abandonware games sorted by popularity

X-Men 2: The Fall of the Mutants is a curious blend of action and light strategy, where Marvel’s famous mutants get to stretch their powers across a series of loosely connected m...

If Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego had a caffeinated younger cousin, it would be Bush Buck: Global Treasure Hunter. You race around the globe chasing clues, dodging rivals, a...

Super Cauldron is a platform adventure with a distinctly magical flavor, sending the player through colorful environments filled with enemies, hazards, and the usual assortment of ...

In the 25th century, bureaucracy is still awful—but now you also have laser guns. Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday is a surprisingly solid sci-fi RPG that blends space oper...

Nuclear War is an abandoned turn-based strategy game designed by Eric Hyman and Jon Van Caneghem. Nuclear War was developed and released by New World Computing in 1989 for Amiga an...

Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft pushes the series further into globe-trotting action, sending Lara through locations ranging from jungles and deserts to urban environment...

Floor 13 hands you the keys to a shadowy government office and suggests you protect national stability by any means necessary. It’s part strategy, part moral dilemma, and ent...

Ever wanted to read Car and Driver magazine and then actually drive the cars featured in it? Well, someone in 1992 said “why not both?” and Car and Driver the game was ...

Aleshar: World of Ice is what happens when someone says, “Let’s make an RPG, but crank the realism to 11.” Set in a cold, brutal land where your sword arm is only...

Pepper's Adventures in Time is a 1993 adventure game that sends players on a journey through history filled with puzzles, humor, and plenty of unusual situations. The story follows...

In Bionic Commando, you're a soldier with no jumping ability—because who needs knees when you have a grappling arm? Swing through 1988 DOS architecture like a pixelated Tarza...

In 1989, Deathtrack tried to answer a question nobody asked: “What if NASCAR had machine guns?” The result is a futuristic racer where speed and firepower go hand in ha...

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...

The Crack of Doom is an old-school adventure with a title that sounds considerably more dramatic than the average Tuesday afternoon, and the game does its best to live up to it. Ex...

Imagine X-COM but with fewer excuses to blame the developers when you miss a 95% chance shot—because in UFO 2000 (2004), the chaos was entirely player-driven. A free, open-so...

Dark, moody, and surprisingly mature, Manhattan Missions takes the Turtles into gritty territory. The city is under siege, Shredder’s back, and the atmosphere feels more Batm...

What if ants could use bazookas and beetles had battle plans? Battle Bugs answers this crucial question by turning your screen into a war zone where tiny insects wage strategic war...

McDonald Land (1992) is one of the strangest brand tie-ins ever to grace DOS, and that’s saying something. You play as Ronald McDonald himself, jumping across colorful platfo...

Released later in 1992, _Jill of the Jungle 3: Jill Saves the Prince_ completes the trilogy with another energetic platforming adventure. This time the story reverses traditional f...

In Altered Destiny, a perfectly average guy named P.J. Barrett gets sucked into a bizarre alien dimension because he answered a phone call. Seriously. What follows is a classic poi...

Named after the famously outspoken baseball manager, Earl Weaver Baseball takes the sport seriously, sometimes almost aggressively so. This isn’t about flashy graphics or arc...

Before its sequel, there was Dark Reign: The Future of War (1997), a forward-thinking RTS that introduced mechanics ahead of its time, like customizable AI scripts for units. The r...

Released in 1983, this classic arcade-style shooter has you defending humanoids from alien abductions. Fly your ship across a scrolling landscape, blasting enemies and saving innoc...

If you’ve ever looked at a map of the Pacific theater in World War II and thought, “Yes, but what if I micromanaged all of it?”, Gary Grigsby’s Pacific War ...

Released in 1991, Free D.C.! is one of those games that feels like a time capsule of early PC experimentation. It mixes political satire with arcade-style action, letting you fight...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

Shinobi is a 1989 DOS adaptation of Sega's classic arcade action game, putting players in control of a highly skilled ninja fighting through waves of enemies. The action revolves a...

Tom and Jerry turns the eternal rivalry between the cat and mouse into a computer platform adventure filled with traps, chases and the sort of household destruction that would make...