abandonware games sorted by popularity

Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 throws you into a gloriously over-the-top sci-fi world where guns, swords, aliens and scantily clad warriors somehow make perfect sense. You play as Julie, ...

Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio is a 1988 DOS adaptation of the classic economic and political strategy game in which players attempt to rule a small Italian principality. The objective...

A fresh beginning for the series, Mega Man X modernizes the classic formula with faster movement, wall climbing, hidden upgrades, and a darker science fiction storyline. The expand...

You thought running a government was hard? Try doing it with a smug civil servant and a budget crisis every five minutes. In Yes, Prime Minister, you play as Jim Hacker, the PM him...

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...

Rollo and the Brush Brothers is a 1983 DOS game with an unusual premise and the kind of experimental spirit that characterized early home-computer software. Players guide Rollo thr...

Never mind is a 1989 DOS game whose title sounds like the developers briefly remembered they had a deadline and decided to release the game anyway. Beneath the wonderfully casual n...

Maupiti Island (1991) is what happens when classic detective fiction meets tropical paranoia. You arrive on a peaceful-looking island for a relaxing vacation, only to discover that...

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...

Emperor of the Fading Suns is a grand strategy game that looks at you and assumes you’ve cleared your schedule. Politics, religion, warfare, economics—it’s all he...

IndyCar Racing is a racing simulation video game developed by Papyrus Design Group and published by Virgin Interactive. Released in 1993 for MS-DOS, it marked a significant step fo...

SkyGlobe is an astronomy software that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a DOS-based planetarium program that allowed users to explore the night sky in real-tim...

Moebius is a thoughtful science fiction adventure that combines exploration, mystery, and philosophical ideas in a world shaped by unusual technology and enigmatic events. Players ...

Synidcate Wars takes everything its predecessor did and dials it up to an almost reckless degree, swapping the isometric restraint for full 3D chaos and giving you even more ways t...

Redneck Rampage is a 1997 first-person shooter that takes the genre into deliberately ridiculous rural territory. Players battle through bizarre environments filled with hostile re...

Strip Poker: A Sizzling Game of Chance is an early example of the adult computer-game genre, taking ordinary poker and adding a rather more provocative incentive to win. The card g...

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...

D-Fend Reloaded it's one of the most user-friendly front ends for the popular DOS-BOX emulator. The installer download includes the latest versione of DOS-BOX and is available for ...

Welltris takes the familiar falling-block formula and turns it sideways, quite literally. Released in 1989, this Tetris-inspired puzzle game presents a three-dimensional well into ...

In Street Sports Basketball (1987, DOS), forget polished courts and referees—this is basketball played between garages, with trash cans as sidelines and pride on the line. Th...

When Wayne Gretzky Hockey hit DOS in 1989, it set a standard for hockey games that many would follow. Fast, fluid, and surprisingly tactical, it captured the feel of ice hockey wit...

Pole Position II is a 1988 DOS racing game based on the classic arcade formula, bringing high-speed Formula One action to home computers. Players race around tracks while managing ...

Sci-Mutant Priestess (1989) is French, weird, and proud of it. You play as a rebellious mutant in a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi world ruled by bio-psychic cults. Obviously. It’s...

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...

Mech War (1992) takes the concept of giant robot combat and turns it into a fast-paced tactical showdown. Instead of commanding from afar, you’re directly involved in the act...

Morphman is a quirky puzzle game built around transforming shapes and manipulating objects to overcome increasingly inventive challenges. The central mechanics encourage experiment...

World Tour Tennis turns tennis into a compact computer contest where positioning and timing matter more than having the reflexes of a professional athlete. Players move around the ...

By 1992, Dragon’s Lair 3: The Curse of Mordread continued Dirk’s tradition of “failing spectacularly until you don’t.” Once again, you guide the world...

Bad Street Brawler is a beat 'em up video game developed by Beam Software and published by Mindscape. Originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1987 and later for other platforms...

If Saturday-morning cartoons and B-movies fused into a pixelated arcade blast, you’d get Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters. This action shooter throws you onto a d...