abandonware games sorted by popularity

Harpoon II expands on the original with more content and a greater sense of scale, as if it decided the ocean was not quite big enough the first time around. The added depth makes ...

Motor City offers a fascinating mixture of urban exploration, driving, and strategy set in a detailed city environment. Players can navigate streets, manage vehicles, and take part...

Fleet Command invites you to command modern naval forces with the calm authority of someone who definitely read the manual. This is strategy on a grand scale: radar screens glowing...

Guy Spy and the Crystals of Armageddon is gloriously over-the-top, starring a hero who looks like he walked out of a Saturday morning cartoon and into a global conspiracy. The digi...

Eishockey Manager is proof that spreadsheets can, in fact, be thrilling—if you really love ice hockey. Released in 1993, this is a hardcore management sim that skips the flas...

SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony is a wonderfully eccentric 1991 simulation that lets players experience life from the perspective of an ant. Rather than building cities or managi...

When Last Ninja reached DOS in 1988, it brought its stylish martial arts adventure to a wider audience with challenging action and memorable level design. Guiding a lone ninja thro...

Qix is a 1989 arcade-style puzzle game built around the strangely satisfying task of claiming territory while avoiding a dangerous moving shape. Players guide a marker across the s...

Ocean Trader is a 1995 strategy game for players who have looked at the sea and thought, “That is a lot of water. I should probably make money from it.” The game focuses on mar...

Welcome to Z, the real-time strategy game where psychotic robots with British accents duke it out over territory in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Think Command & Conquer if the...

Total Annihilation is a landmark real-time strategy game that takes large-scale warfare and refuses to keep it small. Players gather resources, construct factories, build armies, a...

Millennia: Altered Destinies offers a fascinating blend of space exploration, strategy, and time manipulation as players attempt to guide civilizations through an enormous galactic...

Ah, 1000 Miglia - the only racing game where you can almost smell the exhaust fumes and espresso. Based on the historic Italian road race, it’s less about speed and more abou...

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...

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...

Alien Syndrome (1989) is a top-down shooter where you save hostages, shoot aliens, and scream internally because you’re always out of time. It’s frantic arcade action a...

The Immortal is a darkly comic action RPG that drops you into a dungeon where survival depends on quick reflexes, exploration, and a willingness to get killed in surprisingly inven...

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...

Circuit's Edge is a cyberpunk-themed role-playing game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom. It was released in 1990 for MS-DOS. Set in a dystopian future, Cir...

Inca 2: Wiracocha doubles down on everything its predecessor attempted, for better and occasionally for worse. The sequel streamlines some mechanics while expanding the universe, l...

Designed by sci-fi author Syd Mead, CyberRace combines futuristic vehicle design with high-speed competition. The result is a visually striking racer that feels like it came straig...

Tomb Raider II takes Lara Croft on another globe-spanning adventure, expanding the original formula with new locations, vehicles and more elaborate environments. Venice, Tibet and ...

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...

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...

Ah yes, the game that crawled so Ultima could run. Akalabeth is a wireframe dungeon crawl where you descend into monster-infested labyrinths with the elegance of a lost spreadsheet...

Released in 1989, Ghostbusters 2 gives you another shot at wrangling ectoplasm with the world’s most overqualified exterminators. Inspired by the movie sequel, it’s equ...

Harpoon is a naval strategy game that takes itself seriously, which is both its strength and its greatest barrier. It offers a detailed simulation of modern naval warfare, requirin...

Paratrooper is a 1982 action game that demonstrates how much excitement can emerge from a single defensive position and an endless stream of incoming enemies. Players control an an...

Known as Exhumed in some regions, Powerslave is a first-person shooter with a heavy dose of Egyptian flavor. Think mummies, scarabs, and plenty of mystical traps, all wrapped up in...

Visual Basic 3 (VB3) is a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) released by Microsoft in 1993. It is part of the Visual Basic (VB) series, which is know...