abandonware games sorted by popularity

Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy is a 1998 cyberpunk adventure set in a futuristic city where corruption, conspiracies, technology, and suspiciously complicated secrets are all par...

Arctic Adventure is the sequel nobody asked for to Pharaoh's Tomb, except this time you’re freezing your butt off. As Nevada Smith (not a typo, it’s his real name), you...

Action Soccer (1995, DOS) is what happens when you try to make a soccer game fun without worrying too much about realism, physics, or gravity. The ball bounces like it’s fill...

Celtic Tales (1995) throws you into the misty, myth-soaked hills of ancient Ireland, where diplomacy is just war with more steps. You’re a clan leader trying to outwit druids...

Norton Editor 2 is a text editor built for the DOS environment, aimed at users who needed something more capable than a basic command-line editor without requiring an enormous word...

The Curse of Monkey Island is one of the great comic adventure games of the late 1990s, combining pirates, absurd puzzles, memorable characters, and enough terrible puns to sink a ...

Uninvited is one of those games that makes you question every decision, usually right after you make it. Released in 1987, it blends adventure gameplay with a spooky atmosphere tha...

Lost Dutchman Mine (1989, DOS) is what happens when you mix an old western, an adventure game, and a survival simulator — and somehow it works. You’re a prospector with...

Subtrade: Return to Irata is a space trading adventure that combines exploration, commerce, and the ever-present temptation to become considerably richer than you were five minutes...

Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president? If that line doesn’t make you want to punch a ninja through a hotdog stand, nothing will. Bad Dudes VS Dragon Ninja is peak...

Van Buren is the codename for the ambitious Fallout 3 project that Black Isle Studios was developing before Interplay cancelled it, leaving behind one of gaming's great “what if?...

Norton Commander 3 is one of the classic DOS file managers, and for many users it was the program that finally made dealing with files feel civilized. Its famous two-panel interfac...

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...

Cutthroats: Terror on the High Seas puts you aboard ships where peaceful retirement is apparently not part of the career plan. The game mixes naval action, exploration, and the dan...

Toonstruck is a lavishly produced adventure game built around a wonderfully strange premise: a live-action character finds himself trapped inside a cartoon world that desperately n...

Mean Streets (1989) throws you into a gritty sci-fi detective story where neon lights, flying cars, and criminal conspiracies are just part of a normal workday. You play as a priva...

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...

Armaeth: The Lost Kingdom looks like a cousin of Prince of Persia who dropped out of school to study magic mushrooms. You play a vaguely heroic dude exploring a crumbling kingdom f...

Empire II: The Art of War is strategy without small talk. It improves on its predecessor by refining mechanics and deepening tactical options, making every decision feel heavier an...

Black Monday (1987) combines economic panic with the thrill of—wait for it—spreadsheet navigation. It's like Wolf of Wall Street without the fun, drugs, or DiCaprio. Yo...

Released in 1984, Frogger Jr. takes the familiar Frogger concept and gives it a slightly friendlier, more educational twist. Levels are themed around letters, numbers, and simple l...

Released during the holiday season of 1993, _Jetpack: Christmas Special_ wraps the classic gameplay of Jetpack in festive decorations and seasonal cheer. Beneath the snow-covered v...

Adapting movies into games is always tricky, but Predator 2 gives it a shot with mixed results. You play as a cop cleaning up the mean streets while occasionally being stalked by t...

Blake Stone: Planet Strike picks up where the first left off — more aliens, more guns, and more corridors that all look suspiciously alike. Released in 1994 for DOS, it&rsquo...

Ah, the late '90s: when cars exploded for no reason and acronyms made everything cooler. Axelerator: Have a N.I.C.E. day! is a 1997 Windows racer that asks, “What if racing w...

Captain Blood is a space exploration video game released in 1988. It was developed by the French company ERE Informatique, and it was designed by Philippe Ulrich and Didier Bouchon...

X-Men: Madness in Murderworld sends Marvel's mutant heroes into the bizarre and dangerous amusement park created by the villain Arcade. Rather than offering a conventional superher...

Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor (1997, Windows XP) took the RTS formula and flipped it into a weird deathmatch where you control a single unit and try not to die... horribly. ...

Fleet Sweep takes the high drama of naval warfare and filters it through early-80s minimalism. Think less cinematic spectacle and more abstract tension as you maneuver through trea...

The Four Crystals of Trazere is a fantasy strategy and role-playing adventure in which magic, exploration, combat, and tactical planning all collide in a world that seems to have m...