abandonware games sorted by popularity

Fleet Sweep takes the high drama of naval warfare and filters it through early-80s minimalism. Think less cinematic spectacle and more abstract tension as you maneuver through trea...

The Temple of Apshai Trilogy is a series of classic role-playing games developed by Automated Simulations (later known as Epyx) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These games were ...

High Command: Europe 1939-45 is a strategy game that does not shy away from complexity, asking players to engage with history on a grand scale. The mechanics are detailed, sometime...

Veil of Darkness is a gothic action adventure that mixes exploration, puzzles, combat, and a healthy supply of supernatural misery. You find yourself stranded in a remote region do...

BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge is a turn-based strategy game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom in 1990. It is the sequel to "Crescent Hawk's I...

In Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse (1994), you’re not some grizzled barbarian or pointy-hatted wizard - no, you’re a noble corsair with charm, a sword, and a knack for gett...

Pharaoh is a 1999 city-building strategy game that transports players to ancient Egypt, where creating a successful civilization requires planning, organization, and a surprising a...

Uplink: Hacker Elite drops you into a digital underworld where your keyboard is your most powerful weapon. Released in 2001, it blends strategy and simulation, tasking you with bre...

Dark Ages Volume III: Dungeons of Doom closes out the trilogy with—you guessed it—more doom, dungeons, and ways to fall off platforms you swear you landed on. The serie...

Fairy Tale Adventure 2: Halls of the Dead (1997) continues its predecessor’s tradition of sprawling fantasy exploration with a darker, more dangerous edge. Available on DOS a...

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)...

O-Pong is a 1996 DOS game that takes one of the simplest ideas in video game history and gives it another spin. At its heart, it is a variation on Pong, which means two sides, a ba...

A martial arts tournament starring fluffy animals with serious anger issues? Yes, please. Brutal: Paws of Fury is what happens when someone watches too much kung fu cinema and then...

Whiplash is an arcade-style action game that wastes very little time before throwing the player into trouble. Its fast pace, shooting, movement, and constant stream of enemies give...

Pit Fighter is a 1991 fighting game that brings brutal underground combat to the computer with a gritty atmosphere and intense one-on-one battles. Players choose fighters with diff...

Star Trek: Starfleet Command (1999, Windows XP) is a dream come true for anyone who memorized warp core schematics. It’s a tactical space combat simulator that rewards patien...

Arachne is a graphical web browser for DOS. Arachne was developed by Michal Polák and released in the early 1990s as a text-mode web browser with limited graphical capabilit...

Blades of Steel is hockey the way it was meant to be. Fast, brutal, and occasionally resembling a bar fight on ice. The game lets you punch other players mid-match and the announce...

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate brings the grim darkness of the far future into a turn-based tactical battlefield where subtle diplomacy has been replaced by heavily armed Space Marine...

Welcome to Z, the real-time strategy game where psychotic robots with British accents duke it out over territory in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Think Command & Conquer if the...

The Great War: 1914 - 1918 is a historical strategy game focused on the First World War, a conflict where “just move forward” was famously not an especially successful tactical...

Dark Designs 2: Closing the Gate picks up right where the first game left off, with your party stumbling into yet another world-threatening mess. The stakes are higher, the enemies...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Star Trek: First Contact (not to be confused with the later movie) is more puzzle-solving than phaser-firing. You take control of the Enterprise crew as t...

Xargon is a platformer that feels like it was built with equal parts creativity and cheerful chaos. Levels are packed with secrets, strange enemies, and mechanics that sometimes se...

Released in 1987, Falcon is the kind of flight simulator that politely informs you, within minutes, that you are not nearly as smart as you thought. This isn’t an arcade joyr...

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 waiti...

Just like the movie, Batman Returns (1992) is dark, gritty, and full of dudes in clown makeup getting punched in the face. You play as the Caped Crusader in a beat-‘em-up sid...

International Rugby Challenge brings the physical chaos of rugby to the computer, giving players control over matches where possession can change quickly and apparently everybody h...

Obliterator is a 1989 action game that gives the player a suitably intimidating job title and then immediately provides plenty of enemies to justify it. Set in a science-fiction en...

Dark Ages Volume I: Prince of Destiny introduces you to the world of Agroth, where magic, monsters, and your questionable combat skills collide. You play as a hero destined to save...