abandonware games sorted by rating

Managing human civilization from the Stone Age to futuristic technology is no small assignment, yet Mega lo Mania handles it with remarkable style and originality. Players guide po...

B-17 Flying Fortress (1992) is the kind of game where you don't just fly the plane—you are the plane. One moment you're the pilot, the next you're the nose gunner swatting Lu...

Stunt Island is part flight simulator, part movie-making playground, and part excuse to crash aircraft repeatedly in the name of entertainment. You take control of various planes a...

F/A-18 Korea is a serious combat flight simulator for players who enjoy the idea of flying a modern fighter while simultaneously managing a rather intimidating collection of button...

Virtual Reality Studio 2.0 builds on the idea of creating interactive three-dimensional environments, offering a more advanced version of the DOS development environment introduced...

You’ve never really lived until you’ve watched a rook pick up a pawn and slam dunk it into the floor. Battle Chess (1988) turns the world’s most intellectual boar...

Civilization II is a turn-based strategy game developed by MicroProse and released in 1996. It's the second installment in the "Civilization" series, created by Sid Meier. The game...

Quake is a 1996 first-person shooter that helped redefine what players expected from PC action games. Its dark, industrial environments, grotesque enemies, powerful weapons, and fu...

Dungeon Hack is a dungeon-crawling role-playing game (RPG) developed by DreamForge Intertainment and published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI). It was released in 1993 for MS-...

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...

The Need for Speed marked the beginning of a racing series that would eventually become one of gaming's most recognizable names. The original game focuses on fast cars, realistic-f...

Norton Commander was one of the most popular and influential file management applications ever released for MS-DOS. Introduced in 1986, it featured an innovative, dual-pane interfa...

Alien Syndrome (1989) is a top-down shooter where you save hostages, shoot aliens, and scream internally because you’re always out of time. It’s frantic arcade action a...

Black Tiger is a side-scrolling action game packed with monsters, treasure and enough medieval violence to make a quiet afternoon in the countryside seem considerably less attracti...

Part RTS, part simulation, Carrier Command was ahead of its time in the same way that an aircraft carrier is ahead of a canoe. You control a futuristic warship, launch aircraft and...

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a cop who drifts around corners at 90 mph in a convertible, Cisco Heat is your kind of chaos. This arcade racer puts you in the shoes of a law...

Conquest of the New World (Deluxe Edition) invites you to discover new lands, build colonies, and occasionally “accidentally” wipe out entire civilizations while smilin...

European Championship 1992 captures football in a raw, almost scrappy form. This isn’t about realism or presentation; it’s about getting the ball forward and hoping for...

Fleet Defender places you in the cockpit of a carrier-based fighter and politely suggests you try not to embarrass yourself in front of the entire navy. This flight sim balances ac...

Flying Corps (1997, DOS/Win3x) is what happens when someone decides that World War I dogfights need both historical accuracy and a gentle dose of existential dread. You climb into ...

Klass of 99 is a compact educational game built around the sort of schoolroom challenges that were once considered perfectly acceptable entertainment for a computer. Rather than th...

L'Empereur (1991) is one of those games that looks at Napoleon and says, “Yes, but what if we made it complicated?” This DOS strategy title drops you straight into the ...

Microsoft COBOL is a classic programming environment for one of computing's most enduring business languages. COBOL was designed with practical data processing in mind, and Microso...

With a name like Moonshine Racers (1991), you already know this isn’t about safe driving. You’re an outlaw hauling contraband, racing through rural landscapes while dod...

Speedball is like hockey, but with more metal, more violence, and fewer rules. It’s future-sport brutality where scoring goals is optional—knocking opponents unconsciou...

The Lost Treasures of Infocom is essentially a library of interactive fiction for players willing to trade spectacular graphics for spectacularly active imaginations. The collectio...

The Oregon Trail turns a nineteenth-century journey across America into an unexpectedly addictive lesson in logistics, bad luck, and the many creative ways a wagon trip can go wron...

Before immersive sims were a buzzword, there was Ultima Underworld. Dropping you into a massive first-person dungeon, it gave players freedom unthinkable at the time. Want to negot...

Where in America's Past is Carmen Sandiego? turns history into a worldwide chase with one important difference: the criminals have the audacity to hide in the past. As the detectiv...

Bubble Bobble is widely regarded as one of the most beloved and charming platform arcade games of all time. The gameplay objective in Bubble Bobble is straightforward: players must...