abandonware games sorted by popularity

Imagine Doom and Ultima Underworld had a low-budget child who was homeschooled in a basement filled with Mountain Dew cans. That’s Amulets & Armor. A mix of first-person ...

Borland Eureka: the Solver is an abandoned text-based application developed by Borland Software Corporation and released in 1987 for DOS. The product is designed to solve complex p...

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, ...

A martial arts tournament starring fluffy animals with serious anger issues? Yes, please. Brutal: Paws of Fury is what happens when someone watches too much kung fu cinema and then...

This one’s a flight sim for people who think Top Gun didn’t have enough fuel gauges. 1942: The Pacific Air War puts you in the cockpit of World War II fighter planes, c...

Based on the Tom Clancy-inspired novel, Team Yankee puts you in charge of a tank platoon during World War III. It’s the Cold War gone hot, and you’re the unlucky comman...

Xenon, released in 1988, was a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up video game developed by The Bitmap Brothers. Xenon was initially released for the Commodore 64, and later, it was p...

Bolo Ball is a DOS game from the mid-1990s. It features a physics-based gameplay where the objective is to knock opponent balls out of an arena. When you start the game, you find y...

Power Drift feels like a rollercoaster decided it wanted to be a racing game. The tracks are tilted, twisted, and occasionally seem designed by an architect who had a personal grud...

Before Doomguy started ripping and tearing, there was Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. A stealth game where sneaking is mandatory, disguises are fashionable, and stabbing Nazis is encour...

X-COM: Terror from the Deep (also known as X-COM 2) is a DOS science fiction tactical strategy game and the sequel to one of the most popular DOS games in history, X-COM: UFO ...

Castle Adventure is what happens when a medieval fantasy RPG gets crammed into a game smaller than your average selfie. ASCII graphics? Check. Typing commands like “GET SWORD...

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...

Shadowgate is an abandoned fantasy-themed adventure game developed by ICOM Simulations and released by Mindscape in 1988 for Macintosh, DOS, and also for Amiga, Apple IIgs, At...

If Barbie was mildly passive in her 1992 debut, Barbie Super Model (1993) puts her on the runway—literally. You’ll practice walking, dodging obstacles, and matching out...

Days of Thunder (1990) is what happens when Hollywood’s love affair with Tom Cruise collides with DOS racing. Based on the movie of the same name, it’s an attempt to ca...

Ever wanted to be on a game show without leaving your CRT-lit basement? The $100,000 Pyramid brings you that chance. You guess words. Your partner gives clues. Sometimes you wonder...

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 1993 and designed by Jane Jensen. The game is ...

The Legend of Kyrandia: Malcolm's Revenge is the third and final installment in the Legend of Kyrandia series. This point-and-click adventure game was developed and published by We...

Before there was Baldur’s Gate or Skyrim, there was DND. This 1984 DOS dungeon crawler is as old-school as it gets, complete with ASCII graphics, endless hallways, and monste...

The saga continues in Dark Ages Volume II: The Undead Kingdom, where your “Prince of Destiny” status doesn’t earn you a vacation, but instead throws you into a ki...

Drakkhen (1989) was weird—wonderfully, gloriously weird. A 3D RPG before 3D was really ready, it let you roam a strange fantasy world full of surreal landscapes, bizarre enem...