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...

Penthouse Electric Jigsaw is a 1990 puzzle game that combines the relaxing activity of assembling jigsaw puzzles with a distinctly computer-era twist. Players recreate images by mo...

Shadowlands (1992, DOS) hands you a party of adventurers and then expects you to coordinate them like a fantasy air-traffic controller. Instead of a single hero, you manage four ch...

Superhero League of Hoboken is a wonderfully odd role-playing adventure that imagines a superhero team defending the world from threats while operating out of Hoboken. The humor is...

Forget Rambo. Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines is what happens when you drop six experts behind Nazi lines and tell them to behave tactically… or else. Every mission is a deadl...

If your idea of excitement is waiting... and waiting... and maybe catching a giant digital tuna, Big Game Fishing is your dream come true. Simulate the thrill of casting a line wit...

Moebius is a thoughtful science fiction adventure that combines exploration, mystery, and philosophical ideas in a world shaped by unusual technology and enigmatic events. Players ...

Super Hang-On is arcade motorcycle racing distilled into its most energetic form: choose a powerful bike, twist the throttle, and try to remain attached to the road while everythin...

By 1994, RPG fans were spoiled with titles like Might and Magic and Ultima. Then along came Disciples of Steel, a brutally complex, turn-based fantasy epic for DOS. It drops you in...

The Usurper is a fantasy action game built around the classic computer-game recipe of dangerous dungeons, hostile creatures and a hero who apparently has nothing better to do than ...

Take American football, remove the rules, add swords and fireballs, and throw in some screaming. That is Brutal Sports Football. This is not about touchdowns. This is about surviva...

Shadow of Yserbius is a 1993 online role-playing game set in a fantasy world filled with dungeons, monsters, treasure, and enough corridors to make a cartographer nervous. Players ...

Phantasie 3: The Wrath of Nikademus continues the fantasy role-playing series with a larger adventure, stronger enemies, and an even greater challenge for returning heroes. Players...

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...

Ultimate Soccer Manager taps into the irresistible fantasy of running a football club without ever leaving your chair. Instead of flashy graphics, it offers spreadsheets, statistic...

Alien Rampage (1996) is what happens when Duke Nukem gets stranded on a hostile alien planet and decides subtlety is for cowards. It’s a side-scrolling shooter dripping with ...

Released in 1990, Day of the Viper is a first-person shooter before shooters really found their footing. Imagine a blend of Doom and a bargain-bin puzzle game, but with robots. You...

La Abadía del Crimen (1987) is famously unforgiving, and it knows it. Inspired by Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, this is an isometric adventure where breaking the...

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...

Operation Getafix (1989) is what happens when you turn a beloved comic series into a game with the precision of a wild boar wearing gloves. You play as Asterix on a quest to help G...

Released in 1995, Lemmings 3D boldly transported the beloved puzzle series into a fully three-dimensional world. The familiar objective remains unchanged, but rotating the camera a...

King's Quest 7: The Princeless Bride is one of the most colorful and playful entries in Sierra's long-running adventure series. The game follows Princess Rosella and her mother, Qu...

Styx is a compact arcade-style adventure built around exploration, hazards, and the sort of unforgiving design that older computer games considered perfectly normal. The action tak...

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...

Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur is a text adventure with occasional graphics, in which you, the not-yet-king, bumble your way through Camelot trying to prove you’re not just ...

Super Solvers: Operation Neptune is an educational adventure that combines underwater exploration with lessons disguised as missions. Players take part in a submarine-themed journe...

Fascination, released in 1991 for DOS, is a point-and-click adventure that clearly wanted to be edgy, mysterious, and just a little bit scandalous. Set in a neon-soaked future full...

F-15 Strike Eagle III is a combat flight simulation video game released in 1992. It was developed by MicroProse and is the third installment in the F-15 Strike Eagle series. T...

DOSBox is an open-source emulator that allows you to run software and games designed for the MS-DOS operating system on modern computers. As you probably already know, MS-DOS was a...

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...