abandonware games sorted by popularity

Remember the spandex-clad madness of 90s TV? American Gladiators brings it to your DOS screen with all the grace of a flying pugil stick. You’ll compete in various bizarre ev...

With a name like Dink Smallwood, you’d expect something ridiculous—and you’d be right. Released in 1998 for Windows XP, this action RPG follows a pig farmer with ...

Flash Gordon: Il Rapimento di Dale throws you into a pulpy sci-fi serial where subtlety is left at the airlock. Based on the adventures of the square-jawed space hero, the game lea...

One of the best licensed games of the '90s, Blade Runner (1997) puts you in the rain-soaked shoes of Ray McCoy, a detective tracking down replicants in a world where it's always ni...

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...

Domino’s Pizza once had a mascot called the Noid and someone decided he deserved his own video game. Avoid the Noid is about a heroic pizza delivery guy trying to bring food ...

Constructor is a simulation and strategy video game developed by System 3 and first released in 1997. In the game, players take on the role of a property developer with the goal of...

Bright, quirky, and just a little bit mischievous, Finders Keepers feels like it wandered in from another dimension where puzzles and platforming share equal custody of your patien...

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...

Murders in Space takes detective fiction beyond Earth, placing players in a futuristic setting where solving a murder requires investigating an environment with rather fewer conven...

Horror fans found plenty to appreciate in 1989's Last Half of Darkness, an adventure that relies on eerie atmosphere rather than constant action. Exploring haunted locations, solvi...

Deus Ex is a critically acclaimed action role-playing video game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released in 2000 and was designed by Warren Spect...

International Ninja Rabbits sounds like a fever dream, and in many ways it plays like one too. Released in 1991, this platformer combines martial arts, oversized vegetables, and he...

Imagine X-COM but with fewer excuses to blame the developers when you miss a 95% chance shot—because in UFO 2000 (2004), the chaos was entirely player-driven. A free, open-so...

Freddy Hardest introduces a hero whose name suggests subtlety was never on the table. This action-platformer throws you into alien-infested territory armed with a blaster and a stu...

You survived Zork I, and now it’s personal. In Zork II, you face off against the enigmatic Wizard of Frobozz, who exists mostly to mess with you like a magical prankster with...

Your uncle is dead, but his ghost can still blow out candles. That’s the premise. Bubble Ghost is a quirky physics puzzler where you guide a delicate bubble through haunted r...

Lure of the Temptress (1992, DOS) is dark fantasy done right — with muddy streets, suspicious peasants, and a villainess who’s equal parts charm and cruelty. As Diermot...

Tetris (Academysoft) from 1996 feels like the classic puzzle formula got a slightly more polished suit but kept the same addictive soul. The gameplay is instantly familiar: blocks ...

By 1994, RPG fans were spoiled with titles like Might and Magic and Ultima. Then along came Disciples of Steel, a brutally complex, turn-based fantasy epic for DOS. It drops you in...

This isn’t Disney’s musical fairytale—it’s a DOS game, which means Beauty and the Beast is way more "puzzle platformer" than "tale as old as time." You play...

The Amazing Spider-Man is a side-scrolling action game developed by Oxford Digital Enterprises and published by Paragon Software for MS-DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST. The plot revolves ...

Utopia: The Creation of a Nation challenges you to build and manage a society, which sounds noble until everything starts going wrong at once. Released in 1992, it blends simulatio...

Aaargh (1988) is exactly what you’ll scream as your giant monster stomps through cities with all the grace of a drunk kaiju. On DOS, this arcade-ish game lets you smash stuff...

Released in 2003, Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader blends classic role-playing mechanics with a richly imagined alternate history where magic and mythology reshape medieval Europe...