abandonware games sorted by popularity

Paperboy was one of (if not THE) arcade hit of 1985. It was developed by Atari for the arcades and later published by Mindscape for DOS in 1988. More conversion were made for quite...

In Curse of Enchantia, a young boy is whisked away to a magical world full of bizarre creatures, tricky puzzles, and an alarming number of ways to die. The game’s whimsical a...

Aquanoid (1992) takes the classic Breakout formula and throws it underwater, because bricks are apparently much more intimidating when they're wet. You control a paddle, you bounce...

In Ancients 1: Deathwatch, you gather your pixelated party and set off to cleanse a city of evil, or at least try not to get mugged by slimes. It's a dungeon crawler in classic DOS...

The sequel no one expected takes our trench-coated hero from gothic horror to gangster ghost story. Yes, Alone in the Dark 2 (1993, DOS) swaps Lovecraftian horror for Tommy guns an...

Bolo Ball is a DOS game from the mid-1990s. It features a physics-based gameplay where the objective is to knock opponent balls out of an arena. When you start the game, you find y...

Prehistorik 2 builds on the first game’s formula but smooths out the rough edges. The controls are tighter, the levels more inventive, and the humor dialed up a notch. Once 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...

This sequel takes the same D&D-in-space formula and tries to go bigger, bolder, and... okay, maybe just more complicated. Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed continues the galactic strug...

DOSBox is an open-source emulator that allows you to run software and games designed for the MS-DOS operating system on modern computers. As you probably already know, MS-DOS was a...

Released in 1986, James Bond 007: Goldfinger adapted one of the most beloved Bond stories into a text-heavy adventure experience. Rather than relying on fast reflexes, players must...

7 Colors is one of those puzzle games that sounds simple on paper but ends up consuming your entire afternoon before you even realize it. Released in 1991 for DOS, it throws you in...

Blade of Destiny is old-school RPGing at its most unapologetic. Based on the German tabletop system Das Schwarze Auge, it throws you into a world where character creation alone fee...

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...

In Archimedean Dynasty, humanity did the logical thing after wrecking the surface world: moved underwater and started shooting each other in submarines. It's part tactical sim, par...

Maniac Mansion is one of the most famous point-and-click adventure games developed by Lucasfilm Games, designed by Ron Gilbert (who later created Monkey Island) and Gary Winnick. T...

Zeliard is a fantasy platformer/RPG hybrid that has all the trappings of a classic quest: a brave knight, an evil demon, a princess in distress, and an unreasonable number of bats....

Might and Magic: World of Xeen is what happens when two already massive RPGs decide to shake hands and merge into one enormous adventure. By combining Clouds of Xeen and Darkside o...

Ultimate Soccer Manager 2 refines the original formula, adding more depth, more leagues, and a slightly more approachable interface. It still revolves around data, decisions, and d...

Not many people know that the first games created by Sid Meier were flight simulations. Solo Flight was published by MicroProse in 1983 for Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari, and a yea...

Aldo Again (1989) is the platformer that dares to say, “Hey, what if Donkey Kong but with 100% more confusion?” You play as Aldo, a mustachioed man of mystery (and ques...

Before its sequel, there was Dark Reign: The Future of War (1997), a forward-thinking RTS that introduced mechanics ahead of its time, like customizable AI scripts for units. The r...

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...

Might and Magic 7: For Blood and Honor marks the series’ leap into full 3D exploration, and the result feels like stepping from a dusty library of spellbooks into a bustling ...

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...

Armored Fist is all about tanks. Big, heavy, no-nonsense tanks. It's essentially a driving sim for people who think speed is overrated and armor is fashion. Missions involve slow, ...

Take to the skies in Dawn Patrol (1994), a flight sim that remembers when aerial combat meant fabric wings and machine guns bolted onto wooden planes. Set in World War I, it’...