abandonware games sorted by popularity

Released in 1988 for DOS, this game lets you drive monster trucks across deserts, swamps, and icy wastelands with all the grace of a drunken forklift. It’s less about speed a...

Rome wasn’t built in a day—but you’ll conquer it in one afternoon. Centurion (1990) lets you play as a Roman commander with delusions of grandeur and a thing for ...

If Speedball was a fistfight on skates, Speedball 2 is a televised riot with endorsements. More teams, more power-ups, more everything. The game’s slogan might as well be &ld...

Microsoft Space Simulator is a space flight simulator game developed by Bruce Artwick Organization and published by Microsoft in 1994. It is part of the broader range of simulation...

Ever wanted to manage a kingdom, lead armies, go dungeon-crawling, and attend budget meetings? Birthright: The Gorgon’s Alliance makes all your fantasy micromanagement dreams...

Aldo’s Adventure is what you get when someone squints at Donkey Kong and decides to remake it after four cups of coffee and a long nap. You play Aldo, a brave little guy whos...

Acheton (1987, DOS) is one of those text adventures where the game cheerfully tries to kill you every five minutes — and does so with words. You're tossed into a sprawling, b...

Set in the far-off future of 1992, Battle Chess 4000 brings space-age flair to intergalactic checkmate. Now your queen is a laser-wielding dominatrix and your pawns might be robots...

Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0 continues the ambitious tradition of allowing ordinary computer users to experience the joys and responsibilities of piloting an aircraft. Players ca...

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...

In this 1986 DOS game, you're piloting a spacecraft in the year 2123, defending the United Planets from the Andromedan Hegemony. It's like being the captain of a starship, but with...

Released in 1984, Hack is one of those games that quietly shaped an entire genre while pretending not to care if you understood it or not. This early roguelike doesn’t bother...

Twilight 2000 drops you into a grim alternate future where global conflict has gone spectacularly wrong, and survival is less about heroics and more about scraping by. Released in ...

Galdregon's Domain drops players into a fantasy world that feels like it was stitched together from dungeon maps, spellbooks, and a suspiciously large number of monsters. The premi...

Bright colors, imaginative worlds, and wonderfully smooth animation make Magic Pockets an overlooked platforming gem from the early 1990s. You guide a quirky hero armed with magica...

Back when PC shoot-’em-ups were still proving they could match arcades, Raptor: Call of the Shadows landed like a missile. Fast, crunchy, and blessed with explosions that fee...

Ultima 8 drops the Avatar into a grim, volcanic world where “fun” is defined as plummeting to your death from badly timed jumps. Yes, the infamous platforming mechanics...

Unnatural Selection is a quirky strategy game from 1993 that asks a simple question: what if evolution had a sense of humor? You’re tasked with guiding creatures through generati...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is an arcade game released in 1989 by Konami. It is based on the popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. The game was initially released...

By 1993, Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! embraced fully voiced dialogue and colorful VGA graphics, giving the long-running comedy series a significant technical upgrade...

Quarantine 2: Road Warrior continues the series’ tradition of turning driving into a hazardous military operation. Released in 1995, it puts players behind the wheel of an armed ...

Outcast is a 1999 science-fiction action-adventure that sends players to the alien world of Adelpha, a place where the scenery is beautiful, the inhabitants are mysterious, and the...

By the time Space Quest 3: The Pirates of Pestulon arrived in 1989, Roger Wilco had become something of a professional survivor. This time he starts the game stranded in a garbage ...

In Lucky Luke (1997, Windows), the fastest gun in the West is also the funniest. Based on the beloved Belgian comic, the game mixes platforming and slapstick as Luke outsmarts band...

Harpoon is a naval strategy game that takes itself seriously, which is both its strength and its greatest barrier. It offers a detailed simulation of modern naval warfare, requirin...

Elvira: The Arcade Game trades puzzles for action and subtlety for pure chaos. This is fast, brutal, side-scrolling combat with monsters pouring in from every direction. Elvira&rsq...

Operation: Inner Space is a 1994 Windows 3.x game that takes players on a strange journey through the microscopic world inside the human body. Rather than exploring distant planets...

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...

Heimdall blends action and strategy in a way that feels ambitious, placing you in a mythological setting where decisions matter as much as reflexes. Managing resources, recruiting ...