abandonware games sorted by popularity

In Assault Trooper, you're the lone soldier with enough ammo to make Rambo blush, dropped behind enemy lines to shoot first and ask “was that a civilian?” later. This 1...

ARJ is a file compression utility and file format created by Robert K. Jung. The name "ARJ" stands for "Archived by Robert Jung." It was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s a...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Fast Break is basketball distilled into pure late-80s computer logic. Don’t expect flashy presentation or TV-style commentary; instead, you get a to...

Think you’re good at making tough decisions under pressure? Advanced Civilization dares you to prove it by turning diplomacy into passive-aggressive warfare. Based on the cla...

Before Football Manager devoured your social life, there was Championship Manager. With graphics as bare as a locker room and stats as detailed as a tax form, it’s a numbers ...

Few games deserve the title of “classic” more than Day of the Tentacle (1993). It’s Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman at their weirdest, giving us time travel, mutant...

Action Fighter (1989, DOS) is Sega’s way of saying, “Why choose between car chases and aerial dogfights when you can have both?” You start in a motorcycle, grab s...

Telengard is one of the earliest computer role-playing games, released in 1982 for various home computers like the Commodore 64, Apple II, and TRS-80 and later for PC. It was devel...

Take the tactical seriousness of Championship Manager and sprinkle on some espresso. Championship Manager Italia gives you control over Italy’s finest (and most temperamental...

With a title like Dogfight: 80 Years of Aerial Warfare, you know you’re in for a serious history lesson disguised as a game. Released in 1993, this DOS flight sim spans decad...

In Reunion, you return to a solar system that’s moved on without you—like showing up to your own birthday party two centuries late. Your mission? Rebuild civilization, ...

Loom is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games (now LucasArts). It was designed by Brian Moriarty and is known for its unique gameplay mechanics and em...

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 is a simulation game developed by Chris Sawyer Productions and published by Infogrames. It was released in 2002 as the sequel to the original  classic ...

Wizardry 2: The Knight of Diamonds takes the classic dungeon crawl and adds a few extra twists, like more mazes to get lost in and puzzles designed to make you question your life c...

Great Naval Battles vol. 5: Demise of the Dreadnoughts takes you back even further, exploring naval warfare at a time when technology and tactics were evolving rapidly. In Great Na...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a humorous free text adventure game based on the novel of the same name written by Douglas Adams (if you never read it, shame on you!). The ...

Part RTS, part simulation, Carrier Command was ahead of its time in the same way that an aircraft carrier is ahead of a canoe. You control a futuristic warship, launch aircraft and...

Mean 18 (1986) is a golf game with more attitude than you’d expect from a sport usually associated with polite applause and quiet respect. This is arcade golf: fast, flashy, ...

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...

Grand Prix Circuit is a fascinating early attempt at turning real-world racing into something playable without requiring a steering wheel the size of your desk. In Grand Prix Circu...

Dig Dug is a classic maze arcade action game that was first released by Namco in 1982 as a coin-op and later for a number of other systems. The gameplay of Dig Dug involves digging...

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...

Electroman is a cheerful little platformer with a big grin and zero interest in realism. You play as a cartoonish superhero zipping through levels full of gadgets, traps, and enemi...

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...