abandonware games sorted by popularity

In Crusader: No Regret, subtlety is left at the door. You’re a heavily armed operative on a mission to blast your way through enemy installations, leaving nothing but rubble in your wake. The action is fast, the explosions f...

Released in 1986, Desert Rats is a strategy game that puts you in charge of the North African campaign of World War II. Don’t let the cute title fool you—there are no actual rodents wearing goggles, just tanks, supply ...

With a name that sounds like an interstellar pirate greeting, Spaceward Ho! is actually a strategic space colonization game, not an intergalactic dating sim. It's got a simple interface, a surprisingly deep economy, and enough "ju...

Columbus Discovery (1992, DOS) is a history-flavored point-and-click adventure where you, as a pixelated Christopher Columbus, set sail to "discover" lands that are already very much discovered. Expect slow pacing, earnest educati...

In Corporate Raider: The Pirate of Wall Street, you’re not sailing the high seas—you’re sinking companies from the comfort of an office chair. This business simulation turns hostile takeovers into an art form, wi...

Finally, a game where you don’t blast aliens—you launch real people into space, with all the white-knuckled tension of 1960s NASA. Buzz Aldrin’s Race into Space is a strategy sim with rocket science and Cold War ...

If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to run a railway empire without getting coal dust all over your clothes, Railroad Tycoon is the place to start. This 1990 classic hands you a map, a budget, and a dream—then p...

MicroLeague Wrestling is an abandoned wrestling action game based on the WWF league, developed by MicroLeague Multimedia and released in 1989 for DOS. MicroLeague Wrestling was also published for Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64.

Frederik Pohl's Gateway is one of the best abandoned adventures games from Legend Entertainment. Gateway is an interactive fiction with graphics and an improved interface (unusual for IFs), based on the Frederik Pohl's novel ...

In 1987, Driller arrived as a revolutionary 3D game that looked light-years ahead of its time. Using the Freescape engine, it let players explore a fully 3D world—on a DOS machine, no less. The premise: drill into a planet&r...

Police Quest 2: The Vengeance is a graphical point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was released in 1988 as the second installment in the Police Quest series, which was created by former ...

Gauntlet 2 is proof that sequels sometimes mean “more of the same, but louder.” The 1989 upgrade takes the chaotic dungeons of the original and adds new enemies, nastier traps, and more opportunities to yell at your fr...

Dominus (1994) is what happens when a tower defense game and an RPG get thrown into a medieval blender. You’re tasked with defending your castle from wave after wave of enemies, but instead of just building towers, you direc...

Domino’s Pizza once had a mascot called the Noid and someone decided he deserved his own video game. Avoid the Noid is about a heroic pizza delivery guy trying to bring food to hungry customers while the Noid, a chaotic grem...

ATAC (1992) is what you get when someone says, “What if we made SimCity, but for waging the War on Drugs?” You play as the head of an anti-narcotics task force, deploying units, tracking smugglers, and launching airstr...

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 time. This text adventure with occasional graphics oo...