abandonware games sorted by popularity

Bigger, darker, and just as merciless, Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep doubled down on everything that made the first game great—and slightly unhinged. Released in...

Dogs of War (1996) drops you into a gritty mercenary’s life where missions mean money, and money means better gear. Set on Windows XP, the game blends strategy and action wit...

Great Naval Battles vol. 2: Guadalcanal 1942-43 puts you in charge of naval warfare where every decision feels heavy and every mistake echoes across the ocean. In Great Naval Battl...

Based on the hit TV series, LA Law: The Computer Game (1992) lets you live out legal drama without needing a law degree—though it certainly helps. You manage cases, interview...

If Sorcerer Lord was about controlling armies, Sorcerian (1990, DOS) zooms in to the party level — a side-scrolling RPG that’s as odd as it is ambitious. You build a te...

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...

ARJ is a file compression utility and file format created by Robert K. Jung. The name "ARJ" stands for "Archived by Robert Jung." It was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s a...

Take Eddie Murphy’s swagger, remove the charm, add some DOS chiptunes, and you get Beverly Hills Cop—a game adaptation that asks: “What if being a wisecracking de...

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...

Grand Prix 500 2 throws you onto a motorcycle and politely suggests you try not to die at high speed. Unlike car racing games, this one reminds you that two wheels are inherently a...

As sequels go, Serpent Isle is less “more of the same” and more “everything is different, good luck.” Shipwrecked on a strange new land, you’ll deal w...

Big Red Racing is what happens when you combine arcade mayhem with zero regard for realism and lots of British sarcasm. Drive everything from dump trucks to hovercrafts, insult you...

Before Half-Life, there was Chasm: The Rift, a game where time-traveling mutants explode into limbs and every room looks like it was decorated by a doom-metal band. A first-person ...

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet software for personal computers, and it played a pivotal role in the early history of personal computing. It was developed by Dan Bricklin and Bo...

Epic Pinball is what happens when a small team says, “Sure, let’s make a pinball game,” and accidentally creates one of the most addictive shareware hits of the d...

Infestation drops you onto a hostile alien world where the welcome committee consists mostly of things with too many legs and way too many teeth. The game mixes exploration and act...

Empire Deluxe is the kind of strategy game that politely pretends to be simple while quietly stealing entire weekends from your life. On the surface, it’s a turn-based war ga...

In Armor Alley, you command a helicopter in a warzone that looks like a side-scrolling office meeting gone wrong. It’s strategy meets action: you must manage resources, deplo...

Seek and Destroy was a shoot'em up published by the well known Epic Megagames in 1996 that tried to change the usual shoot'em up gameplay for the better. Instead of wave after wave...

If you've ever stared at a camel and thought, "What if it shot lasers and had a personal grudge against humanity?", Attack of the Mutant Camels is the fever dream you've been waiti...

Ah, 2400 A.D. A game where you can rebel against a robot police state… by slowly walking around in beige. Released in 1988, it’s what happens when you mix Orwellian dy...

Released back when computers still hummed ominously and monitors glowed like radioactive jellyfish, Epidemic! throws you into the grim business of stopping a deadly outbreak. The i...

If Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon were a person, it would be that eccentric uncle who insists he once met a genie “for real.” This 1988 Arabian-fantasy adventure m...