abandonware games sorted by popularity

Atomix is a tile-based puzzle game released in 1990 by Thalion Software for platforms like Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64. The objective of Atomix is to assemble mo...

Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne is a turn-based strategy game developed by Triumph Studios and published by Gathering of Developers. It was released in 2002 as a sequel to t...

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 ...

In Cosmic Soldier: Psychic War, you’re not just fighting enemies—you’re reading their minds while doing it. This RPG mixes sci-fi exploration with telepathic abil...

Imagine being a bouncing ball in a series of floating sky islands full of monsters, traps, and puzzles. Welcome to Cloud Kingdoms, where the laws of physics politely take a backsea...

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...

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 ...

This isn’t Disney’s musical fairytale—it’s a DOS game, which means Beauty and the Beast is way more "puzzle platformer" than "tale as old as time." You play...

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...

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...

The title Dinosaur Balls might raise eyebrows today, but in 1992 it was just a quirky DOS puzzle game. Think of it as prehistoric Bubble Bobble: you fire colored spheres to match a...

Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja is a side-scrolling platformer video game developed and released by Data East in 1991. Known as "Joe & Mac" in North America and "Caveman Ninja" in...

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...

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...

Harpoon II expands on the original with more content and a greater sense of scale, as if it decided the ocean was not quite big enough the first time around. The added depth makes ...

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...

After the success of Ultima 6: The False Prophet, Origin decided to "create worlds" not part of the popular Ultima series (strictly speaking) using the same engine of Ultima 6. The...

Unnatural Selection is a quirky strategy game from 1993 that asks a simple question: what if evolution had a sense of humor? You’re tasked with guiding creatures through generati...

F29 Retaliator is what happens when a flight simulator decides it wants to be a blockbuster action movie. You’re piloting a fictional next-generation stealth fighter through ...

Titus the Fox is a DOS horizontal scrolling platform game developed by Titus Interactive in 1992. As Titus, you have to advance through 15 levels to rescue your beloved Suzy who ha...

Days of Thunder (1990) is what happens when Hollywood’s love affair with Tom Cruise collides with DOS racing. Based on the movie of the same name, it’s an attempt to ca...