abandonware games sorted by popularity

Black Friday (1983) isn’t about shopping mayhem—though you might wish it were after trying to figure out what’s going on. This early DOS title is part stock marke...

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...

If you thought childhood was all about sunshine and puppies, Monster Bash begs to differ. This 1993 side-scroller throws you into the shoes of Johnny Dash, a slingshot-toting kid w...

Earthrise taps into late Cold War anxieties, presenting a future shaped by political tension and hard choices. Part strategy, part simulation, it tasks you with managing global sys...

Doomdark's Revenge is a strategy and role-playing video game developed by Mike Singleton and originally released in 1985 for DOS and various home computer systems, including the ZX...

Space 1889 (1990, DOS) is steampunk before steampunk was cool. Based on the tabletop RPG, it sends you to an alternate Victorian era where the British Empire has expanded — t...

Motorcycle racing has never looked so… polygonal. Team Suzuki puts you in the leather suit of a professional racer hurtling around pixel-perfect tracks. The controls are twi...

The 1989 Scrabble release feels a bit like playing the board game on an old typewriter. It’s clunky, monochrome, and oddly charming. The computer AI is less of a challenge an...

Imagine Tetris went on a sugar binge and had an identity crisis. That’s Zyconix (1992, DOS) in a nutshell. It’s a tile-matching puzzle game where nothing quite behaves ...

Cartooners lets you live out your childhood dream of being a one-person animation studio… minus the caffeine addiction. It’s a charming sandbox where you can draw your...

In Diggers 2: Extractors, released in 1995, the digging franchise doubled down on strategy while adding a dash of science fiction flair. This time, your miners aren’t just bu...

Forget muscle cars and highways—Detroit (1994) is all about running your own automobile empire. Starting in the early 20th century, you’ll design cars, juggle productio...

Part RTS, part simulation, Carrier Command was ahead of its time in the same way that an aircraft carrier is ahead of a canoe. You control a futuristic warship, launch aircraft and...

Math was never supposed to be this exciting. In Number Munchers, you’re a green blob with an appetite for multiplication tables, gobbling up correct answers while dodging &ld...

President Elect: 1988 Edition is a political simulation game developed by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) and released in the mid-1980s. The game simulates U.S. presidential elec...

Dark, moody, and surprisingly creepy, Zork Nemesis is what happens when the whimsical world of Zork goes goth. The text adventures are gone—now it’s full-motion video, ...

Ah, Dungeons of Kroz, the glorious mess of ASCII characters that somehow became addictive. Created by Apogee in 1989, it’s a fast-paced dungeon adventure where every symbol m...

Executive Suite puts you in the shoes of a corporate leader and asks you to juggle ambition, ethics, and profit, usually with conflicting results. It’s a business simulation ...

Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan is a computer RPG released in 1990 for MS-DOS and PC-98 platforms. It is based on the tabletop role-playing game Tunnels & Trolls crea...

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...