abandonware games sorted by popularity

Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in The Spinal Frontier is the most ambitious—and arguably strangest—entry in the series. Released in 1995, it blends traditional adventure ga...

The Incredible Toon Machine brings the familiar contraption-building formula into a world populated by cartoon characters and considerably less respect for the laws of physics. As ...

F-22 Lightning II brings the flight sim genre into the late ’90s with faster action, flashier visuals, and a jet that feels like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. The F...

The Flintstones: Dino: Lost in Bedrock is a light-hearted adventure starring everyone's favorite prehistoric family, although this time the spotlight falls on Dino and the problems...

Domino’s Pizza once had a mascot called the Noid and someone decided he deserved his own video game. Avoid the Noid is about a heroic pizza delivery guy trying to bring food ...

Aspar GP Master is a 1989 motorcycle racing game that invites you to tear up the track with the same grace and control as a caffeinated squirrel on rollerblades. Loosely inspired b...

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...

The Terminator: Future Shock takes the Terminator universe into first-person 3D and does considerably more than simply provide another excuse to shoot robots. Set in a devastated f...

Keys to Maramon is a role-playing game developed by Mindcraft Software and released in 1990 for the Amiga, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64 platforms. The game is set in the same universe ...

Mixed-up Fairy Tales takes the familiar world of classic fairy tales and gives it a playful shake, scattering characters, objects, and stories into a wonderfully confused adventure...

Blades of Steel is hockey the way it was meant to be. Fast, brutal, and occasionally resembling a bar fight on ice. The game lets you punch other players mid-match and the announce...

Transarctica presents a wonderfully bleak vision of the future in which Earth has frozen over and surviving civilization depends on enormous trains crossing the icy wilderness. The...

Gateworld is one of those games that seems determined to test your patience as much as your reflexes. On paper, it’s a straightforward platformer, but in practice it’s ...

Italicized title: Jack Nicklaus' Unlimited Golf & Course Design. More than a sports simulation, this title became a toolbox for golf fans eager to build and share their dream c...

The year is 1995, and Abuse brings us one of the slickest, darkest run-and-gun shooters ever to crawl out of a DOS/Linux/Mac basement. You play a guy in prison for a crime he didn&...

The Geekwad: Games of the Galaxy is a collection of bizarre mini-games aimed squarely at players who enjoy their arcade action with a generous helping of nonsense. Rather than buil...

In Montezuma’s Revenge (1984), you play Panama Joe, an explorer who spends more time falling into pits than actually raiding temples. This early platformer is all about timin...

Street Rod (1989, DOS) isn’t just a racing game—it’s a love letter to greasy hands, loud engines, and California sunsets. You start with a beat-up car and a pocke...

Taito’s Puzznic (1990) takes the idea of matching tiles and injects a surprising amount of strategy. You slide blocks to align pairs, but each move requires forethought&mdash...

This one's not for the faint of heart. Conflict in Vietnam tries to simulate the complexity and chaos of guerrilla warfare in a game where every click can cost lives. The graphics ...

Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive is a delightful blend of detective noir, sci-fi weirdness, and FMV acting that swings between charming and unintentionally hilarious. You step int...

Back in 1984, Zaxxon was the future. Isometric graphics? Whoa. Shadow effects? Mind blown. But mostly, it was a game about flying a chunky spaceship through a heavily fortified spa...

SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony is a wonderfully eccentric 1991 simulation that lets players experience life from the perspective of an ant. Rather than building cities or managi...

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 ...

Black & White (2001) is what happens when a god game gets a bit too literal. You play as a deity, complete with a giant hand, an enormous ego, and a giant pet that poops on vil...

Thomas the Tank Engine brings the cheerful little blue locomotive to the computer in a game aimed primarily at younger players. The experience revolves around controlling Thomas an...

Balance of Power: The 1990 Edition is a geopolitical strategy game developed by Chris Crawford and released in 1985. It is considered a classic in the genre of political and strate...

Becoming a Renaissance ruler is complicated enough without everyone around you plotting something. Machiavelli the Prince transforms politics into an engaging strategy game where d...

The Guild of Thieves is a classic interactive fiction adventure in which exploration, puzzles, and carefully written descriptions do most of the heavy lifting. Set in a world of my...

The Civil War from 1995 takes a more developed approach to the American conflict, presenting its historical subject through strategy, military planning, and campaign management. Th...