abandonware games sorted by popularity

A text/graphic adventure from 1986 for DOS and Mac, Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy is the precursor to Kobayashi Alternative but far more playable. You explore alien worlds, so...

Templars, assassins, and a clueless American tourist named George. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a 2D point-and-click masterpiece with more intrigue than a Vatican ba...

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 ...

Midtown Madness is a car racing game developed by Angel Studios (later known as Rockstar San Diego) and released by Microsoft in 1999 for Windows. Midtown Madness is know...

The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a first-person shooter with stealth gameplay elements, developed by Monolith Productions and released by Fox Interactive in 2000 for Windows,...

Before there was Baldur’s Gate or Skyrim, there was DND. This 1984 DOS dungeon crawler is as old-school as it gets, complete with ASCII graphics, endless hallways, and monste...

Drakkhen (1989) was weird—wonderfully, gloriously weird. A 3D RPG before 3D was really ready, it let you roam a strange fantasy world full of surreal landscapes, bizarre enem...

By 1994, digging had evolved from arcade twitch action to full-on economic warfare. Diggers on DOS turned mining into a cutthroat competition between quirky alien races, each with ...

Rendezvous with Rama is an interactive fiction (text adventure) game released in 1984. Telarium, a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software, was known for producing narrative-driven games ...

Lost Dutchman Mine (1989, DOS) is what happens when you mix an old western, an adventure game, and a survival simulator — and somehow it works. You’re a prospector with...

If Barbie was mildly passive in her 1992 debut, Barbie Super Model (1993) puts her on the runway—literally. You’ll practice walking, dodging obstacles, and matching out...

Strap in and crawl through the mud - Airborne Ranger (1988) is here to chew bubblegum and infiltrate enemy lines. And it's all out of bubblegum. This tactical action game lets you ...

Monopoly Deluxe is an abandoned turn-based top-down Monopoly adaptation  of the classic board game, developed by Parker Brothers and released by Virgin Interactive in 1992. Mo...

Darius Gaiden is a visually stunning side-scrolling shooter where every boss is a giant, weaponized sea creature from a neon-soaked fever dream. You’ll pilot your ship throug...

Part RTS, part simulation, Carrier Command was ahead of its time in the same way that an aircraft carrier is ahead of a canoe. You control a futuristic warship, launch aircraft and...

Baldur's Gate a fantasy RPG set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe which is regarded as the RPG that brought new life in a dying genre in the late 90s. Baldur's Gate was d...

Hardball 4 arrives with the kind of confidence that suggests it has been paying attention to feedback, and it shows. The game offers more options, better visuals, and a deeper sens...

You thought the first one was hard? Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty laughs at your pain and then asks you to infiltrate a Gestapo HQ with a knife and a prayer. This standalone e...

Emperor of the Fading Suns is a grand strategy game that looks at you and assumes you’ve cleared your schedule. Politics, religion, warfare, economics—it’s all he...

Flashback: The Quest for Identity feels like a playable sci-fi movie that misplaced its budget but kept its ambition. You wake up with amnesia, which is gaming shorthand for &ldquo...

Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in The Spinal Frontier is the most ambitious—and arguably strangest—entry in the series. Released in 1995, it blends traditional adventure ga...

Super Mario Fusion: Revival is a freeware fan-made game project that aims to combine elements from various classic video games, primarily the Super Mario series and the Sonic ...

Space Hulk is an abandoned real-time tactical strategy game set in the Warhammer  40000 universe, developed and released by Electronic Arts in 1993 for DOS and Amiga systems. ...