abandonware games sorted by popularity

Captain Dynamo is what happens when a circus acrobat chugs ten cans of cola and decides to take on gravity itself. You’re bouncing, flipping, and springing through traps and ...

City of Lost Children is as beautiful as it is bewildering. Based on the surreal 1995 film, this adventure game drops you into a dark, oily dystopia filled with creepy orphans, biz...

By 1992, The Magic Candle 3 refined everything the series had built — a deep fantasy world, intricate character management, and enough side quests to last you until retiremen...

Take the tactical seriousness of Championship Manager and sprinkle on some espresso. Championship Manager Italia gives you control over Italy’s finest (and most temperamental...

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...

Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness takes the series into a much darker setting, sending the hero to the ominous land of Mordavia. Released in 1993, the game blends role-playing...

War never changes—but it does get oddly cute in Cannon Fodder. Guide your tiny commandos through missions filled with explosions, carnage, and dark humor. The game mixes arca...

Pango is a 1983 maze-action game that belongs to the golden age of simple concepts executed with remarkable confidence. Players navigate enclosed levels while avoiding enemies and ...

High Seas Trader offers a blend of trading and exploration that feels both relaxing and quietly strategic. You navigate the seas, making deals and managing resources, all while try...

If Frontier: Elite 2 opened the door to a vast universe, Frontier: First Encounters in 1995 basically kicked it wide open and invited you to wander in. This sequel expands the form...

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...

Super Hang-On is an abandoned motorcycle arcade racing game, developed by Sega, designed by Yu Suzuki and published by Data East for DOS in 1988 (the arcade was released in 1987). ...

In 1989, Deathtrack tried to answer a question nobody asked: “What if NASCAR had machine guns?” The result is a futuristic racer where speed and firepower go hand in ha...

Planetfall is a 1983 interactive fiction adventure created by Infocom that combines science fiction, humor, and clever writing into a memorable journey. Players explore an abandone...

The trilogy concludes in Master Cain, where Snake Logan faces the ultimate evil: a villain with a name that sounds like a Bond bad guy and a plan straight from Saturday morning car...

In this 1990 point-and-click adventure, you find yourself in Las Vegas with no memory of how you got there. Solve puzzles, gather clues, and uncover the mystery behind your amnesia...

Heimdall 2: Into the Hall of Worlds expands on the original with more content and a broader scope, as if the developers decided one world was simply not enough. The gameplay remain...

MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1990. The Zhodani Conspiracy is the first installment in the MegaTraveller ser...

NetHack is one of the great survivors of computer gaming, a 1987 roguelike that has been challenging players for decades with randomly generated dungeons, brutal enemies, complex s...

Shadowgate (1988, DOS/Windows 3.x/Mac) is a point-and-click adventure that politely invites you into a castle and then gleefully kills you for touching the wrong thing. Armed with ...

Ragnarok is a 1993 fantasy role-playing game that combines exploration, combat, character development, and Norse mythology into a substantial adventure. Players guide their charact...

Released in 2004, Lords of the Realm III is an interesting, sometimes controversial attempt to modernize a beloved strategy franchise. The move to full 3D and a more streamlined ap...

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York expands the formula by giving you a larger playground and more opportunities to cause cartoonish chaos. Released in 1992, it follows a similar struct...

If holiday cheer could be bottled into pixels, HappyLand Adventures: X-mas Edition would probably come with a candy cane aftertaste and a mild sugar rush. This cheerful platformer ...

Nobunaga's Ambition is a 1988 strategy game set during Japan’s turbulent Sengoku period, when political alliances were fragile, rival clans were everywhere, and peaceful retireme...

Welcome to Z, the real-time strategy game where psychotic robots with British accents duke it out over territory in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Think Command & Conquer if the...

Operation: Inner Space is a 1994 Windows 3.x game that takes players on a strange journey through the microscopic world inside the human body. Rather than exploring distant planets...