abandonware games sorted by popularity

Karateka is a martial arts themed action / fighting game released by Broderbund in 1986 for DOS. Karateka is the first game designed by Jordan Mechner, the father of the ...

Ugh! answers the eternal question: what if a stone-age delivery service were the basis for an entire video game? You play as a caveman whose main skills include grunting, flying a ...

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a grumpy bearded guy swinging an axe and saving the world before second breakfast, Bloodstone: an Epic Dwarven Tale is your jam. Released in 1...

Flight of the Amazon Queen is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Interactive Binary Illusions and originally released in 1995. The game is heavily inspired by the likes ...

Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan is a computer RPG released in 1990 for MS-DOS and PC-98 platforms. It is based on the tabletop role-playing game Tunnels & Trolls crea...

Battlespire is the weird, dark cousin of the Elder Scrolls family - the one who shows up late to the reunion with a sword and no pants. This first-person RPG strips out all the com...

When Die Hard 2: Die Harder hit DOS in 1992, it decided the airport setting meant “time for an on-rails shooter.” Picture John McClane glued to a track, blasting bad gu...

Explosions? Check. Missiles? Check. Graphics that look like someone spilled gray soup on your monitor? Double check. A-10 Tank Killer lets you pilot a flying war machine and rain c...

Before there was Baldur’s Gate or Skyrim, there was DND. This 1984 DOS dungeon crawler is as old-school as it gets, complete with ASCII graphics, endless hallways, and monste...

City of Lost Children is as beautiful as it is bewildering. Based on the surreal 1995 film, this adventure game drops you into a dark, oily dystopia filled with creepy orphans, biz...

Earthrise taps into late Cold War anxieties, presenting a future shaped by political tension and hard choices. Part strategy, part simulation, it tasks you with managing global sys...

Released in 1991, Free D.C.! is one of those games that feels like a time capsule of early PC experimentation. It mixes political satire with arcade-style action, letting you fight...

Based on the fantasy novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Death Gate (1994) throws you into an epic, puzzle-heavy adventure. Imagine Myst, but with more dragons and a script ...

In Black Crown (1995), you play as a prince with a very punchable name, trying to reclaim his rightful throne by solving puzzles and dying a lot. It's one of those DOS-era games wh...

If Street Rod was a rockabilly rebel, Street Rod 2 (1991, DOS) is its cooler, leather-jacket-wearing cousin. Everything’s bigger, badder, and more polished. The cars roar wit...

In Scapeghost (1989), you’re not just dead—you’re also on the clock. As police officer Alan Chance, recently murdered and newly spectral, you’ve got one las...

If you’ve ever wondered what a caveman’s life was like—minus the boredom and constant risk of saber-tooth tiger attacks—Prehistorik has you covered. It&rsqu...

Face Off! (1989) wastes no time telling you exactly what it wants to be: fast, noisy, and slightly unhinged. This DOS arcade sports game throws subtlety out of the window and repla...

Innocent Until Caught throws you into a sci-fi noir universe where your protagonist, a perpetually broke thief, stumbles from one disaster to the next with a mix of charm, sarcasm,...

Before there were AAA games with 100GB installs, there was Amulet of Yendor, a rogue-like so old-school it might as well come with a floppy disk and a sandwich bag of D&D dice....