abandonware games sorted by popularity

Transport Tycoon is one of the great classic transportation management games, turning the seemingly simple task of moving things from A to B into an obsession with timetables, rout...

Double Dragon II: The Revenge (1988) takes everything that made the first game fun and cranks it up a notch. The story begins with tragedy—Marian, the damsel from the first g...

Speedball is like hockey, but with more metal, more violence, and fewer rules. It’s future-sport brutality where scoring goals is optional—knocking opponents unconsciou...

Part interactive fiction, part “how far can curiosity push you,” Essex places you aboard a massive starship filled with secrets. As you explore its dim corridors and ma...

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...

In 1983, Battlezone asked: what if vector graphics could give you war-induced vertigo? You’re in a tank, in a wireframe world, fighting other tanks. That’s it. But it&r...

Heroes of Might and Magic II takes the foundation of its predecessor and polishes it with the care of someone who genuinely loved the original. The visuals are richer, the mechanic...

Win, Lose or Draw transforms the popular drawing-and-guessing game show into a computer party game. The concept is immediately recognizable: one player gets a word or phrase and at...

Sonic Millennium Edition is a fan-oriented Sonic project that brings the famous blue hedgehog into a PC setting with a distinctly retro spirit. The game focuses on the familiar ing...

The Fourth Protocol turns Frederick Forsyth's Cold War thriller into a computer strategy and espionage experience where information can be considerably more dangerous than bullets....

Based on the French comic series, The Quest for the Time-bird (1989, DOS) offers a fantasy adventure full of personality, odd creatures, and enough lore to fill a small library. Th...

The all new Family Feud brings the classic TV game show into your home, complete with survey questions and the eternal struggle to guess what other people are thinking. It’s simp...

Released in 1987, this game has you waking up in a toilet stall with no memory of who you are. As detective Ace Harding, you must clear your name and restore your memories. It's li...

Released in 1988, Legend of the Sword is a graphic adventure that tries to blend epic fantasy storytelling with the puzzle-solving spirit of early point-and-clicks. The result is a...

Midwinter creates a remarkable open-world survival adventure set across a vast frozen island, combining exploration, combat, strategy, and resource management. Players must recruit...

Nobunaga's Ambition 2 expands on the historical strategy formula of its predecessor, once again placing players in the turbulent world of feudal Japan. Released in 1989, the game c...

With a title that sounds like a deep-sea motivational poster, Big Sea: The Better One Will Win is a maritime strategy game where the stakes are high and the water’s pixelated...

CHAMP Pac-em is a Pac-Man-inspired arcade game built around the familiar pleasure of navigating mazes while collecting items and avoiding enemies. Anyone who has ever confidently e...

Released in 1994 (long after it originally debuted on other platforms), Ant Attack! is what you get when you mix isometric graphics, giant ants, and questionable urban planning. Yo...

Iznogoud from 1987 adapts the famous comic into an adventure-platform hybrid filled with traps, puzzles, and cartoon mischief. Its humor carries much of the charm, while the gamepl...

Clearly inspired by more famous platforming families, Giana Family doesn’t exactly hide its influences, but it manages to carve out its own identity anyway. The levels are pl...

Q*Bert is a 1984 arcade classic that takes a small orange creature, places him on a pyramid of colorful cubes, and then makes the entire structure a surprisingly dangerous workplac...

The Way of the Exploding Fist PC is a later PC take on the classic martial-arts fighting formula, built around timing, positioning and knowing when to strike. The name already give...

Released in 1988, Jinxter is a whimsical text adventure overflowing with clever writing, bizarre situations, and puzzles that often seem determined to test the limits of human logi...

The 11th Hour is what happens when a puzzle game decides it also wants to haunt your dreams. As the sequel to The 7th Guest, it doubles down on eerie atmosphere, cryptic challenges...

Released in 1987, this is less of a simulator and more of a fever dream where you pilot a flying box over a grid pretending to be terrain. 3-D Helicopter Simulator was ambitious fo...

Set in the infamous Underdark, Menzoberranzan brings the dark fantasy of the Forgotten Realms to life through a first-person role-playing adventure filled with drow politics, dange...

Enclave is a dark fantasy action game that feels slightly out of time, in both good and bad ways. Its world is grim, its tone serious, and its combat intentionally weighty. You&rsq...

The Ultimate Doom expands the classic demon-blasting formula with an additional episode and plenty more reasons to wonder why opening that suspicious door seemed like a good idea. ...

Mad Paradox embraces surrealism with remarkable enthusiasm, presenting an action-platform adventure where strange creatures and bizarre environments are perfectly normal. Players m...