abandonware games sorted by popularity

WordStar 4 was a popular word processing software program during the early days of personal computing. WordStar 4 included features typical of word processors in that era, all...

Typing lessons become far less intimidating when Mario is cheering you on, and Mario Teaches Typing cleverly transforms keyboard practice into an entertaining challenge. Players im...

The Elder Scrolls: Arena is where Bethesda's enormous fantasy RPG series began, and even in its early form it already aimed for an impressively large world. Players create a charac...

Take everything that made Warlords 2 addictive, polish it up, throw in more content, and you get Warlords 2 Deluxe, the definitive “I’ll only play for ten minutes&rdquo...

Pipe Dream is a 1989 puzzle game built around a deceptively simple idea: connect pieces of pipe before the flowing liquid reaches the end of the path. What begins as a relaxing exe...

Micro Machines turns ordinary household environments into enormous racing circuits where tiny cars roar across tables, kitchen counters, and other places that definitely were not d...

Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight is an action-RPG and strategy game developed by Rob Anderson and published by Mindscape in 1991 for the Amiga and later for MS-DOS. The game is famous...

Back in 1992, Sensible Soccer arrived and proved that football games did not need dozens of buttons or endless realism to become addictive. Tiny players with oversized heads sprint...

Xenon 2: Megablast is a classic shoot'em up developed by Bitmap Brothers and released by Image Works in 1990 for DOS and for a plethora of other systems. Xenon was good, Xenon 2 wa...

Dungeon Master is a classic computer role-playing game (CRPG) developed by FTL Games and released in 1987. It's considered one of the pioneering titles in the dungeon crawler genre...

Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure is a 1995 platform adventure that brings back the classic Pitfall name with a modernized design, colorful graphics, and a new generation of jungle dang...

The original Command & Conquer (1995, DOS) is the game that launched a thousand LAN parties. It’s gritty, fast-paced RTS warfare with full-motion video cutscenes so chees...

Before he was shooting Mecha-Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D, B.J. Blazkowicz was chasing the actual biblical spear that pierced Jesus. Spear of Destiny is the lesser-known prequel, but n...

Released in 1998, Lego Loco celebrates creativity by allowing players to design cheerful miniature towns filled with colorful trains, quirky citizens, and endless opportunities for...

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...

Ever dreamed of running your own zoo without needing a shovel for elephant poop? Zoo Tycoon lets you do exactly that. Build the ultimate animal empire - until the lions escape, the...

Princess Maker 2 is a 1993 life simulation game where players take responsibility for raising a young girl and guiding her future. Instead of controlling a warrior or explorer, pla...

Mega Man X3 refines the already successful formula with additional armor upgrades, powerful ride vehicles, and the welcome ability to briefly control Zero under specific circumstan...

Soko-Ban is the classic 1984 DOS adaptation of the deceptively simple puzzle concept in which the player pushes crates onto designated spaces. There is one important catch: crates ...

Released in 1989, Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs is pure old-school sports gaming: simple to learn, hard to master, and endlessly competitive. The presentation is minimal,...

Conquests of the Longbow turns Robin Hood into less of a carefree swashbuckler and more of a medieval problem solver with a never-ending to-do list. Sure, you’ll shoot arrows...

You are a cat. Not a cool panther or a mystical tiger. Just a good old alley cat trying to make it through a day full of brooms, angry dogs, and questionable fish. Alley Cat is a f...

The Blues Brothers transforms Jake and Elwood Blues into the stars of a colorful platform adventure. Released in 1991, it sends the duo through a series of stages filled with obsta...

Hospital management has never been so weirdly German. In Biing!, you hire nurses based on looks, run a completely dysfunctional clinic, and try not to get arrested. It's part strat...

Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness is the sequel that helped turn Blizzard fantasy real-time strategy formula into one of the defining PC experiences of the 1990s. Released in 1995, it ...

SimTower turns building management into a surprisingly addictive simulation in which players construct and operate a huge vertical complex. Instead of spreading a city across a map...

In Might and Magic 2: Gates to Another World, the designers apparently decided that the best way to reward players for finishing the first game was to throw them into a world that ...

If you ever wanted to play a point-and-click adventure where the protagonists have the combined IQ of a slice of cheese, Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity is your masterpie...

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...

Gods is a video game developed by The Bitmap Brothers and initially released in 1991. It is a platformer that combines action and puzzle-solving elements. The game was originally r...