abandonware games sorted by popularity

Hardball 2 is baseball distilled into a form that manages to be both accessible and surprisingly tense. It does not overwhelm you with complexity, but it gives you enough control t...

With Might and Magic 4: Clouds of Xeen, the series heads to the colorful world of Xeen, where the sky is bright, the monsters are plentiful, and the sense of adventure is delightfu...

Dig Dug is a classic maze arcade action game that was first released by Namco in 1982 as a coin-op and later for a number of other systems. The gameplay of Dig Dug involves digging...

Released in 1996 for DOS, The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo brings you back to foggy Victorian London, where murders, morphine, and moustaches abound. ...

In Commander Keen 2: The Earth Explodes, the stakes go from “oops, stranded on Mars” to “uh-oh, Earth is doomed.” The Vorticons have planted death lasers in...

You survived Zork I, and now it’s personal. In Zork II, you face off against the enigmatic Wizard of Frobozz, who exists mostly to mess with you like a magical prankster with...

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...

By 1996, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition on DOS felt like the veteran fighter returning for one last round. You could finally play as the bosses, which was a childhood dream...

Hired Guns is what happens when someone looks at a dungeon crawler and thinks, “Yes, but what if it were louder, messier, and slightly unhinged?” Released in 1993, this squad-b...

Released in 1989, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade takes the film's adventure and translates it into a point-and-click experience with surprising elegance. It captures the charm,...

In Ambush at Sorinor, tactics meet fantasy in a land where ambushing people is apparently the national sport. You’re a mercenary commander picking the right team to win missi...

Released in 1987, this is less of a simulator and more of a fever dream where you pilot a flying box over a grid pretending to be terrain. 3-D Helicopter Simulator was ambitious fo...

Maupiti Island (1991) is what happens when classic detective fiction meets tropical paranoia. You arrive on a peaceful-looking island for a relaxing vacation, only to discover that...

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 ...

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 oth...

World Class Leader Board is a golf simulation game developed and published by Access Software and released in the late 1980s for various platforms, including the Commodore 64, Amig...

Before Battle Chess, there was Archon. Imagine a board game where pawns and knights settle disputes not with rules, but with full-on gladiatorial combat. Archon gives you light ver...

By the time Alone in the Dark 3 (1994, DOS) rolls around, Edward Carnby has seen it all - so now it’s off to the Wild West, because of course it is. Zombies? Check. Cowboys? ...

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...

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York expands the formula by giving you a larger playground and more opportunities to cause cartoonish chaos. Released in 1992, it follows a similar struct...