abandonware games sorted by popularity

Shadowgate (1988, DOS/Windows 3.x/Mac) is a point-and-click adventure that politely invites you into a castle and then gleefully kills you for touching the wrong thing. Armed with ...

Borland Turbo C v2 built on the foundations of the first Turbo C release and became another popular tool for DOS programmers who wanted a fast, compact C development environment. T...

Star Wars Chess turns the classic game of chess into a surprisingly noisy Star Wars spectacle. Released in 1993, it keeps the familiar rules but replaces the traditional pieces wit...

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...

Deadly Racer is basically what happens when someone at the office said, “What if racing, but everyone might die?” Released in 1994 for DOS, it’s a fast-paced, rou...

Supaplex is a deceptively simple puzzle game that takes the basic idea of moving objects around a maze and turns it into a surprisingly demanding exercise in planning. Inspired by ...

By the time Duke Nukem II rolled around, Duke had found his groove—and his ego. The gameplay is tighter, the explosions bigger, and the quips slightly more self-aware. It&rsq...

The Civil War is a historical strategy game that places the player in command during the American Civil War, with armies, resources, territory, and battlefield decisions all compet...

Ah, Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior—the game where loincloths are tiny and sword swings are deadly. This 1989 fighter slashed its way onto DOS with decapitations, grunts, and...

Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound was an unreleased role-playing video game that was intended to be the sequel to the critically acclaimed Baldur's Gate series. It was initially a...

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...

Keys to Maramon is a role-playing game developed by Mindcraft Software and released in 1990 for the Amiga, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64 platforms. The game is set in the same universe ...

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...

Heimdall 2: Into the Hall of Worlds expands on the original with more content and a broader scope, as if the developers decided one world was simply not enough. The gameplay remain...

Based on the James Bond film of the same name, James Bond 007: A View to a Kill arrived in 1985 and delivered a mixture of action and adventure sequences inspired by the movie. Pla...

Pong v.2.1 clone is a 1984 recreation of the legendary arcade game that helped start the video game industry. The concept remains wonderfully simple: two players control paddles an...

In 1987, Driller arrived as a revolutionary 3D game that looked light-years ahead of its time. Using the Freescape engine, it let players explore a fully 3D world—on a DOS ma...

The Amazon Trail is an educational adventure that sends you down the Amazon River with considerably less certainty about what you are doing than the title might suggest. Released i...

PHM Pegasus is a 1987 naval simulation that places players in command of a modern hydrofoil missile ship. The game focuses on controlling the vessel, managing weapons, and completi...

Space Rogue is what happens when Elite and Ultima decide to have a baby… in space. You’re dumped into a universe of hostile aliens, smugglers, and zero-g dogfights, an...

The Colony is a first-person science-fiction adventure that combines exploration, combat, puzzles, and a surprisingly lonely atmosphere. Set on an alien world, it gives the player ...

Empire Deluxe is the kind of strategy game that politely pretends to be simple while quietly stealing entire weekends from your life. On the surface, it’s a turn-based war ga...

In 1986, Hacker arrived with a premise that felt thrillingly dangerous at the time: you, alone, tapping into secret computer systems and uncovering conspiracies. No explosions, no ...

Ardentryst is the indie platformer that tried really hard to be a Metroidvania and kinda pulled it off. With anime-style art, RPG elements, and two playable characters, it’s ...

In Crusader: No Regret, subtlety is left at the door. You’re a heavily armed operative on a mission to blast your way through enemy installations, leaving nothing but rubble ...

Shooting Gallery is a 1990 DOS action game built around the simple and immediately understandable pleasure of aiming at targets and trying to hit them. Players face a variety of sh...

Shamus is a maze action game developed by William Mataga and published by Synapse Software in 1982. The game became popular on various home computer platforms of the early 1980s. I...

Alien Rampage (1996) is what happens when Duke Nukem gets stranded on a hostile alien planet and decides subtlety is for cowards. It’s a side-scrolling shooter dripping with ...

Released in 1993, Hannibal is a strategy game that asks you to think like a military commander facing impossible odds—and occasionally impossible interface decisions. Inspire...

Ports of Call is a 1989 shipping simulation that puts players in charge of a maritime company where success depends on careful planning and smart decisions. Players buy ships, choo...