age remarkably well, and Mah Jongg Solitaire proves the point beautifully. The objective is straightforward: remove matching tiles while ensuring each selecti...

Named after the famously outspoken baseball manager, Earl Weaver Baseball takes the sport seriously, sometimes almost aggressively so. This isn’t about flashy graphics or arc...

SimLife is an abandoned simulation game focused on managing a ecosystems and experimenting with genetics. SimLife was designed by Ken Karakotsios, developed and released by Maxis i...

Prehistorik 2 builds on the first game’s formula but smooths out the rough edges. The controls are tighter, the levels more inventive, and the humor dialed up a notch. Once a...

Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance is an adventure game released in 1991, developed by Steve Meretzky and published by Legend Entertainment. It’s the second installme...

Released in 1994, Lollypop stars an energetic young heroine armed with candy-themed determination as she jumps through vibrant platforming stages packed with enemies and hidden sec...

Adventure meets archaeology in Pyramids of Egypt (1989), a classic maze platformer where you loot tombs, dodge snakes, and pray the ceiling doesn’t collapse on you. You play ...

Hexxagon 2 builds on the original with subtle improvements that make the experience feel more polished without losing its core appeal. The gameplay remains as addictive as ever, en...

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...

Released in 1995, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is the cheerful little tale of humanity being tortured by an all-powerful AI for eternity. In other words, not exactly a feel-g...

Ski or Die is a winter sports-themed video game that was originally released in 1990 for various platforms, including the Commodore 64, Amiga, and MS-DOS. The game was developed by...

You don’t need to hate spiders to fear Arachnophobia (1991), but it helps. Based on the movie of the same name, it tasks you with exterminating wave after wave of creepy craw...

F-15 Strike Eagle is one of those games that practically defined what a combat flight simulator should be in the 1980s. It drops you into the cockpit of the legendary F-15 and tell...

Turns out war is a lot tidier when it’s turn-based. Battle Isle (1991) gives you neat little hexagons to move your units on, like a very angry board game. It’s got stra...

Space 1889 (1990, DOS) is steampunk before steampunk was cool. Based on the tabletop RPG, it sends you to an alternate Victorian era where the British Empire has expanded — t...

By 1994, the Ishar series decided subtlety was overrated. Ishar 3 is bigger, bolder, and occasionally more confusing than its predecessors. Your party once again explores vast land...

Artura is a hack-and-slash side-scroller that looks like someone tried to draw Gauntlet from memory after a power outage. You’re some kind of Celtic warrior on a mystical mis...

Turbo Pascal 7 (TP7) is a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was developed by Borland as an ev...

Atomix is a tile-based puzzle game released in 1990 by Thalion Software for platforms like Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64. The objective of Atomix is to assemble mo...

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 ...

Police Quest 3: The Kindred is a 1991 adventure game that continues the story of the police simulation series with improved graphics and a more cinematic presentation. Players inve...

Released in 1994, Magic Carpet is one of those rare games that feels like someone mixed a fantasy novel with a flight simulator and then added enough explosions to keep everyone ha...

Few adventure games manage to feel as effortlessly cool as Full Throttle. Released in 1995 by LucasArts, it places you in the boots of Ben, the gravel-voiced leader of the Polecats...

Released in 1984, Hack is one of those games that quietly shaped an entire genre while pretending not to care if you understood it or not. This early roguelike doesn’t bother...