abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

Unlike traditional adventure games, Kingdom: The Far Reaches focuses on cinematic storytelling through live-action performances and beautifully rendered environments. Players unrav...

Wing Commander Academy takes the combat system of the famous series and strips away much of the campaign structure, allowing players to concentrate on what they presumably came for...

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...

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...

With a title like Pray for Death, you know you’re not signing up for a cheerful platformer. This is a fighting game with a gothic, heavy-metal aesthetic that screams 1996. It...

Siege is a 1992 DOS strategy game centered on medieval warfare and the difficult business of taking fortified positions. Players command armies and must consider troop placement, a...

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...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Star Trek: First Contact (not to be confused with the later movie) is more puzzle-solving than phaser-firing. You take control of the Enterprise crew as t...

Pac PC is a 1995 DOS arcade game that proudly carries the torch of maze-running entertainment into the mid-1990s. Players guide their hungry hero through winding levels filled with...

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 ...

Dark Side (1988) is a first-person sci-fi adventure set on a moon orbiting a planet that’s about to be destroyed. No pressure. The gameplay combines exploration with puzzle-s...

Frankenstein (1994) leans into its gothic inspiration with an earnest devotion to atmosphere. Drawing from Mary Shelley’s tale, it combines adventure elements with a somber m...

Xatax is a no-nonsense arcade shooter that focuses on delivering fast, straightforward action without unnecessary distractions. You pilot your ship through waves of enemies, dodgin...

Netherworld is a 1990 action game that sends the player into a strange, hostile world filled with enemies, obstacles, and the sort of atmosphere that suggests the local tourism boa...

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...

Sherlock Holmes: The Vatican Cameos is a 1986 DOS adventure built around a Sherlock Holmes mystery and the detective's trademark combination of observation, deduction, and careful ...

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...

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...

Total Annihilation Kingdoms takes the large-scale real-time strategy formula of its predecessor and moves it into a fantasy setting. Instead of armies of machines, players command ...

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 ...

Blood Money (1990) answers the question: what if every level in a shoot-'em-up was a different kind of sci-fi fever dream? You fly through alien-infested caverns, collect cash, and...

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 ...

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...

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...

In Black Gold (1989), you're in the cutthroat world of oil barons. It’s like Dallas, but with more charts and fewer cowboy hats. You build rigs, negotiate deals, and try to o...

Italicized title: Jack in the Dark. Released as a small holiday-themed adventure, this game serves as a charming introduction to the style later made famous by Alone in the Dark. P...

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...

Space Quest 1: Roger Wilco in the Sarien Encounter is the adventure that introduced Roger Wilco, a janitor who somehow manages to become one of science fiction gaming's most lovabl...

Forget missiles—Blue Max: Aces of the Great War takes you back to when air combat meant leather helmets, canvas wings, and a healthy fear of gravity. Released in 1990 for DOS...