abandonware games sorted by popularity

Ardentryst is the indie platformer that tried really hard to be a Metroidvania and kinda pulled it off. With anime-style art, RPG elements, and two playable characters, it’s ...

Crazy Cars 2 upgrades the formula with a plot about crooked cops and stolen Ferraris. You’ll speed across vast American highways, dodging patrol cars that spawn with supernat...

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 ...

Strap in and crawl through the mud - Airborne Ranger (1988) is here to chew bubblegum and infiltrate enemy lines. And it's all out of bubblegum. This tactical action game lets you ...

Electroman is a cheerful little platformer with a big grin and zero interest in realism. You play as a cartoonish superhero zipping through levels full of gadgets, traps, and enemi...

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...

Pharaoh is a city-building strategy game released in 1999 by Impressions Games and published by Sierra Studios. It is set in ancient Egypt and is heavily inspired by Caesar III, an...

Westwood Studios decided to take a break from commanding and conquering to give us Nox, a fast-paced action RPG with more personality than it has any right to. You can play as a wa...

Guilty from 1995 is a moody point-and-click adventure that seems to have majored in brooding. You step into a murder investigation drenched in rain-soaked atmosphere and existentia...

Before immersive sims were a buzzword, there was Ultima Underworld. Dropping you into a massive first-person dungeon, it gave players freedom unthinkable at the time. Want to negot...

Dangerous Dave is the kind of platformer that defined the early ’90s shareware scene: simple, fast, and just tricky enough to make you shout at your monitor. You guide Dave t...

Railroad Tycoon Deluxe feels like someone took the original game, showered it with confetti, tuned the engine, and handed it back with a wink. Better colors, refined scenarios, and...

La Abadía del Crimen (1987) is famously unforgiving, and it knows it. Inspired by Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, this is an isometric adventure where breaking the...

Italian noir meets circus mystery in Yellow Kid: Giallo al Circo, where you play a journalist with a yellow trench coat and more curiosity than self-preservation. The game’s ...

Prehistorik 2 builds on the first game’s formula but smooths out the rough edges. The controls are tighter, the levels more inventive, and the humor dialed up a notch. Once a...

Ferrari Formula 1, released in 1989 for DOS, is a racing game that proudly wears its license like a badge of honor. You’re here to drive Ferraris, go fast, and pretend you un...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Fast Break is basketball distilled into pure late-80s computer logic. Don’t expect flashy presentation or TV-style commentary; instead, you get a to...

Artura is a hack-and-slash side-scroller that looks like someone tried to draw Gauntlet from memory after a power outage. You’re some kind of Celtic warrior on a mystical mis...

In Avalon (1998, DOS), you are a wizard, possibly a hero, definitely confused. This fantasy RPG drops you into a world of magic, mayhem, and menu navigation straight out of a Tolki...

The title Dinosaur Balls might raise eyebrows today, but in 1992 it was just a quirky DOS puzzle game. Think of it as prehistoric Bubble Bobble: you fire colored spheres to match a...

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...

Ecstatica is a haunting anomaly in the DOS library, blending early 3D visuals with a dark fairy-tale atmosphere. Its polygonal characters may look crude by modern standards, but th...