abandonware games sorted by popularity

Elite Plus takes everything intimidating about Elite and polishes it just enough to feel slightly less hostile. The visuals are improved, the interface smoother, but the soul remai...

D-Zone is what you’d get if someone blended city-building with military strategy and sprinkled in a dash of chaos. You’re tasked with running a base while fending off a...

Midwinter creates a remarkable open-world survival adventure set across a vast frozen island, combining exploration, combat, strategy, and resource management. Players must recruit...

Part Cold War thriller, part adventure game, part submarine simulator, Code-Name: Iceman is a Sierra title that demands patience, precision, and a deep respect for diplomacy and to...

The Manhole: CD-ROM Masterpiece Edition (1994, Windows/Mac) is the kind of game that makes you feel like you’ve fallen into a dream. Created by the same minds behind Myst, it...

Ever dreamt of running ancient Rome without the toga chafing? Caesar hands you the reins of a budding province and expects you to not burn it to the ground—ideally. This city...

Sports management usually involves tactics, budgets, and serious planning. M.U.D.S. - Mean Ugly Dirty Sport decides those are merely optional suggestions. This delightfully outrage...

Journey: The Quest Begins is an ambitious role-playing adventure from 1989 that mixes exploration, character development, and fantasy storytelling. Players travel through a world f...

Imagine X-COM but with fewer excuses to blame the developers when you miss a 95% chance shot—because in UFO 2000 (2004), the chaos was entirely player-driven. A free, open-so...

The 1990 adaptation of Tim Burton’s Batman hit DOS screens with a moody mix of driving, platforming, and side-scrolling bat-beatdowns. Batman: The Movie swings between genres...

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...

Westphaser is a fast-paced arcade shooter built around the familiar idea that a small spacecraft can somehow be expected to save the universe before lunch. The action takes place o...

No Exit is a 1990 fighting game with a title that sounds like a warning, which is probably appropriate because the player is about to enter a series of increasingly violent battles...

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans is where Blizzard’s legendary fantasy saga began. This real-time strategy classic pits humans against orcs in a battle for control of a war-torn wor...

William Shatner's TekWar takes the futuristic crime world of the TekWar novels and turns it into a first-person shooter filled with gunfights, technology, and suspiciously dangerou...

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...

Cannon Fodder 2 continues the gleefully irreverent military mayhem of its predecessor, sending tiny soldiers into missions where survival is never guaranteed and common sense is ap...

Guardians of Infinity: to Save Kennedy is the sort of time-travel adventure that casually suggests you might want to prevent one of the most infamous assassinations in history befo...

Pinball Dreams is a 1993 digital pinball simulation that brought the excitement of arcade machines into the home computer era with impressive physics and colorful tables. Players l...

The Sentinel is one of those games that seems simple for about five minutes, right up until you realize the entire landscape is part of the puzzle. You control a Synthoid moving ac...

Before Football Manager consumed the souls of soccer nerds everywhere, there was Club Football: The Manager. It’s all spreadsheets, transfers, and managing egos with egos. Th...

DX-Ball 2 is a popular brick-breaking game that was first released in 1998 by Longbow Digital Arts. It serves as a sequel to the original DX-Ball, which was inspired by the classic...

God of Thunder is a classic computer game developed by Adept Software and released in 1993. It's a puzzle platformer with a fantasy theme. In the game, you control Thor, the Norse ...

Released in 1988, BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception is part RPG, part strategy, part “did I just die in the tutorial again?” You’re a young MechWarrior on...

Bright, quirky, and just a little bit mischievous, Finders Keepers feels like it wandered in from another dimension where puzzles and platforming share equal custody of your patien...

Ever wondered what would happen if The Phantom of the Opera got his hands on a time machine, a vengeful streak, and a point-and-click interface? In Return of the Phantom, you step ...

Temple of Kroz blends puzzle-solving with arcade reflexes, creating a strange but compelling hybrid. You navigate traps, monsters, and bizarre hazards while collecting gems and try...

Dungeon Explorer takes the term “dungeon” very seriously—there’s a lot of it, and not much else. Released in 1990, this top-down adventure is part RPG, part...

PrintMaster is a program that allows users to create a variety of print projects, such as greeting cards, banners, brochures, and more. It provides users with tools and templates t...

Popeye 2 is a 1992 DOS action game based on the famous sailor character, bringing spinach-powered adventures to the computer screen. Players control Popeye through colorful levels ...