abandonware games sorted by popularity

Microsoft Space Simulator is a space flight simulator game developed by Bruce Artwick Organization and published by Microsoft in 1994. It is part of the broader range of simulation...

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a cop who drifts around corners at 90 mph in a convertible, Cisco Heat is your kind of chaos. This arcade racer puts you in the shoes of a law...

Released in 1988, Dream Zone was a surreal adventure where you explore your own subconscious after being sucked into a dream machine. It’s colorful, strange, and often unsett...

Released in 1989 for DOS, Poker Relay (also known as 9 Poker) is less a glamorous casino sim and more a smoky backroom full of pixelated cards and questionable programming. You get...

In Curse of Enchantia, a young boy is whisked away to a magical world full of bizarre creatures, tricky puzzles, and an alarming number of ways to die. The game’s whimsical a...

The Legacy: Realm of Terror is a first-person view survival horror RPG set in the modern world, in a haunted house. The Legacy was developed by Magnetic Scrolls and published by Mi...

Xenon, released in 1988, was a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up video game developed by The Bitmap Brothers. Xenon was initially released for the Commodore 64, and later, it was p...

Fleet Command invites you to command modern naval forces with the calm authority of someone who definitely read the manual. This is strategy on a grand scale: radar screens glowing...

Elvira: The Arcade Game trades puzzles for action and subtlety for pure chaos. This is fast, brutal, side-scrolling combat with monsters pouring in from every direction. Elvira&rsq...

Horror Zombies from the Crypt sounds like it should be terrifying, but in practice it leans more toward quirky than genuinely scary. Released in 1990, it mixes action and adventure...

The 7th Guest is one of those games that defined the early CD-ROM era, proudly showing off its multimedia capabilities while quietly messing with your head. Set in a haunted mansio...

Before million-dollar stadiums and sponsorship deals, there was Street Sports Baseball (1987, DOS)—where kids played in backyards, on cracked concrete, and sometimes next to ...

Ace of Aces (1987, DOS) is a game where you pilot a WWII plane via a series of still-image panels that suggest action more than deliver it. It’s like a flipbook with ambition...

Ishar 2 (1994, DOS) picks up where the first game left off, and then throws in more ways to punish careless adventurers. It’s a first-person RPG where managing your party isn...

Think running an airline is easy? Airlines (1994) says “think again.” This old-school management sim hands you a failing fleet and a world map, then laughs quietly as y...

Enchanter is interactive fiction with teeth. As a text adventure, it relies entirely on imagination, yet it manages to feel richer than many graphical games of its era. You play as...

Ever wanted to be responsible for ending the world in fewer than ten keypresses? B-1 Nuclear Bomber (1981) gives you that chance, wrapping global annihilation in glorious monochrom...

Castles is what happens when SimCity meets Game of Thrones. You design your own fortress, manage the budget, and tell unruly peasants why the walls are more important than food. Be...

Released in 1995, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is the cheerful little tale of humanity being tortured by an all-powerful AI for eternity. In other words, not exactly a feel-g...

If you’ve ever looked at a map of the Pacific theater in World War II and thought, “Yes, but what if I micromanaged all of it?”, Gary Grigsby’s Pacific War ...