abandonware games sorted by popularity

Stellar Crusade is a space strategy game for people who think one galaxy is simply not enough territory to argue over. You command fleets, manage resources and attempt to expand yo...

Indenture is a small, relatively obscure DOS adventure that thrives on mood rather than complexity. Set in a bleak, oppressive world, it uses minimalistic visuals and text-driven s...

NCAA Road to the Final Four is a 1991 college basketball game focused on the journey toward the ultimate tournament prize. Rather than simply throwing players onto the court for a ...

Flash Gordon: Il Rapimento di Dale throws you into a pulpy sci-fi serial where subtlety is left at the airlock. Based on the adventures of the square-jawed space hero, the game lea...

In this 1987 DOS game, you delve into a dungeon filled with traps and monsters. Solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and uncover the secrets of the forge. It's like playing Dungeons &...

Remember the spandex-clad madness of 90s TV? American Gladiators brings it to your DOS screen with all the grace of a flying pugil stick. You’ll compete in various bizarre ev...

Fire and Forget: Final Assault is the kind of game that asks a very specific question: “What if driving a heavily armed car was your full-time job?” Released in 2013, i...

A game with a name like Battle Isle 93: The Moon of Chromos clearly means business. Released in 1993, it’s an expansion-slash-standalone with new missions, harder AI, and an ...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is an arcade game released in 1989 by Konami. It is based on the popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. The game was initially released...

Varicella is a particularly unusual adventure game built around social interaction, exploration, and the sort of eccentric premise that makes you wonder what the designers were dri...

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...

F40 Pursuit Simulator takes a different approach by putting you in the cockpit of a fictional high-tech interceptor designed for one job: catching bad guys. Instead of large-scale ...

The Ancient Art of War in the Skies completes the series' journey from land to sea and finally into the air. Released in 1992, it brings strategic warfare into an aviation setting,...

Dark Designs 2: Closing the Gate picks up right where the first game left off, with your party stumbling into yet another world-threatening mess. The stakes are higher, the enemies...

Monopoly transforms the familiar board game into a computer experience where property deals, rent payments, and financial disasters can unfold without anyone needing to physically ...

Windwalker (Moebius 2) is a fantasy adventure that follows the successful tradition of combining exploration, combat, character development, and a large world into one ambitious pa...

Socrates is a 1993 DOS strategy game that takes its name from the famous Greek philosopher, although players will be spending considerably more time thinking about winning than con...

Stonekeep is a first-person fantasy dungeon crawler with an appropriately unpleasant central premise: the kingdom has been attacked, evil has taken over, and you are expected to cl...

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...

Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic 1939-1943 sets the stage for the series with a focus on tense, strategic encounters. In Great Naval Battles, you are dealing with limited inform...

Ballistix asks: “What if air hockey was controlled by futuristic cannons?” The answer: chaos. You frantically shoot pucks with directional blasts while the physics engi...

Beetlejuice: Skeletons in the Closet is a video game based on the popular Beetlejuice franchise, which includes a 1988 film directed by Tim Burton and an animated television series...

Trinity is one of Infocom's more unusual interactive fiction adventures, mixing fantasy, science fiction, surreal imagery, and a healthy dose of philosophical weirdness. You begin ...

IBM Assistant 2.0 belongs to the era when a personal computer was expected to be a serious office companion rather than a machine for launching games and watching cat videos. Desig...

Jimmy White Whirlwind Snooker transforms the traditionally calm game of snooker into something surprisingly tense. Released in 1991, it offers an impressive digital recreation of t...

Oubliette is a 1983 role-playing game and an important early example of the dungeon-crawling tradition that would influence generations of computer RPGs. Players create characters,...

Demoniak is a dark fantasy adventure that combines exploration, combat, and the sort of atmosphere that suggests nobody in this world has ever heard of adequate lighting. You trave...

Released in 1985, Space Commanders 2 didn’t reinvent the wheel — it just made it spin faster. The sequel adds smoother animation, a few new enemy patterns, and a slight...

If you like your RPGs verbose, Betrayal at Krondor is basically a fantasy novel you play. Set in Raymond E. Feist’s Midkemia, the game oozes with narrative depth, detailed ch...

Interpose in 1996 is a first-person shooter that embraces speed and aggression without apology. Set in a sci-fi world of corridors and conflict, it delivers classic run-and-gun act...