abandonware games sorted by popularity

Free Enterprise from 1996 is business simulation with a distinctly ’90s sense of ambition. You’re tasked with building and managing a corporate empire, juggling finance...

If you’ve ever dreamed of commanding a WWII convoy while cold, stressed, and staring at a pixelated radar screen, Action in the North Atlantic (1989, DOS) has you covered. It...

Fairy Tale Adventure 2: Halls of the Dead (1997) continues its predecessor’s tradition of sprawling fantasy exploration with a darker, more dangerous edge. Available on DOS a...

In Blitzkrieg: Battle at the Ardennes, you’re not just playing a wargame — you’re being handed a clipboard, a stack of orders, and a freezing cold battlefield in ...

Afterlife is a simulation strategy game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1996 for Microsoft Windows and later made available on other platforms. The game wa...

Released in 1993, Seven Cities of Gold (Commemorative Edition) invited players to explore the New World with a mixture of discovery, strategy and occasional greed. Sailing into unk...

The Amazon Trail is an educational adventure that sends you down the Amazon River with considerably less certainty about what you are doing than the title might suggest. Released i...

The Shadows of Mordor is a dark fantasy adventure that feels like a lost chapter from an old-school Tolkien-inspired novel. You explore a grim and dangerous world filled with monst...

Based loosely on Jules Verne’s famous tale, this game lets you live your steampunk submarine dreams with all the elegance of a DOS interface. You command the Nautilus, explor...

Imagine Tetris but in three dimensions and your brain slowly melting into a puddle of confusion. That is Blockout. You drop 3D shapes into a pit and try to line them up, but nothin...

In Curse of Enchantia, a young boy is whisked away to a magical world full of bizarre creatures, tricky puzzles, and an alarming number of ways to die. The game’s whimsical a...

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption is a dark action RPG that combines gothic horror, character development, and a surprisingly complicated vampire social life. You play Christof ...

Stronghold is a medieval strategy game that puts you in charge of castles, armies, and enough political trouble to make a peaceful life in the countryside seem terribly overrated. ...

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...

Welcome to Tass Times in Tonetown, where the ‘80s collided with science fiction and nobody cleaned up the mess. It’s a bizarre adventure full of punk hairdos, neon colo...

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...

Batalia (1986) is what happens when war games and spreadsheet programs fall in love. This early DOS strategy title throws you into tactical battles with graphics that would struggl...

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...

Released in 1996 for DOS, The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo brings you back to foggy Victorian London, where murders, morphine, and moustaches abound. ...

Welcome to the future, where space empires are managed entirely via text and colored dots. Anacreon puts you in charge of an interstellar civilization and lets you conquer galaxies...

Rags to Riches is a 1993 DOS business simulation built around the classic dream of starting with almost nothing and ending up with a fortune. Players must make financial decisions,...

Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon trims the team down to two goblins but doubles down on personality and puzzle complexity. The interactions between the characters add a layer of char...

Explosions? Check. Missiles? Check. Graphics that look like someone spilled gray soup on your monitor? Double check. A-10 Tank Killer lets you pilot a flying war machine and rain c...

Part strategy, part fantasy empire builder, Realms gives you a continent to wrangle and a surprising number of ways to embarrass yourself. You recruit armies, juggle rebellious pop...

Zany Golf is what happens when someone says, “Let’s make miniature golf, but with teleporters, hamburgers, and anti-gravity pads.” Part mini-golf simulator, part ...

This one's not for the faint of heart. Conflict in Vietnam tries to simulate the complexity and chaos of guerrilla warfare in a game where every click can cost lives. The graphics ...

Paranormal agents, conspiracy theories, and point-and-click puzzles that would make even a ghost sigh in frustration. Bureau 13 is like The X-Files if Mulder and Scully spent more ...

In APB (1989), you’re a cop in a little squad car with a huge attitude problem. Your job? Pull over criminals, avoid donuts, and try not to smash into every tree, wall, and p...

Word Perfect 5 is one of the defining DOS word processors of its generation, offering a remarkably powerful writing environment while remaining firmly rooted in keyboard-driven com...

Super Solvers: Treasure Mountain! is an educational adventure that sends players into a colorful mountain environment filled with puzzles, treasures, creatures, and questions desig...