abandonware games sorted by popularity

Spy Hunter is a 1984 DOS version of the classic arcade action game, putting the player behind the wheel of a heavily armed sports car with a very simple mission: drive fast and mak...

The first Ishar (1992, DOS) introduced players to a fantasy world where every decision could backfire spectacularly. You’re tasked with toppling a tyrant, but first you&rsquo...

RollerCoaster Tycoon is a 1999 theme-park management simulation that lets players design, build, and operate their own amusement parks. Players construct roller coasters, attractio...

Great Naval Battles vol. 4: Burning Steel shifts focus to earlier conflicts, offering a different flavor of naval strategy. In Great Naval Battles vol. 4, the mechanics remain deep...

Fleet Sweep takes the high drama of naval warfare and filters it through early-80s minimalism. Think less cinematic spectacle and more abstract tension as you maneuver through trea...

Patton vs. Rommel is a 1987 strategy game that brings two legendary World War II commanders into a battle of tactics, planning, and careful decision-making. Players take control of...

Mission: Impossible brings the famous spy franchise to the computer in an action-oriented adventure filled with dangerous missions, enemy agents, and situations where subtlety is g...

By the time Alone in the Dark 3 (1994, DOS) rolls around, Edward Carnby has seen it all - so now it’s off to the Wild West, because of course it is. Zombies? Check. Cowboys? ...

Postal is a deliberately provocative top-down action game that throws the player into a bleak world of violence, paranoia, and very questionable decision-making. You control the Po...

MDK 2 takes the wonderfully bizarre formula of its predecessor and turns the chaos up another notch. The game switches between three very different characters, each bringing a comp...

Douglas Adams, the twisted genius behind Hitchhiker’s Guide, brings you the most terrifying adventure of all: paperwork. Bureaucracy turns mundane modern life into a text-bas...

When in Gaul, punch like the Gauls do. In Asterix and Obelix (1996), you control the iconic French duo on a globetrotting beat-‘em-up adventure that mostly involves sending R...

Before Worms made artillery games cute, Bang! Bang! let you and a friend lob cartoonish shells at each other using nothing but angles, wind speed, and pure spite. It's a math lesso...

Forget piracy—China Sea Trader makes hauling porcelain and spices across 19th-century Asia feel like a cutthroat business. It’s part economic sim, part geography lesson...

FIFA Soccer Manager is aimed at the football fan who would rather decide the lineup than actually run around a pitch for ninety minutes. The game puts you in charge of a club, with...

In Infidel, you play a not-so-noble adventurer whose moral compass is spinning like a broken ceiling fan. As a treasure-hungry explorer poking around an ancient Egyptian tomb, you ...

Strip Poker Deluxe presents poker with an unmistakably adult twist, building its appeal around the familiar combination of card-game strategy and risqué rewards. The rules are str...

One-Nil Soccer Manager is a text-based soccer management simulation game that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was developed for various home computer systems, inc...

In Annals of Rome, you don’t just play history — you command it, badly. This 1988 strategy title lets you take control of the Roman Empire and try to keep it from falli...

Champions of Krynn is a RPG released in 1990 by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) and is the first game in the Dragonlance Gold Box series. It is based on the Advanced Dungeons &am...

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...

Released in 1988, Leisure Suit Larry 2: Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places) sends Larry into an increasingly outrageous international adventure filled with spies, tropi...

With Might and Magic 4: Clouds of Xeen, the series heads to the colorful world of Xeen, where the sky is bright, the monsters are plentiful, and the sense of adventure is delightfu...

If you ever wanted to pilot a hovering tank while yelling at a computer screen, Nova 9 has you covered. A sequel to Stellar 7, it puts you in the cockpit against Gir Draxon’s...

Ace of Aces (1987, DOS) is a game where you pilot a WWII plane via a series of still-image panels that suggest action more than deliver it. It’s like a flipbook with ambition...

If you ever wanted to explore endless, procedurally generated tunnels filled with monsters, traps, and the occasional existential crisis, Dungeon Crawl is your kind of misery. Rele...

Loopz, released in 1990, is the kind of puzzle game that looks innocent for about five seconds before it starts humbling you. The concept is simple: connect the pieces, form loops,...

After Dark brought a rather different idea of entertainment to the desktop: instead of asking the computer to work harder, why not let it sit there and look interesting? The softwa...

Space Quest 2: Vohaul’s Revenge continues Roger Wilco’s improbable rise from janitor to cosmic trouble magnet. This 1987 sequel ups the stakes by kidnapping Roger and t...

Before there was Baldur’s Gate or Skyrim, there was DND. This 1984 DOS dungeon crawler is as old-school as it gets, complete with ASCII graphics, endless hallways, and monste...