abandonware games sorted by popularity

If Shakespeare wrote video games and then decided, “You know what this needs? A parser and some pixelated drama,” you'd get Avon. In this interactive fiction gem from 1...

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...

Time travel stories tend to get complicated quickly, and Future Wars: Adventures in Time embraces that chaos with enthusiasm. Released in 1990, this cinematic adventure casts you a...

Tapper is what happens when someone gamifies bartending and gives you the reflexes of a caffeinated octopus. You’re a mustachioed bartender juggling multiple counters, pourin...

By the time Duke Nukem II rolled around, Duke had found his groove—and his ego. The gameplay is tighter, the explosions bigger, and the quips slightly more self-aware. It&rsq...

Little-known but oddly captivating, Kurtan (1990, DOS) feels like someone’s ambitious homebrew fantasy experiment gone right. You play a wandering warrior exploring a pixelat...

Released in 1988, Alien Fires 2199 AD looks and plays like someone tried to translate a fever dream into a sci-fi RPG. You control some dude with a chin of steel and a crew that se...

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...

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...

MechWarrior (1989) was one of the first games to put players inside a 3D cockpit of a giant mech, but it wasn’t just a combat game, it was also an open-ended mercenary RPG, w...

The Legend of Kyrandia: Hand of Fate is the second installment in the Legend of Kyrandia point and click adventure game series developed by Westwood Studios. It was released in 199...

Jane's Combat Simulations: Advanced Tactical Fighters arrived in 1996 and delivered the kind of detailed flight simulation that aviation enthusiasts love. Players take control of m...

With a title like Dogfight: 80 Years of Aerial Warfare, you know you’re in for a serious history lesson disguised as a game. Released in 1993, this DOS flight sim spans decad...

D-Day: The Beginning of the End is not your average “storm the beach” simulator—it’s a grand strategy title that drops you into the nerve-wracking planning ...

In Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail, you don’t just play King Arthur—you earn your role as the guy in charge of finding a cup with magical healing powers ...

Released in 1994, Lollypop stars an energetic young heroine armed with candy-themed determination as she jumps through vibrant platforming stages packed with enemies and hidden sec...

Expectations were understandably enormous for Master of Orion 3, a sequel to one of strategy gaming's most beloved series. The game introduces ambitious ideas, including highly aut...

Better known as Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior in some regions, Death Sword (1988) is remembered less for its deep gameplay and more for its infamous decapitation move. Swing your...

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...

Fleet Command invites you to command modern naval forces with the calm authority of someone who definitely read the manual. This is strategy on a grand scale: radar screens glowing...

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...

F-22 Lightning II brings the flight sim genre into the late ’90s with faster action, flashier visuals, and a jet that feels like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. The F...

Heart of the Maelstrom brings epic dungeon crawling to dizzying heights, challenging players with sprawling levels, fiendish enemies, and puzzles that seem to require a PhD in pati...

Apollo 18: Mission to the Moon (1987) lets you relive the lunar missions in all their... spreadsheet-like glory. This game is as educational as it is punishing; you’ll learn ...

Ascii Sector is what happens when someone takes Privateer, removes the graphics, and replaces them with pure ASCII and sheer willpower. It’s open-world space sim meets roguel...

Elegant in concept yet famously demanding in execution, Marble Madness asks players to guide a vulnerable marble through twisting obstacle courses filled with hazards determined to...

Pizza Tycoon is a 1994 business simulation that asks a very important question: can you build a pizza empire while dealing with competition, customers, and the occasional questiona...

In Ante-Up at The Friday Night Poker Club, you’re not saving the world or slaying dragons — you’re just trying to win a few bucks from a room full of poker-faced ...