abandonware games sorted by popularity

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...

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...

Released in 1988, BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception is part RPG, part strategy, part “did I just die in the tutorial again?” You’re a young MechWarrior on...

Before NBA 2K made your thumbs cry, there was One-on-One Basketball. You get to control either Larry Bird or Julius Erving in a thrilling display of 80s pixelated hoop dreams. The ...

Alcatraz (1992) asks the question: what if Rambo got locked in prison and had to bust out while flexing dramatically the entire time? This top-down action game puts you in the very...

Dig Dug is a classic maze arcade action game that was first released by Namco in 1982 as a coin-op and later for a number of other systems. The gameplay of Dig Dug involves digging...

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 ...

If you like your justice loud and messy, Crime Wave delivers. It’s a side-scrolling shooter set in a dystopian future where the only way to keep order is with a hail of bulle...

Maniac Mansion Deluxe is the unofficial sequel to the acclaimed point & click adventure game released by LucasFilm in 1987. Maniac Mansion Deluxe it's a fan-made adventure deve...

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...

PGA Tour Golf is an abandoned golf game - the first in the PGA Tour series - designed by Lee Actor and Dennis Koble, developed by Sterling Silver Software and released by Electroni...

Released in 1989 for DOS, Poker Relay (also known as 9 Poker) is less a glamorous casino sim and more a smoky backroom full of pixelated cards and questionable programming. You get...

Laser Squad is an abandoned turn-based strategy/tactical game designed by Julian Gollop (the mind behind the X-COM series). Laser Squad was developed by Target Games Limited and re...

Captain Blood is a space exploration video game released in 1988. It was developed by the French company ERE Informatique, and it was designed by Philippe Ulrich and Didier Bouchon...

She’s pink, she’s fast, and she’s got a bow. CHAMP Ms. Pac-man reimagines the iconic maze-chaser with smooth controls and new levels while keeping that glorious m...

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...

Step into feudal Japan with Bushido, a game that tries to simulate samurai life on a machine barely capable of rendering a convincing circle. Still, there’s something charmin...

Exterminator, released in 1990, is one of those games that knows exactly what it wants to do and wastes no time doing it. You’re thrown into a top-down action scenario with a...

Conquests of the Longbow turns Robin Hood into less of a carefree swashbuckler and more of a medieval problem solver with a never-ending to-do list. Sure, you’ll shoot arrows...