abandonware games sorted by popularity

John Madden Football was the first of a series of american football sports games sponsored by the coach of the same name. The first John Madden Football is an abandoned game develo...

Aleshar: World of Ice is what happens when someone says, “Let’s make an RPG, but crank the realism to 11.” Set in a cold, brutal land where your sword arm is only...

If you’ve ever thought The Lord of the Rings needed more ASCII and fewer hobbit feelings, Angband is your jam. Since 1992, this dungeon-crawling roguelike has been throwing p...

Castle of Dr. Brain is a puzzle lover’s fever dream. It’s like someone crammed a Mensa test into a haunted house and added robot arms. You’re solving logic grids,...

Boston Bomb Club (1991, DOS) is a Rube Goldberg fever dream disguised as a puzzle game. Your mission: guide bombs (yes, bombs) along increasingly elaborate tracks using contraption...

In Armor Alley, you command a helicopter in a warzone that looks like a side-scrolling office meeting gone wrong. It’s strategy meets action: you must manage resources, deplo...

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...

Paranormal agents, conspiracy theories, and point-and-click puzzles that would make even a ghost sigh in frustration. Bureau 13 is like The X-Files if Mulder and Scully spent more ...

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...

Before Street Fighter became a cultural juggernaut, it was this humble 1988 DOS brawler where Ryu’s fists felt more like sluggish bricks than blazing fireballs. The controls ...

Nuclear War is an abandoned turn-based strategy game designed by Eric Hyman and Jon Van Caneghem. Nuclear War was developed and released by New World Computing in 1989 for Amiga an...

F-22 Lightning II brings the flight sim genre into the late ’90s with faster action, flashier visuals, and a jet that feels like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. The F...

Environmental doom simulator? Check. Grim statistics? Double check. Balance of the Planet lets you tinker with carbon emissions, wildlife extinction, and deforestation until you ei...

Deskmate is a software suite developed by Tandy Corporation that provided a graphical user interface (GUI) and a set of applications for personal computers. It was often bundled wi...

Skate or Die is the embodiment of late-’80s “cool,” complete with neon chaos, absurdly dangerous skate events, and characters who look like they stepped out of a ...

Before Football Manager consumed the souls of soccer nerds everywhere, there was Club Football: The Manager. It’s all spreadsheets, transfers, and managing egos with egos. Th...

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...

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where leather vests are apparently immune to radiation, Bad Blood lets you wander the wasteland deciding whether to be a brute, a brainiac, or a mut...

If you’ve ever wanted to play interstellar Monopoly while arguing with alien neighbors, Deadlock: Planetary Conquest is your ticket. Released in 1996, this strategy gem tosse...

Hired Guns is an abandoned game developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis in 1993 for DOS and Amiga platforms. Hired Guns is a sci-fi RPG in which you control four mercena...

The Blues Brothers 2: Jukebox Adventure is a video game developed by Titus Interactive and released in 1993. It is a sequel to the original The Blues Brothers game, which was based...

Blackthorne (1994) is what happens when a '90s action hero gets lost in a side-scrolling alien world and decides to shoot everything until it makes sense. You’re Kyle, a shot...