abandonware games sorted by popularity

Mech War (1992) takes the concept of giant robot combat and turns it into a fast-paced tactical showdown. Instead of commanding from afar, you’re directly involved in the act...

If Barbie was mildly passive in her 1992 debut, Barbie Super Model (1993) puts her on the runway—literally. You’ll practice walking, dodging obstacles, and matching out...

The Curse of Monkey Island is the third installment in the iconic Monkey Island point-and-click adventure series developed by LucasArts. Released in 1997, it introduced a new visua...

Goal! is one of those football games that reminds you how far sports simulations have come—and how much fun they were before realism took over. The controls are simple, the p...

Time travel is confusing enough, but Lost in Time (1993, DOS) makes it gloriously absurd. You wake up in a ship’s hold in the 19th century, trying to figure out how you got t...

Magnetic Scrolls was one of the finest developer companies dedicated to Interactive Fiction. The Magnetic Scrolls Collection is a trilogy of Magnenic Scrolls adventures remade usin...

Lords of the Realm II is a medieval-themed real-time strategy (RTS) and turn-based strategy game developed by Impressions Games and published by Sierra On-Line. Released in 1996, i...

D-Day: The Beginning of the End is not your average “storm the beach” simulator—it’s a grand strategy title that drops you into the nerve-wracking planning ...

Step into the gray, morally ambiguous world of corporate domination with Big Business. It’s Monopoly with fewer dice and more spreadsheets. Crush your competitors, manipulate...

Gateway to the Savage Frontier is a Dungeons & Dragons computer role-playing game released in 1991. It was developed by Beyond Software (later known as Stormfront Studios) and ...

Gold of the Americas: The Conquest of the New World is a strategy game that invites you to rewrite history, usually by making the same mistakes but with more confidence. You manage...

Seek and Destroy was a shoot'em up published by the well known Epic Megagames in 1996 that tried to change the usual shoot'em up gameplay for the better. Instead of wave after wave...

Released in 1989 for DOS, Poker Relay (also known as 9 Poker) is less a glamorous casino sim and more a smoky backroom full of pixelated cards and questionable programming. You get...

NetHack is an open-source roguelike game that's been around since the early 1980s. It's a single-player dungeon exploration game where you navigate your character through a randoml...

Before Donald Duck’s Playground, most kids were told video games were a waste of time. Here, Donald proves otherwise by turning menial labor into an epic adventure. Want to s...

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 ...

Deskmate is a software suite developed by Tandy Corporation that provided a graphical user interface (GUI) and a set of applications for personal computers. It was often bundled wi...

Set in the D&D desert domain of Har’Akir, Ravenloft: Stone Prophet blends horror and ancient-Egypt vibes into a first-person RPG that still feels unusual today. You wande...