abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Amazon Trail is an educational adventure that sends you down the Amazon River with considerably less certainty about what you are doing than the title might suggest. Released i...

Based on the James Bond film of the same name, James Bond 007: A View to a Kill arrived in 1985 and delivered a mixture of action and adventure sequences inspired by the movie. Pla...

Harley-Davidson: The Road to Sturgis is less about racing and more about the journey, which sounds poetic until you realize the road can be quite unforgiving. You ride across the U...

Borland Turbo C v2 built on the foundations of the first Turbo C release and became another popular tool for DOS programmers who wanted a fast, compact C development environment. T...

Sid Meier's Pirates! is one of those games that refuses to fit comfortably into a single genre. Originally released in 1987, it lets players become a pirate captain, sail the Carib...

Balance of Power: The 1990 Edition is a geopolitical strategy game developed by Chris Crawford and released in 1985. It is considered a classic in the genre of political and strate...

Ishar 2 (1994, DOS) picks up where the first game left off, and then throws in more ways to punish careless adventurers. It’s a first-person RPG where managing your party isn...

The Geekwad: Games of the Galaxy is a collection of bizarre mini-games aimed squarely at players who enjoy their arcade action with a generous helping of nonsense. Rather than buil...

Ever wanted to get chess lessons from a genius who could crush your soul with a bishop and a glare? Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess (1994, DOS) is your chance. Based on the classic boo...

Before Doom, there was Catacomb Abyss, where you throw fireballs down corridors at zombies who all apparently graduated from the same school of slow shuffling. It's a first-person ...

In 1999, Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator offered role-playing fans a huge adventure filled with memorable characters and an unusual world divided into layers. Its blend of rea...

Ah, 2400 A.D. A game where you can rebel against a robot police state… by slowly walking around in beige. Released in 1988, it’s what happens when you mix Orwellian dy...

Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor pushes the series into more ambitious territory. Released in 1991, it features a larger scope and a more complex narrative, set in ...

X-COM: Apocalypse takes the familiar alien invasion formula and tosses it into a sprawling futuristic city, where things feel both more chaotic and oddly more personal. Instead of ...

Set in a futuristic detective story, Martian Memorandum combines mystery, science fiction, and classic point-and-click adventure design into an engaging investigation. Private dete...

Storm is a strategy game built around the classic idea that controlling an entire world is much easier when nobody can complain about your management style. The game challenges you...

Microsoft Minesweeper is an iconic puzzle game that has been included with Microsoft Windows operating systems since Windows 3.1. The game's objective is to clear a rectangular boa...

The Legend of Kyrandia: Hand of Fate is the second installment in the Legend of Kyrandia point and click adventure game series developed by Westwood Studios. It was released in 199...

Wheel of Fortune brings the familiar television game show into the computer age, complete with word puzzles, contestants, and the eternal temptation to buy a vowel. The basic idea ...

The Humans is a puzzle game built around a charmingly simple idea: you control a group of tiny prehistoric people and must help them reach safety by making use of their different a...

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...

Imagine being a bouncing ball in a series of floating sky islands full of monsters, traps, and puzzles. Welcome to Cloud Kingdoms, where the laws of physics politely take a backsea...

Keys to Maramon is a role-playing game developed by Mindcraft Software and released in 1990 for the Amiga, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64 platforms. The game is set in the same universe ...

This 1989 game is based on the animated movie where dogs die, go to heaven, then come back for revenge (sort of). The DOS adaptation? Well, it’s more like All Pixels Go Nowhe...

Released in 2003 for Windows XP, Babylon 5: I've Found Her is the kind of fan-made game that makes you question whether it’s actually fan-made or secretly a pilot for a new s...

If Sorcerer Lord was about controlling armies, Sorcerian (1990, DOS) zooms in to the party level — a side-scrolling RPG that’s as odd as it is ambitious. You build a te...

Ragnarok is a 1993 fantasy role-playing game that combines exploration, combat, character development, and Norse mythology into a substantial adventure. Players guide their charact...

This one's not for the faint of heart. Conflict in Vietnam tries to simulate the complexity and chaos of guerrilla warfare in a game where every click can cost lives. The graphics ...

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...

Atlantis: The Lost Tales is a graphic adventure game developed by Cryo Interactive and released in 1997. It is the first in a series of games set around the legendary lost city of ...