abandonware games sorted by popularity

Ah, Chessmaster 3000. The title alone sounds like it should have lasers and robot arms, but what you get is a thoughtful, elegant chess sim that finally brings charisma to the game...

A murder has been committed on a luxury yacht, and in Cruise for a Corpse, you’re the detective tasked with unraveling the mystery before the killer strikes again. The game u...

Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999, Windows XP) is the kind of game that leans across the table and says, “What if we mashed every genre together and asked David Bowie to help?&rd...

Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor (1997, Windows XP) took the RTS formula and flipped it into a weird deathmatch where you control a single unit and try not to die... horribly. ...

Gobliiins is a peculiar adventure game designed by Pierre Gilhodes, developed by French company Coktel Vision and released by Sierra On-Line in 1991 for DOS, Mac, Amiga and Atari S...

The Smurfs is a bright and cheerful platformer that brings the tiny blue heroes to life in a world full of mushrooms, forests, and cartoon danger. You run, jump, and bounce your wa...

Might and Magic 3: Isles of Terra is where the series starts to feel confident, like a dungeon master who has finally figured out how cruel they can be before players revolt. The l...

Escape from Hell asks the important question: what if escaping the underworld were less Dante and more sarcastic road trip? You descend into a demon-infested landscape armed with d...

Incursion is a modern love letter to classic tactical RPGs, clearly inspired by tabletop rulesets and games like early Fallout. It throws you into a turn-based world where position...

King's Quest 3: To Heir is Human is a fantasy adventure game designed by Roberta Williams, developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1986 for DOS and for other platforms su...

Conquests of the Longbow turns Robin Hood into less of a carefree swashbuckler and more of a medieval problem solver with a never-ending to-do list. Sure, you’ll shoot arrows...

Imagine Doom got abducted by aliens, experimented on, and sent back to Earth with a case of amnesia. That’s Alien Cabal (1997). It’s a weird mix of FPS action and X-Fil...

A text adventure with just enough graphics to remind you what year it is, The Pawn (1986, DOS) wraps you in a fantasy world where the puzzles are clever and the parser occasionally...

Football Manager 3 (1993, DOS) trades grass stains for spreadsheets and proves that tension can thrive in numbers. You’re not scoring goals; you’re negotiating contract...

The Settlers II: Veni, Vidi, Vici takes everything that worked in the original and polishes it until it shines like a freshly forged sword. The graphics are warmer, the maps are bi...

Executive Suite puts you in the shoes of a corporate leader and asks you to juggle ambition, ethics, and profit, usually with conflicting results. It’s a business simulation ...

Hugo III: Jungle of Doom is a point-and-click adventure game released in 1992. It is the third game in the Hugo adventure series, developed by David P. Gray for MS-DOS. Hugo a...

Empire II: The Art of War is strategy without small talk. It improves on its predecessor by refining mechanics and deepening tactical options, making every decision feel heavier an...

Solomon’s Key is an arcade puzzle-platformer developed by Tecmo and released in 1986. It gained popularity for its challenging gameplay and was later ported to various home s...

MicroLeague Wrestling is an abandoned wrestling action game based on the WWF league, developed by MicroLeague Multimedia and released in 1989 for DOS. MicroLeague Wrestling was als...

Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan is a computer RPG released in 1990 for MS-DOS and PC-98 platforms. It is based on the tabletop role-playing game Tunnels & Trolls crea...