Abandonware shooter games

Before James Bond was saving the world with cinematic flair, he was crashing pixelated helicopters in 007: License to Kill. This top-down action game takes the movie and crams it into six bite-sized missions of explosions, awkward flying, and questionable hit detection. You’ll drive, swim, fly, and die - a lot. The controls are about as smoot...

18th Airborne is what happens when a military recruitment pamphlet and a tactical shooter have a baby. You’re thrown into the boots of a paratrooper with a mission, a gun, and maybe a vague idea of what’s going on. The graphics are vintage DOS, which means everything looks like it was drawn with crayons under enemy fire. Missions involv...

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’t commit (sure, pal), armed to the teeth and mowing down mutants like it’s casual Friday. It’s gritty, fast, and has mouse aiming — in 1995! That ...

In Ack-Ack Attack! (1995, DOS), you operate an anti-aircraft gun and do your best to shoot down waves of enemy planes with what appears to be a potato cannon. The game is loud, frantic, and wonderfully simple — a throwback to the days when “arcade-style” meant “your wrist will hurt after 15 minutes.” It’s not com...

Strap in and crawl through the mud - Airborne Ranger (1988) is here to chew bubblegum and infiltrate enemy lines. And it's all out of bubblegum. This tactical action game lets you drop behind enemy territory, blow things up, and look extremely cool doing it (in blocky, 8-bit fashion). It's part stealth, part shootout, and somehow still manages to b...

Ajax (1989) is like an arcade fever dream: vertical shooter, transforming vehicles, lasers everywhere, and a soundtrack that yells “blast stuff!” every few seconds. One minute you’re flying a helicopter, the next you’re a tank on a hoverboard - don’t ask how, just shoot. It’s pure ’80s adrenaline: fast, lou...

Alcatraz (1992) asks the question: what if Rambo got locked in prison and had to bust out while flexing dramatically the entire time? This top-down action game puts you in the very macho boots of an elite commando trying to escape America’s most infamous prison. The game is part stealth, part shoot-‘em-up, and all testosterone. You&rsqu...

If Doom and Gauntlet had a lovechild, Alien Breed would be the weird kid who hangs out in dark corridors with a shotgun. Released in 1993 for DOS, this top-down shooter throws you into a space station overrun by what can only be described as angry seafood. It’s tense, claustrophobic, and gleefully gory for the time. Bring a map, a friend, and...

Alien Breed: Tower Assault (1994) takes everything you loved about the original - creepy corridors, limited ammo, sudden death - and adds something revolutionary for the time: non-linear level design. That's right, you can now die in a completely different order! It's like a Choose-Your-Own-Alien-Disaster book. The game is harder, faster, and even ...

Imagine Doom got abducted by aliens, experimented on, and sent back to Earth with a case of amnesia. That’s Alien Cabal (1997). It’s a weird mix of FPS action and X-Files paranoia, with pixelated bad guys who look like they were rendered on a toaster. The story is bonkers, the voice acting is... present, and the gameplay is surprisingly...

Alien Rampage (1996) is what happens when Duke Nukem gets stranded on a hostile alien planet and decides subtlety is for cowards. It’s a side-scrolling shooter dripping with gore, attitude, and the occasional terrible pun. Everything explodes, everything wants to kill you, and the hero growls like he gargles gravel. It’s dumb, loud, and...

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 at its finest—like Contra had a baby with Gauntlet, then threw it into space. Controls are tight, enemies are relentless, and the soundtrack sounds like a robot havi...

Alien Trilogy is a first-person shooter video game released in 1996 for various platforms, including the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS. Developed by Probe Entertainment and published by Acclaim Entertainment, the game is based on the first three films in the Alien franchise. The game's narrative loosely follows the storyline of these mo...

Ever wanted to pilot a walking death machine through a series of exploding industrial hellscapes while being shot at from every angle? Welcome to Amok. This 1996 mech-shooter is a glorious mess of 3D environments, big explosions, and gameplay that occasionally forgets it needs to be fun. You stomp around in your mech like a robot with arthritis, bl...

Despite the name, Aquaphobia (1992) doesn’t help you overcome your fear of water. In fact, it might just make it worse. This is an action-platformer where you try not to drown while battling mutated sea creatures and unintuitive controls. You’ll wonder if your true enemy is the terrifying undersea monsters or the game’s refusal to...

