abandonware games sorted by popularity

Italicized title: Jack in the Dark. Released as a small holiday-themed adventure, this game serves as a charming introduction to the style later made famous by Alone in the Dark. P...

Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego? Deluxe takes the familiar Carmen Sandiego formula and launches it into orbit. Instead of chasing criminals between earthly cities, you investigat...

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...

Take the tactical seriousness of Championship Manager and sprinkle on some espresso. Championship Manager Italia gives you control over Italy’s finest (and most temperamental...

Millennia: Altered Destinies offers a fascinating blend of space exploration, strategy, and time manipulation as players attempt to guide civilizations through an enormous galactic...

Megafortress places players inside the cockpit of a sophisticated B-52 bomber, combining realistic flight simulation with large-scale military operations. Navigation, fuel manageme...

Zangband is a variant of the popular roguelike game Angband. Zangband, short for Zelazny Angband, was developed by Chris Weisiger and first released in 1994. The game features...

Imagine Doom and Ultima Underworld had a low-budget child who was homeschooled in a basement filled with Mountain Dew cans. That’s Amulets & Armor. A mix of first-person ...

Goal! is one of those football games that reminds you how far sports simulations have come—and how much fun they were before realism took over. The controls are simple, the p...

Conqueror is what happens when a tank simulator and an arcade game go on a date and forget their purpose. You drive a tank in a pseudo-3D landscape, blow up stuff, and command squa...

Gloriana sails into the realm of naval strategy with a focus on historical battles and tactical maneuvering. Ships move with a deliberate pace, and positioning is everything, turni...

Civil War buffs, rejoice. Battle of Antietam (1985) lets you relive one of the bloodiest days in American history... via pixelated dots and turn-based tension. There’s no fla...

Ah yes, the golden age of video games: where catching babies yeeted from burning buildings was a fun pastime. In Bouncing Babies, you play as a heroic volunteer with a trampoline, ...

Obliterator is a 1989 action game that gives the player a suitably intimidating job title and then immediately provides plenty of enemies to justify it. Set in a science-fiction en...

Nectaris is a 1995 turn-based strategy game built around military operations, tactical movement, and the timeless pleasure of watching a carefully planned attack succeed. Players c...

Block O Mania is what happens when a Rubik’s Cube and a sliding puzzle fall in love during a rave. Released in 1989 for DOS, this game will twist your brain into shapes it wa...

Combat Chess (1997, Windows XP) takes the cerebral game of kings and adds swords, screams, and shameless violence. Every piece battle-animates into Mortal Kombat-lite fights when y...

Originally released in 1986, Larn is a classic roguelike that wastes absolutely no time reminding players that dungeon exploration is a dangerous profession. Every descent into its...

Dungeon Keeper 2 took everything its predecessor did and gave it a demonic polish. Slicker graphics, full 3D environments, and imps that finally looked like they deserved a raise. ...

Cultures is a charming real-time strategy game about building a Viking settlement from the ground up. You’ll manage resources, assign jobs, and watch your villagers go about ...

In Bert and the Snake, you are Bert. And yes, there's a snake. That’s the plot. It’s a maze game from a time when naming conventions were refreshingly honest and graphi...

Elevator is one of those early arcade-style games that sounds boring on paper and becomes oddly stressful in practice. You’re navigating elevators, rescuing people, and avoid...

Columbus Discovery (1992, DOS) is a history-flavored point-and-click adventure where you, as a pixelated Christopher Columbus, set sail to "discover" lands that are already very mu...

Vaxine is a first-person shooter with a wonderfully strange premise: you are flying through the interior of a human body, blasting viruses and other microscopic nasties before they...

The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time continues the futuristic adventures of Gage Blackwood with an even stronger emphasis on cinematic storytelling and exploration. Once again,...

Stellar Crusade is a space strategy game for people who think one galaxy is simply not enough territory to argue over. You command fleets, manage resources and attempt to expand yo...

Released in 1990, Imperium offers strategy fans a chance to rule, conquer, and inevitably mismanage resources on a grand scale. It combines empire-building with military planning, ...

Before NBA 2K made your thumbs cry, there was One-on-One Basketball. You get to control either Larry Bird or Julius Erving in a thrilling display of 80s pixelated hoop dreams. The ...

Oxyd is a 1992 puzzle game built around a deceptively simple concept: move objects, solve problems, and somehow avoid making the situation much more complicated than it needs to be...

Prophecy: The Fall of Trinadon is a 1989 fantasy role-playing game that combines adventure, exploration, and combat in a classic computer RPG format. Players journey through a worl...