abandonware games sorted by popularity

Italicized title: Jack in the Dark. Released as a small holiday-themed adventure, this game serves as a charming introduction to the style later made famous by Alone in the Dark. P...

The Civil War from 1995 takes a more developed approach to the American conflict, presenting its historical subject through strategy, military planning, and campaign management. Th...

Chicago, 1920s. You’ve got a tommy gun, a fedora, and a score to settle. Capone is part gangster sim, part shooting gallery, and part fever dream. The graphics are muddy, the...

Often hailed as the best of the trilogy, Star Trail doubles down on everything its predecessor attempted—and somehow makes it all smoother. The world feels richer, the quests...

In 1991, DOS gamers were treated to the weirdest parenting simulator ever: Baby Joe in: Going Home. You play as Baby Joe, an infant inexplicably left to crawl through caves, forest...

Lost Dutchman Mine (1989, DOS) is what happens when you mix an old western, an adventure game, and a survival simulator — and somehow it works. You’re a prospector with...

Rules of Engagement is a 1991 DOS space strategy and combat simulation that puts players in command of a fleet operating in a dangerous futuristic conflict. Instead of simply jumpi...

Part action-RPG, part body-horror fairy tale, Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall (1995) is the game where you slowly transform into an insect and, somehow, that’s not even the...

King's Quest 7: The Princeless Bride is one of the most colorful and playful entries in Sierra's long-running adventure series. The game follows Princess Rosella and her mother, Qu...

MicroProse Soccer takes the beautiful game and turns it into a fast, energetic arcade experience where spectacular goals matter more than elaborate tactics. The controls are simple...

Van Buren is the codename for the ambitious Fallout 3 project that Black Isle Studios was developing before Interplay cancelled it, leaving behind one of gaming's great “what if?...

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games (now known as LucasArts). It was first released in 1988 for various p...

Trying to describe Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1991) as a “normal” game is impossible—because nothing about it is normal. It’s a fever dream in pixe...

The Legacy: Realm of Terror is a dark first-person RPG that throws you into a genuinely unpleasant supernatural world. Rather than offering heroic castles and cheerful fantasy vill...

Populous: The Beginning is a 1998 strategy game that transforms the classic god simulation series into a more traditional real-time strategy experience. Players control a shaman an...

From 1987’s text adventure golden age, The Lurking Horror proves you don’t need graphics to be terrified. You’re a student trapped on a snowy university campus du...

Norton Editor 2 is a text editor built for the DOS environment, aimed at users who needed something more capable than a basic command-line editor without requiring an enormous word...

Guldkorn Expressen sounds cheerful, and in many ways it is—a Scandinavian oddity that feels like it was assembled with equal parts whimsy and educational intent. You guide a ...

Rollo and the Brush Brothers is a 1983 DOS game with an unusual premise and the kind of experimental spirit that characterized early home-computer software. Players guide Rollo thr...

In Annals of Rome, you don’t just play history — you command it, badly. This 1988 strategy title lets you take control of the Roman Empire and try to keep it from falli...

Industrial machinery might not sound thrilling, yet Magnetic Crane transforms operating a giant crane into a surprisingly engaging puzzle experience. Your task is to move cargo eff...

If Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon were a person, it would be that eccentric uncle who insists he once met a genie “for real.” This 1988 Arabian-fantasy adventure m...

Super Pac-Man takes the familiar yellow arcade hero and gives him a slightly more complicated playground than the original maze. Instead of simply eating dots while avoiding ghosts...

The title Alex Higgins World Snooker might imply world-class snooker. What it delivers is 1986 DOS ball physics that sometimes feel like they were modeled in an alternate dimension...

Highway Hunter combines driving and shooting in a way that feels both chaotic and entertaining. The concept is simple, survive while dealing with whatever the road throws at you, b...

UMS: The Universal Military Simulator is exactly what its name promises and maybe a little more than you bargained for. Released in 1988, it offers a sandbox approach to warfare th...

Xixit is a puzzle game that feels like it is constantly trying to outwit you, presenting challenges that require both logic and a bit of creative thinking. It does not rely on flas...

Shamus is a maze action game developed by William Mataga and published by Synapse Software in 1982. The game became popular on various home computer platforms of the early 1980s. I...

Karnov is a classic side-scrolling action arcade game developed by Data East in 1987. The game features a unique protagonist named Jinborov Karnovski, or "Karnov", a fire-breathing...

Super Stardust is a fast-paced space shooter that throws the player into a colorful galaxy filled with enemies, asteroids, power-ups, and the sort of screen activity that makes bli...