abandonware games sorted by popularity

Blade Warrior (1991) is a side-scrolling beat 'em up that looks like it was illustrated entirely in heavy metal album covers. You’re a silhouette of rage, cutting through dem...

The Cool Croc Twins is a colorful platform game starring two crocodile brothers who seem to have decided that saving the day is best accomplished while bouncing around, collecting ...

Norton Desktop takes the Norton philosophy of practical system management and gives it a more graphical, desktop-like presentation. Designed for DOS, it provides an organized envir...

Jump 'n Bump proves that rabbits can be surprisingly competitive. Released in 1998, this multiplayer-focused platform game pits adorable bunnies against one another in frantic matc...

Streets of SimCity takes the city-building world of SimCity and drops the player directly onto its streets. Instead of calmly planning roads and zoning districts from above, you ca...

If you’ve ever wondered what baseball would look like if someone crammed the entire sport into a DOS machine and sprinkled a bit of 90s attitude on top, Epic Baseball has you...

Pyjamarama is an abandoned action adventure game released in 2004 for Windows; it's a remake of the original Pyjamarama. The original is a classic video game developed by Mikr...

Solomon's Key is a 1988 puzzle-platform game in which the player controls a wizard attempting to navigate rooms filled with enemies, traps, ladders, and blocks that can be created ...

F-15 Strike Eagle is one of those games that practically defined what a combat flight simulator should be in the 1980s. It drops you into the cockpit of the legendary F-15 and tell...

Dalek Attack is the digital embodiment of Doctor Who’s “run for your life” mantra—except here, you can also shoot back. Playing as the Doctor or one of his ...

Outpost is a 1994 science-fiction strategy and management game that asks players to establish a human colony far from Earth, which immediately raises several questions about transp...

In Battle Master (1991), you play as a heavily armored murder-hobo leading an army across a fantasy world that really doesn’t want you there. It’s part action-RPG, part...

Football Fanatic (1998, DOS) is pure arcade chaos dressed in cleats. It doesn’t care much for the finer tactical nuances of the sport; it wants you sprinting, tackling, and g...

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 ...

F-16 Combat Pilot throws you into the sleek, agile Fighting Falcon and says, “Good luck, pilot,” before pushing you straight into the chaos of modern air warfare. What ...

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...

Theatre of War is a strategy game that puts the player in command of military forces while recreating the tension of battlefield decisions. Rather than simply moving units toward t...

Gremlins 2: The New Batch leans into the chaos of its source material and then adds a layer of video game unpredictability on top. In Gremlins 2, you deal with enemies that are as ...

With a title like Game Over, you almost expect the game to greet you with a shrug and a polite apology. Instead, it throws players into a strange sci-fi action adventure filled wit...

Night Mission Pinball is a 1982 pinball simulation that proves the basic appeal of pinball is remarkably difficult to ruin. The game recreates the essential ingredients of the real...

Commander Keen 3: Keen Must Die! is the kind of title that makes you wonder what this kid did to tick off an entire alien race. After foiling their plans twice, Keen takes the figh...

Shadow of the Comet is a 1993 adventure game steeped in cosmic horror, mystery, and the unsettling fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Players follow journalist John Parker as he investiga...

Sango Fighter 2 expands the fighting formula of its predecessor with more characters, moves, and opportunities for chaotic martial-arts action. The game once again turns warriors f...

Sokoban is one of those puzzle games whose rules can be explained in a sentence and whose harder levels can destroy an afternoon. The player controls a character inside a warehouse...

Sink or Swim is basically what happens when someone asks, “What if we turned a rescue operation into a slapstick puzzle show?” You guide lifeboat-juggling hero S.S. Dav...

The Temple of Elemental Evil is a remarkably faithful computer adaptation of classic Dungeons & Dragons, based on the famous Greyhawk adventure. It offers turn-based combat, charac...

If you liked Betrayal at Krondor, Return to Krondor is that younger cousin who tries real hard to live up to the family name. It's got 3D graphics (for 1998), turn-based combat, an...

The Manhole: CD-ROM Masterpiece Edition (1994, Windows/Mac) is the kind of game that makes you feel like you’ve fallen into a dream. Created by the same minds behind Myst, it...

ELIZA, created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT, was one of the first computer programs to simulate human conversation. Designed as a natural language processing demons...

Mychess offers a straightforward but challenging digital chess experience for players who want to test their strategic thinking against a computer opponent. The rules are familiar,...