abandonware games sorted by popularity

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?...

Vette! is a driving game built around the unmistakable spectacle of cruising a high-performance Corvette through San Francisco. Instead of confining you to a neat racing circuit, t...

NetHack is one of the great survivors of computer gaming, a 1987 roguelike that has been challenging players for decades with randomly generated dungeons, brutal enemies, complex s...

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 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...

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...

Chrono Quest II is a science-fiction adventure that combines exploration, puzzles, strange worlds, and the usual hazards of wandering around somewhere the locals probably wish you ...

Dragon Slayer: the Legend of Heroes is a classic Japanese-style role-playing adventure that combines exploration, character development, combat, and a traditional fantasy story. Yo...

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...

Stratego brings the classic board game of hidden armies to the computer, preserving the central trick that makes the original so entertaining: you never quite know what the other s...

Long before Minecraft let us build worlds, Adventure Construction Set handed you a digital Lego box and said, “Go nuts.” Want to make a dungeon full of orcs and ham san...

The title Dinosaur Balls might raise eyebrows today, but in 1992 it was just a quirky DOS puzzle game. Think of it as prehistoric Bubble Bobble: you fire colored spheres to match a...

Crisis in the Kremlin lets you step into the shoes of a Soviet leader during the late 1980s, facing the impossible task of guiding the USSR through economic collapse, political unr...

Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy is a 1998 cyberpunk adventure set in a futuristic city where corruption, conspiracies, technology, and suspiciously complicated secrets are all par...

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...

Hot on the heels of the first, Caverns of Kroz 2 (also 1989) doesn’t mess with the formula—it sharpens it. More puzzles, more monsters, more reasons to scream at fallin...

The Colony is a first-person science-fiction adventure that combines exploration, combat, puzzles, and a surprisingly lonely atmosphere. Set on an alien world, it gives the player ...

Ford Simulator 3 (1992, DOS) pushes the formula further, polishing visuals and adding enough variety to feel like a modest evolution rather than a simple update. The driving segmen...

Super Huey UH-IX is an early helicopter simulation that places you in the cockpit and asks you to master the wonderfully awkward business of keeping a rotorcraft airborne. The game...

The Faery Tale Adventure: Book I is a charming action-adventure set in a colorful fantasy world where exploration matters just as much as fighting. You play a young hero sent on a ...

X-Men: Madness in Murderworld sends Marvel's mutant heroes into the bizarre and dangerous amusement park created by the villain Arcade. Rather than offering a conventional superher...

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...

CyClones is a first-person shooter where you take on the role of a bio-engineered super-soldier fighting alien invaders. The controls are smooth, the weapons varied, and the level ...

Dangerous Dave: Dave Goes Nutz! is what happens when a platformer drinks too much coffee. The pace is frantic, the enemies relentless, and the levels filled with hazards that seem ...

Stargunner is a 1996 side-scrolling shooter that delivers fast, colorful space combat with plenty of enemies, explosions, weapons, and screen-filling chaos. The player pilots a hea...

The Cool Croc Twins is a colorful platform game starring two crocodile brothers who seem to have decided that saving the day is best accomplished while bouncing around, collecting ...

Escape from Delirium feels like someone took a pulp adventure novel, dipped it in a bucket of chaos, and fed it to a DOS system. You wake up with amnesia (because of course you do)...

Moraff's World offers a colorful fantasy role-playing adventure where players explore a large world, battle monsters, gather treasure, and gradually develop a powerful character. T...

Transylvania is an atmospheric text adventure that sends the player into a classic gothic setting filled with mystery, danger, and the sort of suspicious castle that sensible peopl...

Don’t let the clown fool you—Krusty’s Super Funhouse (1993, DOS) is more puzzle torture chamber than funhouse. You guide Krusty as he exterminates waves of rats u...