abandonware games sorted by popularity

In Commander Keen 2: The Earth Explodes, the stakes go from “oops, stranded on Mars” to “uh-oh, Earth is doomed.” The Vorticons have planted death lasers in...

Zeliard is a fantasy platformer/RPG hybrid that has all the trappings of a classic quest: a brave knight, an evil demon, a princess in distress, and an unreasonable number of bats....

Your uncle is dead, but his ghost can still blow out candles. That’s the premise. Bubble Ghost is a quirky physics puzzler where you guide a delicate bubble through haunted r...

If you’ve ever wondered what a caveman’s life was like—minus the boredom and constant risk of saber-tooth tiger attacks—Prehistorik has you covered. It&rsqu...

In Jungle Strike, players pilot military helicopters through explosive missions that blend action, strategy, and just enough chaos to keep things interesting. Released in 1995, the...

Chessmaster 9000 is a chess game developed by Ubisoft and released in 2002. It's part of the Chessmaster series, which has been around since the 1980s. Chessmaster 9000 was known f...

In Core War Plus, programming isn’t just for making spreadsheets—it’s for virtual combat. You write tiny programs that battle for control of computer memory, turn...

Ninja Gaiden, released in 1988 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and later to other platforms, is a side-scrolling action-platformer developed by Tecmo. It follows the st...

Cool Spot proves that even a soft drink mascot can star in a surprisingly fun platformer. You’re a tiny, sunglasses-wearing red dot who surfs soda bubbles, rescues friends tr...

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...

Hired Guns is what happens when someone looks at a dungeon crawler and thinks, “Yes, but what if it were louder, messier, and slightly unhinged?” Released in 1993, this squad-b...

Beneath Apple Manor is a pioneering game in the roguelike genre, originally developed and released in 1978 by Don Worth for the Apple II and later re-released for DOS as a "Special...

Back in 1989, David Wolf: Secret Agent tried really hard to make you feel like James Bond. You get car chases, fistfights, and enough cheesy dialogue to fill an action movie marath...

Alcatraz (1992) asks the question: what if Rambo got locked in prison and had to bust out while flexing dramatically the entire time? This top-down action game puts you in the very...

Dangerous Streets is a fighting game that clearly wanted to be the next Street Fighter—and instead became a cult oddity. The character roster is bizarre, the animations oddly...

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 ...

Conqueror is what happens when a tank simulator and an arcade game go on a date and forget their purpose. You drive a tank in a pseudo-3D landscape, blow up stuff, and command squa...

Released in 1987, Lords of Conquest is strategy in its most distilled, no-nonsense form. This is a game that drops you onto a map, hands you control of armies, and essentially says...