abandonware games sorted by popularity

Ah yes, Blood (1997)—the cheerful little game where you rise from the grave, wield a pitchfork, and quote evil-sounding movie lines while setting cultists on fire. It’s...

In 1998, Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War decided the world needed fewer corridors and more cosmic dogfights. Instead of bumping into walls like a drunken astronaut, you&rs...

War in Middle-earth is a real-time strategy game developed by Synergistic Software and published by Melbourne House. It was released in 1988 for various platforms including the Com...

You are Sherlock Holmes, and someone has committed a crime, possibly because they couldn’t handle the game’s UI. 221B Baker Street is a detective board game where your ...

Artura is a hack-and-slash side-scroller that looks like someone tried to draw Gauntlet from memory after a power outage. You’re some kind of Celtic warrior on a mystical mis...

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...

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...

BloodNet combines vampires, cyberspace, and noir in a cocktail so strange it probably shouldn’t work but somehow does. You are a hacker who just got bitten by a vampire and n...

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...

Knight Orc (1987, DOS/Mac) flips the fantasy script: you’re not the hero, you’re the orc. Tired of being slaughtered by noble knights, you decide it’s payback tim...

Conan: The Cimmerian lets you brawl your way through the Hyborian Age like a shirtless rage machine with a sword and questionable dialogue. It’s got all the ingredients: dark...

Panger General is a turn based strategy wargame developed by SSI set in World War 2. The player can choose Axis or Allies and fight against the AI or another human player in more t...

Aleshar: World of Ice is what happens when someone says, “Let’s make an RPG, but crank the realism to 11.” Set in a cold, brutal land where your sword arm is only...

The Terminator: Future Shock is an abandoned science fiction first-person shooter game based on the popular Terminator movies franchise, set in a dystopian world where machines has...

Grand Prix Circuit is a fascinating early attempt at turning real-world racing into something playable without requiring a steering wheel the size of your desk. In Grand Prix Circu...

Before Diablo made clicking on dungeons cool, DarkSpyre was already throwing players into labyrinths filled with monsters and puzzles. Released in 1990, it combines hack-and-slash ...

In Ack-Ack Attack! (1995, DOS), you operate an anti-aircraft gun and do your best to shoot down waves of enemy planes with what appears to be a potato cannon. The game is loud, fra...

If text adventures are your thing, Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative (1985, DOS) will either delight or destroy you. You type commands to guide Kirk and crew through a no-win sc...

Dungeon Keeper 2 took everything its predecessor did and gave it a demonic polish. Slicker graphics, full 3D environments, and imps that finally looked like they deserved a raise. ...

_Jill of the Jungle 2: Jill Goes Underground_ expands on the successful formula established by its predecessor. Released in 1992, it sends Jill into subterranean environments packe...