The most popular abandonware action-adventure games

Spider-Man 2: The Game, released in 2004, finally gave players what they had been quietly demanding for years: the freedom to swing through a fully realized New York City like a ca...

The original Grand Theft Auto drops you into a city where rules are more of a suggestion than an obligation. In Grand Theft Auto, you play from a top-down perspective that somehow ...

Grand Theft Auto 2 refines the original formula and then adds more attitude, more chaos, and more ways to get into trouble. In Grand Theft Auto 2, gangs matter, reputation matters,...

Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams is an enhanced version of the original Silent Hill 2, released in 2001 for the Xbox. It later appeared on PC and PlayStation 2 under titles like Dire...

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is an open-world action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games in 2002. It's the fourth main entry in the GTA series...

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone brings the wizarding world to life with a mix of exploration, puzzles, and light action that feels appropriately magical. It captures the sens...

Before Doom and Wolfenstein 3D turned PC gaming into a pixelated bloodbath, there was Castle Wolfenstein. A stealth game in 1984? Believe it. You sneak around a Nazi fortress, stea...

Step into the polygonal shoes of Edward Carnby (or Emily Hartwood, if you're feeling bold) in Alone in the Dark, the grandfather of survival horror games. Released in 1992 for DOS,...

Ecstatica is a haunting anomaly in the DOS library, blending early 3D visuals with a dark fairy-tale atmosphere. Its polygonal characters may look crude by modern standards, but th...

Castlevania, originally released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986, was developed and published by Konami. The game was known in Japan as Akumajo Dracula (Devil's Castl...

D/Generation is a slick blend of action, puzzle-solving, and corporate dystopia. You’re a courier dropped into a high-security biotech facility to deliver a package, only to ...

La Abadía del Crimen (1987) is famously unforgiving, and it knows it. Inspired by Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, this is an isometric adventure where breaking the...

In 1987, Driller arrived as a revolutionary 3D game that looked light-years ahead of its time. Using the Freescape engine, it let players explore a fully 3D world—on a DOS ma...

Fade to Black (1995) aims high and mostly lands on its feet, delivering a cinematic science-fiction adventure that feels ambitious even today. As a sequel to Flashback, it keeps th...

Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures is a charmingly odd experiment that shrinks globe-trotting archaeology into bite-sized missions designed for quick play sessions. Viewed fr...

Based on a book series almost nobody remembers, Below The Root drops you into a serene world of treehouses, talking children, and deeply philosophical moral choices. Combat does no...

By the time Alone in the Dark 3 (1994, DOS) rolls around, Edward Carnby has seen it all - so now it’s off to the Wild West, because of course it is. Zombies? Check. Cowboys? ...

Half comic book, half arcade game, Batman: The Caped Crusader (1988) offers a delightfully weird aesthetic with its paneled visual style and pulp serial vibe. You’ll punch, p...

System Shock drops you into a space station run by an AI that has clearly read too many villain manuals and decided to try them all at once. SHODAN, the game’s iconic antagon...

Operation Getafix (1989) is what happens when you turn a beloved comic series into a game with the precision of a wild boar wearing gloves. You play as Asterix on a quest to help G...

Impossible Mission 2 proves that espionage is mostly about jumping carefully and avoiding suspicious furniture. Released in 1988 for DOS, this sequel expands on the original's plat...

Before space marines were gritty and everything exploded in brown and grey, there was The Adventures of Captain Comic. This is early PC platforming in all its clunky, jumpy, 4-colo...

Take Eddie Murphy’s swagger, remove the charm, add some DOS chiptunes, and you get Beverly Hills Cop—a game adaptation that asks: “What if being a wisecracking de...

Cosmic Spacehead is a cheerful point-and-click adventure wrapped in platformer segments, starring a purple alien who’s equal parts explorer and goofball. You’ll travel ...

Ah, Dizzy—the little egg that could. Released in 1987, this puzzle-platformer puts you in the delicate shell of an egg who somehow manages to roll, jump, and carry objects wi...

Released in 1992, Dylan Dog: Murderers brings Italy’s most famous nightmare investigator to the DOS screen with all the moody atmosphere you’d expect. It’s part p...