abandonware games sorted by popularity

With Gary Grigsby’s War in Russia, the scale somehow gets even bigger, and the margin for error even smaller. This is strategy at its most unforgiving, where moving a unit on...

Moraff's Revenge delivers a classic dungeon-crawling role-playing adventure packed with monsters, treasure, exploration, and enough dangerous corridors to make staying home seem in...

The Fellowship of the Ring is an early computer adaptation of Tolkien's famous fantasy novel, following the journey of Frodo and his companions through a dangerous Middle-earth fil...

Dive into Aquanox (2001), where post-apocalyptic submarines battle it out beneath the ocean in a world that’s half Waterworld, half neon rave. With moody lighting and dialogu...

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...

Simon the Sorcerer is a wonderfully irreverent 1993 adventure that follows Simon, a sarcastic teenager who is transported to a fantasy world and promptly discovers that becoming a ...

Secret Agent is a 1992 DOS action-platform game from Apogee in which players take control of an international spy battling through dangerous levels packed with enemies, traps, and ...

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,...

Shadow Knights is a 1990 DOS action game inspired by the world of ninjas and medieval warriors. Players control a highly trained fighter who must move through dangerous environment...

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 System Shock was a warning, System Shock 2 is the full-blown nightmare that follows. This time, the horror seeps into every corner of the experience, blending RPG mechanics with...

Conqueror is what happens when a tank simulator and an arcade game go on a date and forget their purpose. You drive a tank in a pseudo-3D landscape, blow up stuff, and command squa...

V for Victory: Market-Garden tackles Operation Market Garden, the ambitious 1944 Allied attempt to seize a chain of bridges in the Netherlands. The game translates this complicated...

Kroz returns, and with it, your CRT monitor’s worst nightmare: ASCII graphics! Return to Kroz takes you back to a time when @ meant “you,” and everything else was...

Ah, Chessmaster 3000. The title alone sounds like it should have lasers and robot arms, but what you get is a thoughtful, elegant chess sim that finally brings charisma to the game...

Few titles make a promise quite like Gamma Force in Pit of a Thousand Screams. You already know this won’t be a relaxing stroll through a meadow. Instead, it’s an energ...

Jumping forward to 2004, Dark Horizons Lore: Invasion ditches swords and sorcery for giant mechs stomping across futuristic battlefields. It’s a squad-based online multiplaye...

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...

Ocean Trader is a 1995 strategy game for players who have looked at the sea and thought, “That is a lot of water. I should probably make money from it.” The game focuses on mar...

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 ...

Tomahawk is an early helicopter flight simulation that puts the player behind the controls of a military aircraft and expects them to take the job rather seriously. Navigation, wea...

Released in the mid-’80s, Earthly delights is an odd, almost poetic little DOS title that feels more like an experiment than a traditional game. It blends abstract visuals wi...

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 ...

From the mind of Michael Crichton comes Amazon, a game that lets you live out your jungle explorer fantasies—without the bugs or dysentery. You’re off to the Amazon to ...

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 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...

This 1989 DOS game has you hunting down demons in a dark, pixelated world. Equip yourself with weapons, explore eerie environments, and face off against otherworldly creatures. It'...

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...

World Tour Golf is an early golf simulation built around the eternal challenge of sending a small white ball toward a hole while avoiding the temptation to blame the weather, the c...

Published in 1988, Lombard RAC Rally captures the demanding world of rally racing with challenging courses, changing terrain, and an emphasis on precision driving. Unlike tradition...