abandonware games sorted by popularity

A game with a name like Battle Isle 93: The Moon of Chromos clearly means business. Released in 1993, it’s an expansion-slash-standalone with new missions, harder AI, and an ...

Super Cauldron is a platform adventure with a distinctly magical flavor, sending the player through colorful environments filled with enemies, hazards, and the usual assortment of ...

The Ancient Art of War in the Skies completes the series' journey from land to sea and finally into the air. Released in 1992, it brings strategic warfare into an aviation setting,...

Escape from Delirium feels like someone took a pulp adventure novel, dipped it in a bucket of chaos, and fed it to a DOS system. You wake up with amnesia (because of course you do)...

Ulises is a mythological adventure that wears its classical inspiration proudly, even when the technology struggles to keep up. Drawing loosely from Homer’s Odyssey, the game...

If pro wrestling in the '80s had a fever dream after drinking too much neon paint, it would be called Bop'N Wrestle (1988, DOS). You play as Gorgeous Greg, who’s about as gor...

Dangerous Streets is a fighting game that clearly wanted to be the next Street Fighter—and instead became a cult oddity. The character roster is bizarre, the animations oddly...

Yacht Racing Simulator proves that even in the '80s, developers were brave enough to turn the thrilling world of rich people boating slowly into a video game. With graphics that co...

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...

Highway Patrol 2 puts you on the side of the law, chasing down offenders with determination and a bit of flair. The gameplay focuses on pursuit and control, asking you to balance s...

Italicized title: J.R.R. Tolkien's Riders of Rohan. Rather than focusing on epic battles alone, this adaptation places players in the role of a member of Rohan during one of the mo...

Elevator is one of those early arcade-style games that sounds boring on paper and becomes oddly stressful in practice. You’re navigating elevators, rescuing people, and avoid...

Moraff's Dungeon of the Unforgiven is a first-person dungeon crawler filled with monsters, exploration, treasure, and the sort of dark corridors that strongly suggest turning aroun...

In Captain Comic 2: Fractured Reality, our fearless spandex-wearing space explorer returns—but this time, he's bouncing between dimensions like a malfunctioning microwave. Th...

Great Naval Battles vol. 3: Fury in the Pacific expands the scope and the intensity, throwing you into larger conflicts with even more to manage. In Great Naval Battles vol. 3, the...

The final part of the original trilogy, Zork III ditches treasure-hunting in favor of introspection, moral puzzles, and the looming presence of the Dungeon Master—basically t...

Rings of Medusa is a 1990 DOS role-playing adventure that combines exploration, trading, combat, and strategy in a large fantasy world. Players travel across a map, gather resource...

Riven: The Sequel to Myst is a 1997 adventure that follows the groundbreaking Myst with an even larger and more detailed world. Players explore the mysterious Age of Riven, examini...

Skyfox II: The Cygnus Conflict is a 1988 space combat game that combines strategic decisions with direct piloting. Players command forces involved in a large-scale conflict while a...

Before the term “VR” existed, Knightmare (1986, DOS) gave you a taste of immersive peril. Inspired by the UK TV show, you guide a blindfolded knight through deadly dung...

Mech Brigade (1987) is a strategy game that lets you live out your dream of commanding an army of giant robots. Set in a futuristic battlefield, you’re in charge of deploying...

Do you find spreadsheets thrilling? Does the idea of profit margins make your heart race? Then Business Simulator is your kind of party. It’s all about running a faceless com...

Evasive Action is a space shooter that embraces speed and precision over spectacle. You pilot a small craft through dangerous environments, dodging obstacles and enemies with littl...

International Moto X in 1996 brings motocross thrills to DOS with mud, speed, and the constant threat of spectacular wipeouts. The game balances arcade accessibility with enough ch...