abandonware games sorted by popularity

Ken's Labyrinth throws players into twisting mazes packed with monsters, hidden rooms, colorful textures, and enough secret passages to keep even the most determined explorer suspi...

Aka Starglider 2 with an attitude, Revenge of Defender (or Defender of the Crown’s evil twin in name only) is a 3D space shooter where your main enemy is not the aliens&mdash...

Lexi-Cross, released in 1991, transforms crossword puzzles into an engaging computer experience that rewards vocabulary, observation, and patience. Rather than relying on fast refl...

Merchant Prince invites players to build a commercial empire across the Renaissance world, combining trading, diplomacy, politics, and occasional military force. Managing cities an...

Imagine if Tetris, Columns, and a pack of highlighters had a baby. That’s Zoop. You’re in the center of the screen, and colorful shapes are marching toward you from all...

If Doom was the apocalypse, Doom II: Hell on Earth was the encore nobody asked for but everyone wanted. Released in 1994, it doubled down on everything: bigger maps, nastier monste...

Sword of Honour is an action-oriented medieval adventure that mixes swordplay, exploration, and dangerous encounters into a compact old-school package. Released in 1993, it sends t...

Conflict is a turn-based war game where you get to play Commander-in-Chief and yell at your virtual generals when things go wrong (which they often do). It's part military sim, par...

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...

Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is a turn-based strategy video game set in the Star Trek universe. The game was developed by MicroProse Software and published by Infogrames for ...

Wall Street Raider is less a game about buying a nice office and more an uncompromising simulation of corporate warfare. Released in 1986, it puts you in the role of an ambitious i...

Nobunaga's Ambition 2 expands on the historical strategy formula of its predecessor, once again placing players in the turbulent world of feudal Japan. Released in 1989, the game c...

Hotshot is an arcade-style action game designed around quick reactions and straightforward challenges. The premise is simple enough to understand almost immediately, but succeeding...

Math Cad 2.5 is a mathematical computing package from an era when serious technical calculations were increasingly moving from paper and calculators onto personal computers. It pro...

Exile: Escape from the Pit, released in 1995, is where the whole strange, subterranean saga begins. You’re exiled—literally—thrown into an underground world and t...

Nectaris is a 1995 turn-based strategy game built around military operations, tactical movement, and the timeless pleasure of watching a carefully planned attack succeed. Players c...

WWF Wrestlemania brings the spectacle of professional wrestling to the computer, offering matches built around the stars and larger-than-life personalities of the early WWF era. Ra...

Doofus (1994) is what happens when platformers go slightly off the rails. You guide a floppy-haired kid through surreal, cartoony landscapes filled with hazards that feel more anno...

Shard of Spring (1987, DOS) is a role-playing adventure from an era when mapping dungeons on graph paper was practically mandatory. You assemble a party and set out on a quest fill...

Starcross is a 1982 science-fiction text adventure from Infocom that places the player aboard a mysterious spacecraft with an intriguing and potentially dangerous problem to solve....

Strategy fans with a taste for sci-fi and logistics will find something special in Full Metal Planete. Released in 1990 for DOS and Mac, the game is essentially a futuristic board ...

Tyrian 2000 is what happens when a classic shoot ’em up decides to go all in and then some. Released in 1999, it delivers relentless action, an absurd variety of weapons, and mor...

Archery (1985) is what happens when someone says, “Hey, what if we made a bow-and-arrow game with the graphical fidelity of a cave painting?” You shoot arrows. That&rsq...

Might and Magic: World of Xeen is what happens when two already massive RPGs decide to shake hands and merge into one enormous adventure. By combining Clouds of Xeen and Darkside o...

The Incredible Machine turns ordinary household objects into the components of gloriously complicated machines. The objective sounds simple enough: complete a particular task, usua...

The Amazon Trail is an educational adventure that sends you down the Amazon River with considerably less certainty about what you are doing than the title might suggest. Released i...

Guilty from 1995 is a moody point-and-click adventure that seems to have majored in brooding. You step into a murder investigation drenched in rain-soaked atmosphere and existentia...

Corridor 7 is a claustrophobic FPS where every hallway feels like a trap and every door could hide something with too many teeth. You’re humanity’s last line of defense...

Based on the blockbuster film, Last Action Hero arrived on DOS in 1993 with all the over-the-top action one would expect from a movie starring an unstoppable cinematic hero. Player...

Norton Commander 3 is one of the classic DOS file managers, and for many users it was the program that finally made dealing with files feel civilized. Its famous two-panel interfac...