abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Incredible Toon Machine is a puzzle video game developed by Jeff Tunnell Productions and published by Sierra On-Line in 1994. It serves as the successor to the game Sid & A...

Then there’s Martian Dreams, the Ultima game where you travel to Mars in the 19th century with none other than Sigmund Freud and Nikola Tesla. Yes, it’s as delightfully...

Ah, Championship Manager 93, the game that taught us yelling at pixels is a valid emotional outlet. It's you, a keyboard, and a list of players with stamina ratings. No fancy graph...

Jetpack is a classic 2D platformer video game developed by Adept Software and released for MS-DOS computers in 1993. Created by Adam Pedersen, it became popular for its addictive g...

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...

Lamborghini: American Challenge (1992) is what happens when arcade racing meets a poster-covered teenage bedroom. You race exotic cars across the U.S., earn money, upgrade vehicles...

Just when you thought Keen could catch a break, Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle drops him into a mystical realm full of bouncing jelly beans and sentient toasters. This is w...

Released in 1998, Sentinel Returns revived Geoff Crammond’s peculiar classic with updated visuals and an atmosphere that felt strangely hypnotic. Players wandered surreal landsca...

Oil Barons takes the glamorous world of oil speculation—yes, glamorous—and turns it into a strategy game that feels like Monopoly went through a midlife crisis. Release...

Imagine Marble Madness had a caffeine overdose and fell into a platformer. That’s Bumpy’s Arcade Fantasy. You control a perpetually bouncing ball named Bumpy (creative,...

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 ...

Thief: The Dark Project is a first-person stealth video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. Released in 1998, it is considered a groundbreak...

Mean Streets (1989) throws you into a gritty sci-fi detective story where neon lights, flying cars, and criminal conspiracies are just part of a normal workday. You play as a priva...

Grand Prix Unlimited gives you something most racing games only hint at: control over everything. In Grand Prix Unlimited, you are not just a driver, you are practically a team man...

Environmental doom simulator? Check. Grim statistics? Double check. Balance of the Planet lets you tinker with carbon emissions, wildlife extinction, and deforestation until you ei...

Hostage: Rescue Mission puts you in a high-stakes situation where planning and precision matter far more than reflexes. Released in 1989, it blends strategy with action, asking you...

Move aside, Jurassic Park—Dinopark Tycoon (1993, DOS) gave kids everywhere the chance to run their very own dinosaur zoo without the risk of being eaten alive. This education...

MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients is the sequel to MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy. It is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1991, developed by Par...

If Street Rod was a rockabilly rebel, Street Rod 2 (1991, DOS) is its cooler, leather-jacket-wearing cousin. Everything’s bigger, badder, and more polished. The cars roar wit...

Imagine Doom got abducted by aliens, experimented on, and sent back to Earth with a case of amnesia. That’s Alien Cabal (1997). It’s a weird mix of FPS action and X-Fil...

If you’ve ever thought The Lord of the Rings needed more ASCII and fewer hobbit feelings, Angband is your jam. Since 1992, this dungeon-crawling roguelike has been throwing p...

Might and Magic: Swords of Xeen is something of a curious side chapter in the Xeen saga, originally created as a smaller adventure but still packed with the series’ trademark...

UMS: The Universal Military Simulator is exactly what its name promises and maybe a little more than you bargained for. Released in 1988, it offers a sandbox approach to warfare th...

By 1994, digging had evolved from arcade twitch action to full-on economic warfare. Diggers on DOS turned mining into a cutthroat competition between quirky alien races, each with ...