abandonware games sorted by popularity

Diabolika is a dark, atmospheric adventure with a taste for supernatural trouble and gloomy surroundings. The game places you in a world where strange events are normal and apparen...

If your idea of excitement is waiting... and waiting... and maybe catching a giant digital tuna, Big Game Fishing is your dream come true. Simulate the thrill of casting a line wit...

Igor: Objective Uikokahonia—or however many vowels you can fit into that kingdom's name—arrived in 1995 as a delightfully oddball adventure game. Its humor leans absurd, its pu...

Motor City offers a fascinating mixture of urban exploration, driving, and strategy set in a detailed city environment. Players can navigate streets, manage vehicles, and take part...

In Assault Trooper, you're the lone soldier with enough ammo to make Rambo blush, dropped behind enemy lines to shoot first and ask “was that a civilian?” later. This 1...

By the time Ultima 9 rolled around, expectations were sky-high—and the result was… divisive. It looked gorgeous for 1999, with sweeping 3D landscapes and dramatic voic...

Rings of Medusa is a 1990 DOS role-playing adventure that combines exploration, trading, combat, and strategy in a large fantasy world. Players travel across a map, gather resource...

Plundered Hearts is a 1987 interactive fiction adventure from Infocom that combines romance, pirates, and high-seas drama into a charming text-based story. Players take the role of...

Strap in and crawl through the mud - Airborne Ranger (1988) is here to chew bubblegum and infiltrate enemy lines. And it's all out of bubblegum. This tactical action game lets you ...

Released in 1996, Discworld 2: Mortality Bytes! continues the misadventures of Rincewind, who once again proves that cowardice can be a powerful survival tool. This time, Death has...

International Rugby Challenge brings the physical chaos of rugby to the computer, giving players control over matches where possession can change quickly and apparently everybody h...

Screamer Rally (1997) took everything that made Screamer great and added dirt. Literally. The tracks are muddy, the physics bumpier, and the action even more intense. This time, it...

Donald’s Alphabet Chase is the video game equivalent of hiding fridge magnets and watching a duck hunt them down. In this 1988 edutainment title, the mischievous alphabet let...

Transarctica presents a wonderfully bleak vision of the future in which Earth has frozen over and surviving civilization depends on enormous trains crossing the icy wilderness. The...

Premier Manager 2 polished the formula, giving football nerds even more stats to obsess over. If you thought juggling line-ups and balancing books was fun in the first game, this s...

The final part of the original trilogy, Zork III ditches treasure-hunting in favor of introspection, moral puzzles, and the looming presence of the Dungeon Master—basically t...

Alien Trilogy is a first-person shooter video game released in 1996 for various platforms, including the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS. Developed by Probe Entertainment and ...

NetHack is one of the great survivors of computer gaming, a 1987 roguelike that has been challenging players for decades with randomly generated dungeons, brutal enemies, complex s...

Night Mission Pinball is a 1982 pinball simulation that proves the basic appeal of pinball is remarkably difficult to ruin. The game recreates the essential ingredients of the real...

Drakkhen (1989) was weird—wonderfully, gloriously weird. A 3D RPG before 3D was really ready, it let you roam a strange fantasy world full of surreal landscapes, bizarre enem...

Hugo’s House of Horrors is a classic example of early adventure gaming, complete with pixelated graphics and puzzles that require a mix of logic and guesswork. Released in 1990, ...

Police Quest 2: The Vengeance continues the realistic police adventure series with a new investigation, deeper mechanics, and more opportunities to experience the daily challenges ...

Grand Prix Circuit is a fascinating early attempt at turning real-world racing into something playable without requiring a steering wheel the size of your desk. In Grand Prix Circu...

Ishido (1990, DOS/Mac) is the digital version of sitting in a Zen garden and realizing you’re terrible at strategy. The game’s premise is simple: place stones on a grid...

The Ultimate Doom expands the classic demon-blasting formula with an additional episode and plenty more reasons to wonder why opening that suspicious door seemed like a good idea. ...

Prophecy: The Fall of Trinadon is a 1989 fantasy role-playing game that combines adventure, exploration, and combat in a classic computer RPG format. Players journey through a worl...

Bigger, deeper, and just as punishing, Gengis Khan 2: Clan of the Gray Wolf (1992) expands the formula with more maps, more rulers, and more ways to fail spectacularly. Want to uni...

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 ...

BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge is a turn-based strategy game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom in 1990. It is the sequel to "Crescent Hawk's I...

By 1993, Lemmings 2: The Tribes expanded the original formula with a remarkable collection of new abilities and themed tribes, giving players dozens of fresh ways to rescue their r...