abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

When Little Big Adventure appeared in 1994, it immediately stood out thanks to its imaginative world, memorable storytelling, and charming protagonist Twinsen. Blending action, adv...

Before Doomguy started ripping and tearing, there was Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. A stealth game where sneaking is mandatory, disguises are fashionable, and stabbing Nazis is encour...

The sequel nobody asked for, but we’re still kinda glad happened. California Games 2 adds even weirder sports: jet-skiing, hang gliding, and bodyboarding, which is like surfi...

The Dig is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It was originally released in 1995 for MS-DOS and later for other platforms, including Mac OS and ...

Grand Prix is one of those games that tries to bottle the thrill of Formula racing and pour it into a DOS machine that wheezes like an overworked engine. In Grand Prix, you get a s...

Ishar 2 (1994, DOS) picks up where the first game left off, and then throws in more ways to punish careless adventurers. It’s a first-person RPG where managing your party isn...

B.A.T. is a cyberpunk-themed adventure game released in 1989 by UBI Soft for various platforms, including Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and later the Commodore 64. It blends adventure, ...

Crusaders of the Dark Savant is a sprawling saga with enough content to make your eyes bleed and your fingers cramp. The game blends strategy, exploration, and role-playing with a ...

PHM Pegasus is a 1987 naval simulation that places players in command of a modern hydrofoil missile ship. The game focuses on controlling the vessel, managing weapons, and completi...

By 1992, Dragon’s Lair 3: The Curse of Mordread continued Dirk’s tradition of “failing spectacularly until you don’t.” Once again, you guide the world...

Ninja is a 1986 action game that wastes very little time explaining the job description. You are a ninja, there are enemies, and they would prefer that you stop being quite so succ...

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...

Boulder Dash is a classic action-puzzle video game that was first released in 1984 by First Star Software. In Boulder Dash, players control a character named Rockford as he di...

Outpost is a 1994 science-fiction strategy and management game that asks players to establish a human colony far from Earth, which immediately raises several questions about transp...

Often hailed as the best of the trilogy, Star Trail doubles down on everything its predecessor attempted—and somehow makes it all smoother. The world feels richer, the quests...

If Doom and Gauntlet had a lovechild, Alien Breed would be the weird kid who hangs out in dark corridors with a shotgun. Released in 1993 for DOS, this top-down shooter throws you ...

Released in 1986, Desert Rats is a strategy game that puts you in charge of the North African campaign of World War II. Don’t let the cute title fool you—there are no a...

John Madden Football was the first of a series of american football sports games sponsored by the coach of the same name. The first John Madden Football is an abandoned game develo...

Released in 1988, Alien Fires 2199 AD looks and plays like someone tried to translate a fever dream into a sci-fi RPG. You control some dude with a chin of steel and a crew that se...

Before there was Capitalism 2, there was Capitalism Plus, which basically took the original and added a few bells, whistles, and ways to fail spectacularly. It’s like being h...

Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Revolution Software. Released in 1997. The game follows the continuing adventures of George...

If Speedball was a fistfight on skates, Speedball 2 is a televised riot with endorsements. More teams, more power-ups, more everything. The game’s slogan might as well be &ld...

Step into the Korean War with Conflict: Korea, where you command UN forces and discover that even in strategy games, North Korea is a problem. It follows the same system as the res...

Indiana Jones: Revenge of the Ancients from 1987 is one of those curious side stories that feels like it emerged from a parallel cinematic universe. Presented as a text-heavy adven...