In Armor Alley, you command a helicopter in a warzone that looks like a side-scrolling office meeting gone wrong. It’s strategy meets action: you must manage resources, deploy units, and not crash into the ground every five seconds. It’s chaotic, a little clunky, and far too fun. The game shines in its mix of arcade shooting and light t...

Arnie 2 is the unofficial Schwarzenegger sim where you run around shirtless with guns bigger than your torso, blowing up helicopters, bunkers, and bad guys in increasingly ridiculous quantities. The plot is somewhere between Commando and a fever dream, but who needs a story when you’ve got grenades? The controls are twitchy, the explosions fr...

In Assault Trooper, you're the lone soldier with enough ammo to make Rambo blush, dropped behind enemy lines to shoot first and ask “was that a civilian?” later. This 1997 top-down shooter screams “keyboard-mashing catharsis,” offering a blend of stealth, strategy, and full-auto chaos. The missions are varied, the enemies pl...

Astro Dodge (1982) is basically Frogger — in space. You control a tiny spacecraft tasked with dodging endless waves of meteors, space debris, and possibly your own questionable life choices. There’s no shooting, no exploration, just pure, panicked evasion. The graphics are charmingly primitive, like a screensaver decided to become senti...

Astro Fire (1994) is the illegitimate love child of Asteroids and a particularly angry fireworks show. You pilot a tiny ship with a death wish through an endless barrage of asteroids, enemies, and power-ups that may or may not be worth the risk. The pace is fast, the soundtrack is intense, and the explosions are satisfying enough to make Michael Ba...

Yes, Astrotit (1987) is really the name, and no, it’s not what you think — though it does feel like it was named by a bored teenager. This side-scrolling shooter puts you in command of a spaceship shaped suspiciously like a flying insect, blasting your way through bizarre alien landscapes that look like they were designed during a fever...

If you've ever stared at a camel and thought, "What if it shot lasers and had a personal grudge against humanity?", Attack of the Mutant Camels is the fever dream you've been waiting for. Released in 2001 for DOS — yes, someone made a DOS game in the 21st century — it pits you against a herd of surly dromedaries with serious attitude pr...

Before Michael Bay got his hands on the franchise, Autobots (1989, DOS) offered a more... subtle approach to transforming robot mayhem. Well, not subtle exactly — more like confusing. You drive around a blocky city, fight vaguely car-shaped enemies, and wonder if you're the hero or just traffic. There’s a story in here somewhere, probab...

Released in 1989 for DOS, Baal is what happens when demons invade and the only thing standing between Earth and eternal damnation is a guy with a really big gun and absolutely no concern for platforming physics. You’re dropped into a hellish maze of traps, puzzles, and pixelated horror, tasked with recovering the parts of a weapon so powerful...

Batalia (1986) is what happens when war games and spreadsheet programs fall in love. This early DOS strategy title throws you into tactical battles with graphics that would struggle to impress a calculator. But don’t be fooled—it’s deeper than it looks. Planning, resource management, and an iron will are essential. It's not pretty...

In 1983, Battlezone asked: what if vector graphics could give you war-induced vertigo? You’re in a tank, in a wireframe world, fighting other tanks. That’s it. But it’s oddly immersive—thanks to a pseudo-3D first-person view that was mind-blowing at the time. Think of it as the grandparent of every FPS ever, minus the textur...

Before Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, the world only knew of one man who could mow down Nazis in a maze of corridors — then Blake showed up with a laser gun and a mission to rid the universe of alien gold hoarders. Released in 1993 for DOS, this game is like Wolfenstein 3D’s sci-fi cousin who read too many pulp comics. The enemies range f...

Blake Stone: Planet Strike picks up where the first left off — more aliens, more guns, and more corridors that all look suspiciously alike. Released in 1994 for DOS, it’s basically Blake’s victory lap, but with added polish and new weapons. The villain’s plan still makes zero sense, but who needs logic when you’ve got ...

Blasteroids is a video game developed and released by Atari, Inc. in 1987. It's a sequel to the classic arcade game Asteroids, which was released in 1979. In Blasteroids, players control a spaceship tasked with destroying asteroids and enemy ships while avoiding collisions and enemy fire. The game features updated graphics and gameplay mechanics co...

Ah yes, Blood (1997)—the cheerful little game where you rise from the grave, wield a pitchfork, and quote evil-sounding movie lines while setting cultists on fire. It’s a first-person shooter soaked in gore and dark humor, like Doom went on a bender with Evil Dead. Between the voodoo dolls, dynamite bundles, and haunted amusement parks,...