abandonware games sorted by popularity

Alien Legacy (1994) is like SimCity crashed into Star Trek and nobody called the insurance company. It’s a real-time strategy/simulation game that has you managing a colony i...

Castles 2 took everything the first game did and cranked it up with actual diplomacy, espionage, and conquest mechanics. Now you’re not just stacking bricks—you’r...

Normality is a first-person adventure video game developed by Gremlin Interactive and released in 1996. The game is set in a dystopian future where a totalitarian regime known as t...

Heretic is what happens when someone looks at fantasy and thinks it needs more fireballs and a lot more attitude. Built on familiar shooter foundations, it swaps sci-fi corridors f...

Tennis Cup 2 refines its predecessor with smoother controls and a broader range of shots, making rallies feel more dynamic and less predictable. Matches demand attention and strate...

Wizardry 4: The Return of Werdna flips the script by letting you play the villain, which is as delightful as it is diabolical. You control Werdna, an evil wizard with a knack for c...

Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic 1939-1943 sets the stage for the series with a focus on tense, strategic encounters. In Great Naval Battles, you are dealing with limited inform...

Released in 1994 for DOS, Iron Cross is a historical strategy game that tries very hard to make military planning look sexy. Spoiler: it doesn’t. You’re dealing with Wo...

Up Periscope! from 1988 lets you take command of a submarine, which sounds exciting until you realize just how much responsibility that entails. Managing depth, speed, and position...

Based on the legendary Argentine comic, L'Eternauta: Gli Invasori della Città Eterna (1994) is bleak, atmospheric, and proudly uninterested in holding your hand. Set in a sn...

Ah, Apache Strike (1989), the game where you're the lone helicopter pilot flying through blocky cities that look like they were made of leftover Lego bricks. Your mission? Blow up ...

Hi-Octane is exactly what the title suggests, a fast-paced racing experience that prioritizes speed and chaos over realism. The vehicles feel more like futuristic experiments than ...

In 1988, kids with floppy disks instead of smartphones got Designasaurus, a quirky blend of education and prehistoric fantasy. The premise: design your own dinosaur and see if it s...

Panza Kick Boxing is a video game released in 1990 for the Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, DOS, and ZX Spectrum platforms. It was developed and published by Loriciel. T...

If Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego had a caffeinated younger cousin, it would be Bush Buck: Global Treasure Hunter. You race around the globe chasing clues, dodging rivals, a...

Noctis is less of a "game" and more of a meditative ritual performed through DOS interface, with fonts so pixelated they might just be ancient runes. You play as a silent explorer ...

The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time is the third chapter in The Journeyman Project series. It's a science fiction adventure game developed by Presto Studios, designed by Phil ...

Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans is one of gaming’s most famous “what could have been” stories. Designed as a point-and-click adventure set in the Warcraft ...

War in Middle-earth is a real-time strategy game developed by Synergistic Software and published by Melbourne House. It was released in 1988 for various platforms including the Com...

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...

Exterminator, released in 1990, is one of those games that knows exactly what it wants to do and wastes no time doing it. You’re thrown into a top-down action scenario with a...