abandonware games sorted by popularity

Robotron 2084 is a 1983 DOS adaptation of the legendary arcade shooter, throwing players into frantic battles against overwhelming waves of hostile robots. The objective is brutall...

Dark Ages Volume III: Dungeons of Doom closes out the trilogy with—you guessed it—more doom, dungeons, and ways to fall off platforms you swear you landed on. The serie...

Wild West World is a western-themed action game that drops the player into a world of dusty towns, gunslingers, and the sort of problems that cannot be solved by writing a strongly...

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 ...

Sherlock Holmes: The Vatican Cameos is a 1986 DOS adventure built around a Sherlock Holmes mystery and the detective's trademark combination of observation, deduction, and careful ...

Forget piracy—China Sea Trader makes hauling porcelain and spices across 19th-century Asia feel like a cutthroat business. It’s part economic sim, part geography lesson...

NASCAR Racing is a 1994 racing simulation that takes the world of stock-car racing seriously enough to make players appreciate just how much can go wrong while driving in a circle....

Hollywood Hijinx feels like stepping into a puzzle-filled mansion where logic occasionally takes a coffee break. Released in 1986, this text adventure blends humor with brain-teasi...

Star Trek: Starfleet Command (1999, Windows XP) is a dream come true for anyone who memorized warp core schematics. It’s a tactical space combat simulator that rewards patien...

Risk: The World Conquest Game is a 1989 DOS version of the famous strategy board game, offering players the familiar objective of controlling territories and eventually conquering ...

Cosmic Spacehead is a cheerful point-and-click adventure wrapped in platformer segments, starring a purple alien who’s equal parts explorer and goofball. You’ll travel ...

Robocop 3 is a 1992 DOS action game based on the third Robocop movie, expanding the familiar formula with shooting, platforming, and vehicle-based sequences. Players control the ar...

In Gauntlet, four brave souls (or just you with an overworked space bar) hack, slash, and gobble food like medieval Pac-Men. This 1986 dungeon crawler is basically a family reunion...

Star Saga: Two - The Clathran Menace continues the science-fiction role-playing adventure of its predecessor, expanding the story and sending players deeper into a galaxy threatene...

Worms takes the basic concept of turn-based artillery and replaces the soldiers with tiny worms carrying an almost irresponsible quantity of weaponry. The result is one of those ga...

Tomahawk is an early helicopter flight simulation that puts the player behind the controls of a military aircraft and expects them to take the job rather seriously. Navigation, wea...

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...

Xenon, released in 1988, was a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up video game developed by The Bitmap Brothers. Xenon was initially released for the Commodore 64, and later, it was p...

Indiana Jones: Revenge of the Ancients from 1987 is one of those curious side stories that feels like it emerged from a parallel cinematic universe. Presented as a text-heavy adven...

Knight Orc (1987, DOS/Mac) flips the fantasy script: you’re not the hero, you’re the orc. Tired of being slaughtered by noble knights, you decide it’s payback tim...

Fairy Tale Adventure 2: Halls of the Dead (1997) continues its predecessor’s tradition of sprawling fantasy exploration with a darker, more dangerous edge. Available on DOS a...

Super Star Wars brings the famous Star Wars universe into a side-scrolling action game filled with blasters, enemies, platforms, and enough danger to make the Death Star seem like ...

Star Goose! is a 1988 arcade-style space shooter with a wonderfully eccentric title and an equally straightforward mission: fly through hostile environments, shoot enemies, and try...

Virtual Reality Studio 2.0 builds on the idea of creating interactive three-dimensional environments, offering a more advanced version of the DOS development environment introduced...

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...

Rampart is what happens when someone mashes Tetris, tower defense, and medieval warfare into a single frantic loop. You rebuild crumbling castle walls using oddly shaped bricks, th...

Wipeout is a futuristic racing game built around speed, aggressive competition, and vehicles that apparently have no interest whatsoever in ordinary road safety. The anti-gravity c...

V for Victory: D-Day Utah Beach is a turn-based wargame that puts you in command during one of the most important military operations of the Second World War. The game focuses on t...

This one’s a flight sim for people who think Top Gun didn’t have enough fuel gauges. 1942: The Pacific Air War puts you in the cockpit of World War II fighter planes, c...

Heart of China is an adventure game that leans heavily into storytelling, weaving a tale of intrigue and danger across exotic locations. The narrative is its strongest asset, pulli...