abandonware games sorted by popularity

Finally, a game where you don’t blast aliens—you launch real people into space, with all the white-knuckled tension of 1960s NASA. Buzz Aldrin’s Race into Space i...

DuckTales: The Quest for Gold takes everyone’s favorite miserly duck, Scrooge McDuck, and sends him globetrotting for treasure. It’s part platformer, part management si...

Ultima 5 takes a darker turn. Lord British is missing, and his regent, Lord Blackthorn, has turned Britannia into a police state where virtues are enforced at sword-point. You know...

Amerzone is like stepping into a dream where logic is optional and atmosphere is everything. You play a journalist unraveling the mystery of a dying explorer’s last journey, ...

Indiana Jones: Revenge of the Ancients from 1987 is one of those curious side stories that feels like it emerged from a parallel cinematic universe. Presented as a text-heavy adven...

Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy is a 1998 cyberpunk adventure set in a futuristic city where corruption, conspiracies, technology, and suspiciously complicated secrets are all par...

Released in 1983, this classic arcade-style shooter has you defending humanoids from alien abductions. Fly your ship across a scrolling landscape, blasting enemies and saving innoc...

Imagine Tetris but in three dimensions and your brain slowly melting into a puddle of confusion. That is Blockout. You drop 3D shapes into a pit and try to line them up, but nothin...

Alien Rampage (1996) is what happens when Duke Nukem gets stranded on a hostile alien planet and decides subtlety is for cowards. It’s a side-scrolling shooter dripping with ...

Xargon is a platformer that feels like it was built with equal parts creativity and cheerful chaos. Levels are packed with secrets, strange enemies, and mechanics that sometimes se...

No, it’s not about a guy who holds your groceries. Bagman is a retro-style indie throwback where you’re a pickaxe-wielding convict trying to steal bags of cash from a m...

_Jill of the Jungle 2: Jill Goes Underground_ expands on the successful formula established by its predecessor. Released in 1992, it sends Jill into subterranean environments packe...

Before London called, Eagle Eye Mysteries: The Original laid the groundwork with a simpler, more classroom-friendly approach to detective work. This is edutainment done with confid...

As sequels go, Serpent Isle is less “more of the same” and more “everything is different, good luck.” Shipwrecked on a strange new land, you’ll deal w...

EcoQuest 2 takes its environmental message seriously but packages it in a way that’s engaging rather than preachy. You explore lush rainforest environments, solving puzzles t...

Gorillas, also known as "Gorillas.bas," is a turn-based artillery game that was included as a sample program with Microsoft QBasic, an IDE and interpreter for a variant of the...

Ultimate Soccer Manager 2 refines the original formula, adding more depth, more leagues, and a slightly more approachable interface. It still revolves around data, decisions, and d...

Fountain of Dreams is a post-apocalyptic RPG that feels like a distant, slightly sunburned cousin of more famous wasteland adventures. Set in a radioactive Florida, it sends you sc...

A Night with Troi (1991) sounds like a fan fiction gone too far - and, well, that’s pretty much what it is. It’s a DOS-based “adventure” in the loosest sens...

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...

In 1989, Deathtrack tried to answer a question nobody asked: “What if NASCAR had machine guns?” The result is a futuristic racer where speed and firepower go hand in ha...

Released in 1983, Battle for Normandy plays less like a game and more like a history book that came alive, donned a helmet, and asked for a coffee. This is wargaming at its purest:...

Azalta: Cult of the Raven is what happens when a lone developer says, “I can make an RPG better than Ultima!” and sort of does. Released in 1996, this DOS dungeon crawl...

Sid Meier's Colonization is Civilization’s scrappy, historically charged cousin. You start with a tiny ship and a dream: exploit the New World before the other European power...

Populous 2: Trials of the Olympian Gods expands the original god simulation concept by adding mythology, new powers, and even greater control over the world. Players take on the ro...

Released in 1992, 3D World Boxing tried its best to bring the sweet science into the third dimension. The result is less Rocky and more “two mannequins in pajamas slap each o...

Shamus is a maze action game developed by William Mataga and published by Synapse Software in 1982. The game became popular on various home computer platforms of the early 1980s. I...