abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

Guerrilla War wastes no time pretending to be subtle. You run upward, you shoot everything that moves, and occasionally you rescue a hostage who seems oddly calm about the whole si...

Empire Earth asks a bold question: what if we took all of human history and turned it into one very long real-time strategy match? From cavemen to mech-wielding future armies, this...

Tank controls + polar bears + Cold War vibes = Arctic Fox. In this early vehicular combat sim, you're piloting a futuristic snow tank across an icy wasteland to stop some aliens or...

Forget Rambo. Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines is what happens when you drop six experts behind Nazi lines and tell them to behave tactically… or else. Every mission is a deadl...

In Strahd’s Possession, you’re tossed into the mists of Barovia, where Count Strahd—smooth, sinister, and eternally well-groomed—looms over everything. The ...

Imagine X-COM but with fewer excuses to blame the developers when you miss a 95% chance shot—because in UFO 2000 (2004), the chaos was entirely player-driven. A free, open-so...

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...

Before rhythm games took over, there was Moonwalker (1989), where you play as none other than Michael Jackson himself, saving kidnapped kids by dancing enemies into submission. Yes...

Released in 1990, Geisha is one of those games that makes you ask, “Who thought this was a good idea?” Part adventure, part fever dream, it’s filled with surreal ...

Pirates! Gold is an open world game designed by Paul Murphy, developed and released by MicroProse Software in 1993 for DOS, Windows 3.x, Mac and also Sega Genesis and Amiga CD32.&n...

Alternate Reality: The City is a role-playing video game developed by Paradise Programming for various platforms including Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, and Commodore 64. It was released ...

Part Cold War thriller, part adventure game, part submarine simulator, Code-Name: Iceman is a Sierra title that demands patience, precision, and a deep respect for diplomacy and to...

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...

John Madden Football was the first of a series of american football sports games sponsored by the coach of the same name. The first John Madden Football is an abandoned game develo...

Flying Tigers (1994, DOS) throws you into the Pacific theater with a grin and a trigger finger that never quite rests. It’s loud, brash, and unashamedly action-oriented, the ...

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...

Ishar 2 (1994, DOS) picks up where the first game left off, and then throws in more ways to punish careless adventurers. It’s a first-person RPG where managing your party isn...

MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries is a standalone expansion to MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat, released in 1996 by Activision. Part of the larger BattleTech universe, the game puts pl...

X-Men: Children of the Atom is a fighting video game developed by Capcom and released in arcades in 1994. The game features characters from Marvel Comics' X-Men series, including p...

Riven is the sequel to the highly successful and critically acclaimed adventure game, Myst. Developed by Cyan Worlds, Riven was released in 1997 and continues the narrative establi...

In Crystals of Arborea, you lead a team of heroes on a quest to defeat the evil Lord of Chaos and restore balance to a shattered world. It’s part RPG, part strategy game, wit...