abandonware games sorted by popularity

Midwinter creates a remarkable open-world survival adventure set across a vast frozen island, combining exploration, combat, strategy, and resource management. Players must recruit...

Star Fleet 1: The War Begins is a 1985 space strategy game inspired by classic television science fiction, putting players in command of a starship during a large-scale conflict. R...

Think you're smart? Arcade Trivia Quiz (1993) is here to humble you with rapid-fire questions about pop culture, history, and whatever else the developers could fit on a floppy dis...

Duck Hunt is a faithful remake based on the original light gun game Duck Hunt published by Nintendo in 1984. Duck Hunt was a shooting gallery game with a straightforward ...

Blades of Exile is a classic role-playing video game developed by Spiderweb Software. It's the third installment in the "Exile" series. The game was released in 1997 for Mac OS, an...

Based on the famously chaotic 1995 movie, Waterworld (1997, DOS) somehow manages to be more confusing than the film itself—and that’s saying something. This action-adve...

Italian noir meets circus mystery in Yellow Kid: Giallo al Circo, where you play a journalist with a yellow trench coat and more curiosity than self-preservation. The game’s ...

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a criminal economist in 1980s New York, Drug Wars has your fix—pun intended. This early DOS classic throws you into t...

Red Baron is a 1990 flight simulation that recreates the aerial combat of World War I, putting players behind the controls of early fighter aircraft. The game combines dogfighting,...

The Untouchables brings the Prohibition-era world of Eliot Ness and his team to the computer, mixing shootouts, driving sequences and other action set pieces inspired by the famous...

Released in 1994, Sensible Golf took the elegant sport of chasing a tiny ball and gave it the unmistakable Sensible Software treatment. Rather than drowning players in endless stat...

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....

Port Royale is a 2002 trading and strategy game that lets players experience the life of a merchant in the Caribbean during the age of sailing ships. Instead of becoming a legendar...

NetStorm: Islands at War is a 1997 real-time strategy game with a wonderfully unusual setting: floating islands suspended in the sky, where rival factions wage war using buildings,...

Great Naval Battles vol. 5: Demise of the Dreadnoughts takes you back even further, exploring naval warfare at a time when technology and tactics were evolving rapidly. In Great Na...

James Clavell's Shogun, a text adventure game developed by Infocom and released in 1989. Infocom was known for its interactive fiction games, and "James Clavell's Shogun" was one o...

In Archimedean Dynasty, humanity did the logical thing after wrecking the surface world: moved underwater and started shooting each other in submarines. It's part tactical sim, par...

Step into feudal Japan with Bushido, a game that tries to simulate samurai life on a machine barely capable of rendering a convincing circle. Still, there’s something charmin...

Hocus Pocus is the kind of platformer that seems to run on pure sugar and cheerful chaos. You play as a young wizard with more enthusiasm than common sense, bouncing through colorf...

Into the Eagle's Nest from 1987 is a top-down action game where stealth and gunfire coexist in uneasy partnership. Players infiltrate enemy territory, rescue prisoners, and survive...

Midwinter 2: Flames of Freedom expands the original's ambitious open-world design with a larger setting, new vehicles, more varied missions, and a broader struggle for freedom. Pla...

Welcome to the future, where space empires are managed entirely via text and colored dots. Anacreon puts you in charge of an interstellar civilization and lets you conquer galaxies...

Post-apocalyptic survival meets real estate management in Burntime, where the world is ruined, but you still need to hire employees and secure water rights. It’s like Mad Max...

Crystal Caves is a bright, cheerful platformer starring Mylo Steamwitz, an entrepreneur whose business plan involves raiding dangerous alien caves for profit. The levels are full o...

Dominium (1992) is an ambitious mix of real-time strategy and empire management, though perhaps “ambitious” is just another word for “slightly overwhelming.&rdquo...

Strategy fans, sharpen your wits: The Perfect General (1991, DOS) marches onto the battlefield with hex-based tactics, satisfyingly crunchy mechanics, and a strict “no button...

Long before comic-book games became blockbuster spectacles, The Punisher (1990, DOS) delivered gritty vigilante action with a side of pixelated attitude. You step into Frank Castle...

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...

In a world where fish can apparently become cybernetic superheroes, James Pond 2: Codename: RoboCod makes perfect sense. Released for DOS in 1993, this platformer stars the aquatic...

Aquanoid (1992) takes the classic Breakout formula and throws it underwater, because bricks are apparently much more intimidating when they're wet. You control a paddle, you bounce...