abandonware games sorted by popularity

Just like the movie, Batman Returns (1992) is dark, gritty, and full of dudes in clown makeup getting punched in the face. You play as the Caped Crusader in a beat-‘em-up sid...

The Terminator: Future Shock is an abandoned science fiction first-person shooter game based on the popular Terminator movies franchise, set in a dystopian world where machines has...

Shanghai II: Dragon’s Eye (1990, Windows 3.x/Mac) takes the serene logic of mahjong solitaire and wraps it in a calm, almost meditative presentation. Tiles stack in intricate...

Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire is the second installment in Sierra On-Line's Quest for Glory series, blending classic adventure gameplay with RPG elements in a world inspired by...

In Captain Comic 2: Fractured Reality, our fearless spandex-wearing space explorer returns—but this time, he's bouncing between dimensions like a malfunctioning microwave. Th...

Released in 1988, Alien Fires 2199 AD looks and plays like someone tried to translate a fever dream into a sci-fi RPG. You control some dude with a chin of steel and a crew that se...

Wizardry 4: The Return of Werdna flips the script by letting you play the villain, which is as delightful as it is diabolical. You control Werdna, an evil wizard with a knack for c...

Exile: Escape from the Pit, released in 1995, is where the whole strange, subterranean saga begins. You’re exiled—literally—thrown into an underground world and t...

Times of Lore is an abandoned action RPG designed by Chris Roberts, developed and released by Origin Systems in 1989 for DOS and many more 8 bit and 16 bit platforms. Compared to U...

Wipeout is a popular racing video game known for its high-speed gameplay, anti-gravity racing vehicles, and electronic music soundtracks. Wipeout was developed and published b...

In Amnesia, you wake up in a hotel room with no idea who you are, where you are, or why someone wants you dead. And no, this isn’t a gritty FPS—it’s a text advent...

Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0 (MSFS 4.0) is a flight simulation game released by Microsoft in 1989 for MS-DOS. It was the fourth major version of the Microsoft Flight Simulator se...

1893: A World's Fair Mystery is an interactive fiction game developed by the American studio Illuminated Lantern and released in 2002. Set during the Chicago World's Columbian Expo...

If Frontier: Elite 2 opened the door to a vast universe, Frontier: First Encounters in 1995 basically kicked it wide open and invited you to wander in. This sequel expands the form...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Star Trek: First Contact (not to be confused with the later movie) is more puzzle-solving than phaser-firing. You take control of the Enterprise crew as t...

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....

Step into the cockpit of the Apache Longbow, a 1995 combat flight simulator where you’ll experience the thrilling sensation of trying to figure out keyboard controls before g...

By 1994, digging had evolved from arcade twitch action to full-on economic warfare. Diggers on DOS turned mining into a cutthroat competition between quirky alien races, each with ...