abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Incredible Toon Machine is a puzzle video game developed by Jeff Tunnell Productions and published by Sierra On-Line in 1994. It serves as the successor to the game Sid & A...

7 Colors is one of those puzzle games that sounds simple on paper but ends up consuming your entire afternoon before you even realize it. Released in 1991 for DOS, it throws you in...

Welcome to the Ys series, where you swing swords by running headfirst into enemies. The Vanished Omens introduces Adol Christin, red-haired hero extraordinaire, as he embarks on a ...

The Lost Patrol (1991, DOS) drops you into the brutal jungles of Vietnam, where survival depends on strategy, luck, and maybe divine intervention. You lead a squad of exhausted sol...

Murders in Space takes detective fiction beyond Earth, placing players in a futuristic setting where solving a murder requires investigating an environment with rather fewer conven...

Arctic Adventure is the sequel nobody asked for to Pharaoh's Tomb, except this time you’re freezing your butt off. As Nevada Smith (not a typo, it’s his real name), you...

Shadowlands (1992, DOS) hands you a party of adventurers and then expects you to coordinate them like a fantasy air-traffic controller. Instead of a single hero, you manage four ch...

In Space Quest 5: The Next Mutation, Roger Wilco finally receives something resembling a promotion. Released in 1993, the game puts him in charge of a spaceship and a crew, which f...

Ah, Black Sect (1993), where the puzzles are cryptic, the villagers are creepy, and the atmosphere is so thick you could spread it on toast. A classic first-person point-and-click ...

Arcade Pool (1994) is like playing a game of billiards in your best friend’s basement—if your best friend happened to be a DOS machine with a serious competitive streak...

Step into the Korean War with Conflict: Korea, where you command UN forces and discover that even in strategy games, North Korea is a problem. It follows the same system as the res...

Amberstar is a fantasy old school RPG very similar to Ultima 6 that uses a top-down view for interiors and small locations and a first person pseudo 3D view for everything else. Un...

An expansion to the original, Cossacks: The Art of War refines, expands, and generally cranks up the chaos. New units, new campaigns, and more ways to accidentally bankrupt your na...

Crossfire is what happens when you throw a tank into a maze, give it infinite ammo, and tell it to go wild. Released in 1982, it’s all about twitch reflexes and precise shoot...

TV Sports: Basketball is one of those games that feels like it really wanted to impress you with its presentation—and honestly, it does a decent job. Released in 1990, it blends ...

Paranormal agents, conspiracy theories, and point-and-click puzzles that would make even a ghost sigh in frustration. Bureau 13 is like The X-Files if Mulder and Scully spent more ...

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 ...

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...

Before Madden became a household name, 1988 gave us this DOS football classic, where plays are drawn like cave paintings and players move like molasses in January. Yet, for its tim...

Released in 1984, Jumpman is a classic platform game that challenges players to navigate construction sites packed with hazards, ladders, and carefully placed obstacles. The object...

UnReal World is a survival experience that takes its premise very seriously, perhaps more seriously than you expected. First released in 1992 and evolving over time, it places you ...

Guilty from 1995 is a moody point-and-click adventure that seems to have majored in brooding. You step into a murder investigation drenched in rain-soaked atmosphere and existentia...

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...

Castle Adventure is what happens when a medieval fantasy RPG gets crammed into a game smaller than your average selfie. ASCII graphics? Check. Typing commands like “GET SWORD...

D-Zone is what you’d get if someone blended city-building with military strategy and sprinkled in a dash of chaos. You’re tasked with running a base while fending off a...