abandonware games sorted by popularity

Shogun is a 1986 DOS strategy game inspired by feudal Japan, giving players the chance to manage armies, territories, alliances, and political ambitions in a period where diplomacy...

By the time Lords of Midnight: The Citadel arrived in 1995, it carried the weight of a classic on its shoulders. Rather than reinventing the original, it refines and reinterprets i...

Road Runner is a 1989 DOS arcade game based on the famous cartoon rivalry between the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Players control the extraordinarily fast bird as he races thro...

By 1996, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition on DOS felt like the veteran fighter returning for one last round. You could finally play as the bosses, which was a childhood dream...

No, not that Battlestar. Battlestar (1996) is more obscure than a reboot that never happened. Set in deep space with a top-down view and UI only a Windows 3.x user could love, it m...

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...

Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur is a text adventure with occasional graphics, in which you, the not-yet-king, bumble your way through Camelot trying to prove you’re not just ...

Ever wanted to read Car and Driver magazine and then actually drive the cars featured in it? Well, someone in 1992 said “why not both?” and Car and Driver the game was ...

Battle Arena Toshinden was the first game in the Toshinden series and was originally released for the Sony PlayStation in 1995 and later for DOS. Battle Arena Toshinden introd...

If you’ve ever looked at a map of the Pacific theater in World War II and thought, “Yes, but what if I micromanaged all of it?”, Gary Grigsby’s Pacific War ...

Daemonsgate is what happens when someone decides RPGs need more moral ambiguity, political intrigue, and sprawling maps that require an actual notebook to navigate. You’re to...

Step into the shoes of a medieval lord in this 1991 DOS strategy game. Engage in jousting tournaments, siege castles, and vie for control of England. It's like playing Risk, but wi...

Where Time Stood Still is an adventure set in a strange, dangerous land where getting lost is considerably easier than finding the exit. You guide a small group of characters throu...

Battlespire is the weird, dark cousin of the Elder Scrolls family - the one who shows up late to the reunion with a sword and no pants. This first-person RPG strips out all the com...

Faces Tris 3 (1990) takes a familiar concept and gives it a slightly unsettling twist. Yes, it’s a falling-blocks puzzle game, but instead of abstract shapes, you’re st...

Forget piracy—China Sea Trader makes hauling porcelain and spices across 19th-century Asia feel like a cutthroat business. It’s part economic sim, part geography lesson...

Monopoly transforms the familiar board game into a computer experience where property deals, rent payments, and financial disasters can unfold without anyone needing to physically ...

Paint Shop Pro 3 is an early version of PaintShop Pro, which is a graphics editing program known for its user-friendly interface and a range of features that cater to both amateur ...

Nobunaga's Ambition 6 continues the long-running historical strategy series with an even broader and more sophisticated take on Japan’s Sengoku era. Released in 1994, it places p...

Before Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, the world only knew of one man who could mow down Nazis in a maze of corridors — then Blake showed up with a laser gun and a mission to ri...

Before Diablo made clicking on dungeons cool, DarkSpyre was already throwing players into labyrinths filled with monsters and puzzles. Released in 1990, it combines hack-and-slash ...

Ultimate Soccer Manager 2 refines the original formula, adding more depth, more leagues, and a slightly more approachable interface. It still revolves around data, decisions, and d...

Escape from Delirium feels like someone took a pulp adventure novel, dipped it in a bucket of chaos, and fed it to a DOS system. You wake up with amnesia (because of course you do)...

Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is a software development tool that enables users to create point-and-click adventure games. It was originally created by Chris Jones and has been used ...

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...

Postal 2 takes the outrageous premise of its predecessor and expands it into a first-person sandbox where practically every ordinary errand can become an excuse for complete chaos....

Treasure Trap is the sort of game that understands the basic appeal of a good dungeon: there are treasures to find, dangers to avoid, and absolutely no sensible reason to keep goin...

Alien Crucible is an ambitious science-fiction role-playing project built around exploration, combat and the discovery of a dangerous alien world. Developed during a period when co...

Rings of Medusa is a 1990 DOS role-playing adventure that combines exploration, trading, combat, and strategy in a large fantasy world. Players travel across a map, gather resource...

Time and Magik: The Trilogy collects three fantasy adventures into one package, offering a substantial journey through magical worlds filled with puzzles, strange characters and th...