abandonware games sorted by popularity

From 1987’s text adventure golden age, The Lurking Horror proves you don’t need graphics to be terrified. You’re a student trapped on a snowy university campus du...

Released in 1987, Falcon is the kind of flight simulator that politely informs you, within minutes, that you are not nearly as smart as you thought. This isn’t an arcade joyr...

The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a stylish first-person shooter that mixes espionage, comedy, and action with the confidence of a secret agent who has absolutely no intention...

In Amnesia, you wake up in a hotel room with no idea who you are, where you are, or why someone wants you dead. And no, this isn’t a gritty FPS—it’s a text advent...

PHM Pegasus is a 1987 naval simulation that places players in command of a modern hydrofoil missile ship. The game focuses on controlling the vessel, managing weapons, and completi...

Microsoft Minesweeper is an iconic puzzle game that has been included with Microsoft Windows operating systems since Windows 3.1. The game's objective is to clear a rectangular boa...

Microsoft Space Simulator is a space flight simulator game developed by Bruce Artwick Organization and published by Microsoft in 1994. It is part of the broader range of simulation...

Pinball Illusions is a 1995 pinball game that represents another impressive step forward in the famous digital pinball series. It features beautifully designed tables, smooth anima...

By the time Space Quest 3: The Pirates of Pestulon arrived in 1989, Roger Wilco had become something of a professional survivor. This time he starts the game stranded in a garbage ...

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...

Circuit's Edge is a cyberpunk-themed role-playing game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom. It was released in 1990 for MS-DOS. Set in a dystopian future, Cir...

KGB delivers one of the most ambitious espionage adventures of the early 1990s, placing players inside a complex web of political intrigue during the final years of the Soviet Unio...

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...

Shadowlands (1992, DOS) hands you a party of adventurers and then expects you to coordinate them like a fantasy air-traffic controller. Instead of a single hero, you manage four ch...

Inca is a strange hybrid that feels like three different games stitched together by sheer ambition. One moment you’re managing resources and navigating an empire, the next yo...

Explosions? Check. Missiles? Check. Graphics that look like someone spilled gray soup on your monitor? Double check. A-10 Tank Killer lets you pilot a flying war machine and rain c...

Step into a dungeon, take a left at the creepy skeleton, and say hello to Bloodwych, the 1989 DOS game that proves co-op first-person dungeon crawling can be both confusing and odd...

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 ...

Free Enterprise from 1996 is business simulation with a distinctly ’90s sense of ambition. You’re tasked with building and managing a corporate empire, juggling finance...

In Ancients 1: Deathwatch, you gather your pixelated party and set off to cleanse a city of evil, or at least try not to get mugged by slimes. It's a dungeon crawler in classic DOS...

With a title that sounds like a deep-sea motivational poster, Big Sea: The Better One Will Win is a maritime strategy game where the stakes are high and the water’s pixelated...

CheckIt 3 is a DOS diagnostic utility designed to inspect the health and configuration of a personal computer. In an era when Windows could not necessarily tell you much about what...

The Immortal is a darkly comic action RPG that drops you into a dungeon where survival depends on quick reflexes, exploration, and a willingness to get killed in surprisingly inven...

Ever wondered what would happen if a roguelike and a B-movie had a radioactive baby? AlphaMan is the answer. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where mutant banana slugs might be your...

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 ...

There’s something oddly admirable about a game that hands you a polyester-clad disaster like Larry and says, “Go on, make him succeed.” Leisure Suit Larry 1: In t...

Skate or Die is the embodiment of late-’80s “cool,” complete with neon chaos, absurdly dangerous skate events, and characters who look like they stepped out of a ...

Wing Commander 2: Vengeance of the Kilrathi builds on its predecessor with a larger story, more elaborate missions, and an even stronger sense that your career as a fighter pilot i...

Neverwinter Nights is a 1991 role-playing game set in the Forgotten Realms, long before the later title of the same name became famous for its powerful multiplayer tools and moddin...

Galaxy is a relic from the early days of PC gaming, when the idea of exploring space could be conveyed with a handful of pixels and a lot of imagination. The gameplay is simple, re...