abandonware games sorted by popularity

Romantic Encounters at the Dome is a 1988 DOS title with a decidedly unusual focus, placing romance and social interaction at the center of its gameplay. Rather than commanding arm...

Welltris takes the familiar falling-block formula and turns it sideways, quite literally. Released in 1989, this Tetris-inspired puzzle game presents a three-dimensional well into ...

Galactix continues the grand space-shooter tradition with enthusiasm and a healthy disregard for your survival odds. You control a small but determined ship facing waves of enemy f...

World Games is a collection of unusual sporting events designed to prove that the Olympics did not have a monopoly on strange ways of hurting yourself. Instead of concentrating on ...

If Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon were a person, it would be that eccentric uncle who insists he once met a genie “for real.” This 1988 Arabian-fantasy adventure m...

Forget piracy—China Sea Trader makes hauling porcelain and spices across 19th-century Asia feel like a cutthroat business. It’s part economic sim, part geography lesson...

Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio is a 1988 DOS adaptation of the classic economic and political strategy game in which players attempt to rule a small Italian principality. The objective...

Italicized title: Jack the Ripper. Blending mystery, historical intrigue, and adventure gameplay, this title places players in Victorian London during one of history’s most i...

Theatre of War is a strategy game that puts the player in command of military forces while recreating the tension of battlefield decisions. Rather than simply moving units toward t...

Borland dBase 5 is a database development environment from the later years of the DOS and early Windows database era. It belongs to a long tradition of software that allowed users ...

Dark, moody, and surprisingly mature, Manhattan Missions takes the Turtles into gritty territory. The city is under siege, Shredder’s back, and the atmosphere feels more Batm...

Epic Pinball is what happens when a small team says, “Sure, let’s make a pinball game,” and accidentally creates one of the most addictive shareware hits of the d...

Alien Crucible is an ambitious science-fiction role-playing project built around exploration, combat and the discovery of a dangerous alien world. Developed during a period when co...

Night Mission Pinball is a 1982 pinball simulation that proves the basic appeal of pinball is remarkably difficult to ruin. The game recreates the essential ingredients of the real...

In Air Force Commander (1992), you don’t just fly planes - you run the whole air force. Think of it as being a general with a spreadsheet addiction. Assign squadrons, manage ...

The Usurper is a fantasy action game built around the classic computer-game recipe of dangerous dungeons, hostile creatures and a hero who apparently has nothing better to do than ...

Beach volleyball rarely received much attention in classic gaming, making Kings of the Beach a refreshing surprise. Fast-paced matches combine accessible controls with enough tacti...

Borland Reflex was a relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by Borland International, a software company that was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Reflex was rele...

Monopoly transforms the familiar board game into a computer experience where property deals, rent payments, and financial disasters can unfold without anyone needing to physically ...

Where Time Stood Still is an adventure set in a strange, dangerous land where getting lost is considerably easier than finding the exit. You guide a small group of characters throu...

Slash'EM is a substantial 1997 variant of the legendary roguelike NetHack, expanding its already enormous collection of monsters, items, classes, spells, and gameplay possibilities...

Redneck Rampage is a 1997 first-person shooter that takes the genre into deliberately ridiculous rural territory. Players battle through bizarre environments filled with hostile re...

Dig Dug is a classic maze arcade action game that was first released by Namco in 1982 as a coin-op and later for a number of other systems. The gameplay of Dig Dug involves digging...

Icewind Dale arrived in 2000 as a frosty sibling to the Baldur's Gate formula, trading political intrigue for glorious dungeon crawling in the forgotten corners of the Forgotten Re...

Based on the film that made air guitar cool (briefly), Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is a time-traveling puzzler where history class meets stoner logic. Gather historical figu...

Before heroes had inventory screens and voice acting, there was Adventure in Serenia, the lovechild of a text parser and a fever dream. Released in 1982, this proto-graphic adventu...

With a name like Blort!, you'd expect a fart joke or a kids’ cartoon gone wrong, but no—it’s a 1987 arcade-style blaster for DOS. You play as a cosmic defender sh...

Borland Paradox 4.5 was a powerful relational database system aimed at users who needed more than a simple spreadsheet but did not necessarily want to become full-time database eng...

X-Men 2: The Fall of the Mutants is a curious blend of action and light strategy, where Marvel’s famous mutants get to stretch their powers across a series of loosely connected m...

Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is a software development tool that enables users to create point-and-click adventure games. It was originally created by Chris Jones and has been used ...