abandonware games sorted by popularity

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 landscapes, but now you’re hopping through diffe...

1990’s Back to the Future Part 2 for DOS is a game that tries very hard to be as confusing as time travel itself. You’re Marty McFly, zipping between timelines, avoiding paradoxes, and trying to not get arrested for pi...

Before Street Fighter became a cultural juggernaut, it was this humble 1988 DOS brawler where Ryu’s fists felt more like sluggish bricks than blazing fireballs. The controls were about as precise as a shopping cart with a fl...

Ravenloft: Stone Prophet is a fantasy RPG set in the egyptian Ravenloft campaign that uses the Advanced Dungeons & Dragon ruleset. It's the sequel to Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession and uses the same first person real-time 3d e...

Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire is the second installment in Sierra On-Line's Quest for Glory series, blending classic adventure gameplay with RPG elements in a world inspired by Middle Eastern folklore. Released in 1990 for Ami...

Imagine Cheers met Quantum Leap and got weirdly philosophical. That’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, a narrative adventure based on Spider Robinson’s sci-fi stories. You’re Jake Stonebender, a pun-slinging ti...

If you ever wanted to command the Pacific fleet without getting wet, Carrier Strike is your game. Set during WWII, it’s a turn-based wargame where numbers, radar, and weather reports matter more than reflexes. You’ll p...

Before Half-Life, there was Chasm: The Rift, a game where time-traveling mutants explode into limbs and every room looks like it was decorated by a doom-metal band. A first-person shooter with surprising depth, it features dismemb...

Yes, Astrotit (1987) is really the name, and no, it’s not what you think — though it does feel like it was named by a bored teenager. This side-scrolling shooter puts you in command of a spaceship shaped suspiciously l...

In Gengis Khan, you’re not just playing history—you’re rewriting it with pixelated armies. This 1989 Koei classic lets you lead the great Mongol conqueror (or other rulers) in your quest for world domination. You...

Sid Meier took one look at Earth and said, “Let’s leave this dump.” Thus, Alpha Centauri (1999, Windows XP) was born - a 4X strategy game that takes Civilization to space, then adds philosophy, moral dilemmas, an...

Great Naval Battles vol. 5: Demise of the Dreadnoughts 1914-18 is an abandoned naval simulation game, developed for DOS only by Divide by zero and released by SSI Strategic Simulations Inc. in 1996. As the title implies, Great Nav...

MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1990. The Zhodani Conspiracy is the first installment in the MegaTraveller series and was developed by Paragon Software.MegaTrav...

In Airball (1987), you don’t play a knight, a space marine, or a plumber - you play a literal ball of air. Trapped in an isometric nightmare of spikes, fans, and poison gas, your squishy self must navigate hazards that clear...

Unreal Gold is a first-person shooter (FPS) video game developed by Epic MegaGames and published by GT Interactive. It was originally released in 1998 for Windows. Unreal Gold is an enhanced edition of the original Unreal game, an...

Now with 27% more diplomacy and 300% more frustration! Axis and Allies: Iron Blitz (1999) takes everything from the original game and throws in extra scenarios, improved AI, and more ways to accidentally cause a Cold War. Want to ...

In Auf Wiedersehen Monty, our favorite marsupial is back, and this time he's taking a very pixelated Eurotrip. Released for Windows XP in 2001, it's a nostalgia-fueled platformer that insists you master gravity-defying jumps and m...

Marble Madness is an abandoned isometric action game designed by Mark Cerny and originally published by Atari as a successful and iconic arcade game. It was later converted for many platform in 1986 and for IBM PCs in 1987 by Atar...