abandonware games sorted by popularity

The Chessmaster 2000 brought serious computer chess to a huge audience while also making the rather bold suggestion that your humble home PC could become a terrifyingly patient opp...

Space Quest 2: Vohaul’s Revenge continues Roger Wilco’s improbable rise from janitor to cosmic trouble magnet. This 1987 sequel ups the stakes by kidnapping Roger and t...

If you ever wanted to pilot a hovering tank while yelling at a computer screen, Nova 9 has you covered. A sequel to Stellar 7, it puts you in the cockpit against Gir Draxon’s...

Taito’s Puzznic (1990) takes the idea of matching tiles and injects a surprising amount of strategy. You slide blocks to align pairs, but each move requires forethought&mdash...

In Amnesia, you wake up in a hotel room with no idea who you are, where you are, or why someone wants you dead. And no, this isn’t a gritty FPS—it’s a text advent...

Released in 1991, Lemmings introduced one of the most unforgettable puzzle concepts ever created. Players must guide an army of tiny green-haired creatures toward safety by assigni...

Silpheed is a 1988 DOS shoot-'em-up originally known for its impressive use of polygonal enemy designs and fast-paced space combat. Players pilot a futuristic fighter through a ser...

Loopz, released in 1990, is the kind of puzzle game that looks innocent for about five seconds before it starts humbling you. The concept is simple: connect the pieces, form loops,...

Shufflepuck Café is a 1989 DOS and Macintosh arcade game that takes air hockey into a wonderfully eccentric science-fiction setting. Instead of playing against ordinary humans in ...

This 1989 game is based on the animated movie where dogs die, go to heaven, then come back for revenge (sort of). The DOS adaptation? Well, it’s more like All Pixels Go Nowhe...

Bad Street Brawler is a beat 'em up video game developed by Beam Software and published by Mindscape. Originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1987 and later for other platforms...

Bright colors, imaginative worlds, and wonderfully smooth animation make Magic Pockets an overlooked platforming gem from the early 1990s. You guide a quirky hero armed with magica...

Street Sports Soccer (1988, DOS) trades professional pitches for empty lots, with goalposts made of bricks and wild kids chasing glory. It’s messy, fast, and surprisingly end...

Empire Earth asks a bold question: what if we took all of human history and turned it into one very long real-time strategy match? From cavemen to mech-wielding future armies, this...

Innocent Until Caught throws you into a sci-fi noir universe where your protagonist, a perpetually broke thief, stumbles from one disaster to the next with a mix of charm, sarcasm,...

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a grave-robbing dwarf with a flair for interior dungeon decoration? Cadaver grants that peculiar wish. As Karadoc, you’ll wander an eer...

Released in 1995, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is the cheerful little tale of humanity being tortured by an all-powerful AI for eternity. In other words, not exactly a feel-g...

SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony is a wonderfully eccentric 1991 simulation that lets players experience life from the perspective of an ant. Rather than building cities or managi...

World Games is a collection of unusual sporting events designed to prove that the Olympics did not have a monopoly on strange ways of hurting yourself. Instead of concentrating on ...

Manhunter 2: San Francisco continues the unsettling science fiction saga with another blend of investigation, puzzle solving, and dark storytelling. Once again humanity struggles b...

Think you're smart? Arcade Trivia Quiz (1993) is here to humble you with rapid-fire questions about pop culture, history, and whatever else the developers could fit on a floppy dis...

Beetlejuice: Skeletons in the Closet is a video game based on the popular Beetlejuice franchise, which includes a 1988 film directed by Tim Burton and an animated television series...

This one's not for the faint of heart. Conflict in Vietnam tries to simulate the complexity and chaos of guerrilla warfare in a game where every click can cost lives. The graphics ...

Night Mission Pinball is a 1982 pinball simulation that proves the basic appeal of pinball is remarkably difficult to ruin. The game recreates the essential ingredients of the real...

In Infidel, you play a not-so-noble adventurer whose moral compass is spinning like a broken ceiling fan. As a treasure-hungry explorer poking around an ancient Egyptian tomb, you ...

Released in 1987, Falcon is the kind of flight simulator that politely informs you, within minutes, that you are not nearly as smart as you thought. This isn’t an arcade joyr...

Westwood Studios decided to take a break from commanding and conquering to give us Nox, a fast-paced action RPG with more personality than it has any right to. You can play as a 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...

Hocus Pocus is the kind of platformer that seems to run on pure sugar and cheerful chaos. You play as a young wizard with more enthusiasm than common sense, bouncing through colorf...

Before open-world RPGs let you be anyone, Dusk of the Gods made you a literal Viking demigod with a bad temper and worse manners. Released in 1991, it blends Norse mythology with t...