abandonware games sorted by popularity

Uridium is a fast-paced shooter from 1988 that wastes no time getting you into the action. You’ll be piloting a sleek craft across massive enemy ships, blasting anything that get...

Arachne is a graphical web browser for DOS. Arachne was developed by Michal Polák and released in the early 1990s as a text-mode web browser with limited graphical capabilit...

In Chicago 90, you either play as the cops or the crooks in a top-down, crime-infested, vaguely Windy City-esque setting. Think of it as a proto-GTA with more sirens and fewer mora...

Jimmy White Whirlwind Snooker transforms the traditionally calm game of snooker into something surprisingly tense. Released in 1991, it offers an impressive digital recreation of t...

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...

The classic television quiz show made its way to computers with Jeopardy! in 1987. Players compete by answering questions presented in the show's famous answer-and-question format,...

Risky Woods is a 1992 platform adventure that combines colorful fantasy environments with fast-paced action and challenging level design. Players guide a young hero through forests...

ATAC (1992) is what you get when someone says, “What if we made SimCity, but for waging the War on Drugs?” You play as the head of an anti-narcotics task force, deployi...

Moraff's Morejongg takes the familiar tile-matching concept of Mahjongg Solitaire and expands it with a broad selection of layouts, variations, and challenging puzzles. The basic i...

Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Dark Forces II continues Kyle Katarn's story while transforming the series into a more ambitious 3D action adventure. Released in 1997, it introduces light...

Grand Slam Bridge is exactly what it says on the tin, which is both comforting and slightly intimidating if you are not already fluent in the mysterious language of card games. In ...

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is an action-adventure game released in 1999, developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos Interactive. It’s the second game in the Legacy...

American Civil War: From Sumter to Appomattox offers a strategic treatment of the American Civil War, covering the conflict from its opening confrontation through the final campaig...

Lancelot (1988) is an action-adventure that draws loosely from Arthurian legend and very tightly from the difficulty school of “good luck.” You guide the famous knight ...

Sonic Millennium Edition is a fan-oriented Sonic project that brings the famous blue hedgehog into a PC setting with a distinctly retro spirit. The game focuses on the familiar ing...

If Rambo had a twin brother who preferred hiding behind sandbags and tossing grenades like candy, Cabal would be his biography. This over-the-top shooter puts you in the boots of a...

Red Baron is a 1990 flight simulation that recreates the aerial combat of World War I, putting players behind the controls of early fighter aircraft. The game combines dogfighting,...

Checkers for Windows is exactly what it says on the tin—checkers. But somehow, it turns this rainy-afternoon classic into a digital duel of patience and spite. No explosions,...

Released in 1994, Jagged Alliance helped define tactical turn-based strategy long before every game wanted to be an open-world crafting survival experience. Set on the troubled isl...

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...

If the first game was controlled chaos, Earthworm Jim 2 is joyful anarchy. It cranks up the weirdness, throwing genre shifts and unexpected mechanics at the player with gleeful aba...

Power Dolls is a 1994 tactical strategy game that places players in command of an elite female military unit equipped with powerful combat machines. The game combines turn-based pl...

The Final Crusade of Kroz continues the tradition of the Kroz games with another top-down adventure packed with mazes, monsters, treasures, traps, and enough dangerous corridors to...

Questron II is a role-playing game (RPG) developed by Westwood Associates and published by Strategic Simulations Inc. (SSI) in 1988. It serves as the sequel to the original Questro...

Released in 1984, Zyll is what happens when a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master learns to code and decides to build a text adventure inside a coffee machine. There are no graph...

Baseball Mogul (1997) was the original release that kicked off the whole franchise. Developed by Clay Dreslough and published by Infinite Monkey Systems, this was a pioneer in the ...

Beneath Apple Manor is a pioneering game in the roguelike genre, originally developed and released in 1978 by Don Worth for the Apple II and later re-released for DOS as a "Special...

Ninja Gaiden 2: The Dark Sword of Chaos continues the adventures of Ryu Hayabusa with even more enemies, more danger, and a title that makes it very clear that the sword situation ...

If holiday cheer could be bottled into pixels, HappyLand Adventures: X-mas Edition would probably come with a candy cane aftertaste and a mild sugar rush. This cheerful platformer ...

Released in 1988, Lane Mastodon vs. the Blubbermen is one of those wonderfully odd DOS adventures that seems determined to surprise players every few minutes. Starring the delightf...