Dear Abandonia visitors: Help us keep Abandonia free with a small donation. Abandonia is like an old gaming arcade with only original games. Abandonia helps you have fun four hours and years. If Abandonia is useful to you, please help us forget fundraising and get back to Abandonia.


When Abandonia was founded it was to collect and present all old games where the copyright protection had been abandoned, hence the term ’abandonware’ and the site name Abandonia.com. We are still keeping the site open and free and will appreciate your support to help it stay that way.

‐ Thank you from the Abandonia Team

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Abandonia Story

Submitted by Dave on 21. March 2009 - 13:06.
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10 Years... Floating In the Abandoned Space

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The sun shimmers brightly in the blue sky and the green leaves are dancing in the summer heat (Okay, I bet it's snowing now in New Zealand, but that's not the point). On this very day, 10 years ago, some guy from Croatia decided to share his passion for old games with the rest of civilization, and at the same time to give his mother, Ines, a unique birthday gift. Thus, Kosta laid the groundwork for what would later become the land of joy and sorrow, Abandonia.

Back in 1999, the concept of "abandonware" was in its infant stage, because until then the gaming industry itself was still too young to witness titles being forgotten and lost in the deep bowels of the past. Even though the term was and still is a bit vague, people formed large communities with the sole objective of preserving old games, without discrimination.

At the beginning, Abandonia was nothing special. A simple site hosted on a subdomain with a couple of games, which by today's standards couldn't even be considered abandoned. Among those were popular titles, such as LucasArts' classics, Doom 2 and Wolfenstein 3D. By the way, if you want to witness the original layout check this site, created by Kosta especially for these kinds of celebrations/events.

The thing is, the site didn't even survive a year before becoming inactive. Only after its revival did it get the corporate feel you're seeing now. And maybe you don't know this, but the biggest boulder for Abandonia's progress was carried on your shoulders, in other words the community. Only with your help we succeded to model the site into its current shape. Just recently you probably noticed we've reached the grand milestone of 100.000 registered users. It's a great achievement and it stands close to our game-related successes: we have 1000 games available for download and another 900 extras files. Not to mention the reviews and the screenshots.

The actual rise of Abandonia started on August 3rd, 2002, its second official birthday, when a new site was presented to the masses. Due to high activity going through Abandonia's official Guestbook, Kosta, following Titan's suggestion, opened a forum on October 8, 2003. The forum innauguration was a turning point in the site's history. The forum ensures a greater cohesion between all the members of the community and presents itself as a easy way to offer, request and discuss games. Forums were also the host of various contests. 5 Official Abandonia Giveaway Contests were organised during its 10 years of existence, the winner having received expensive prizes, such as one IPod Shuflle, two NDS Lite and several original game copies.

A large multinational team was formed later, reaching the point when the providing of multiple languages was discussed and implemented, but as you can see - not perfected. As volunteers, various members, often lead by the spirit of competition, translated a great number of reviews and newsposts. Sometimes full-fledged wars were started between the countries, fighting to reach the first a specific number of translations. Abandonia is currently partially translated into over 20 languages, including German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Romanian, Italian and others.

crewBy 2005, all the people who dedicated their valuable time to Abandonia and who are fondly remembered up until now, were already registered and actively working. The administration was periodically renewed with fresh hard-working volunteers: Titan, The Niles, Tom Henrik, Maikel, Braindead, Data, The Fifth Horseman, Reup, taikara, Luchsen, swiss, Dave and red_avatar. Currently we have only 5 active administrators: The Fifth Horseman, Luchsen, Dave, red_avatar and Titan, the last one being also the veteran, the last remnant from the original team.

2005 was a Golden Year for our site. Besides the creation of the Oldwarez list, managed by Tom Henrik, we were subject to different articles in media from all around the world. But the biggest achievement is the unveiling of Abandonia Reloaded, our sister site, on May 7. This fresh project focused exclusively on games categorised as freeware. Before its creation such games were hosted here and we didn't remove them because they're part of our beloved history.

The Kingdom of Abandonia had its inevitable share of pain and problems. In 2005 when the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) laid siege to our castle, we were forced to adopt a new set of rules regarding which games would be available for download. Games released by ESA members were put on hold till the end of the 15-year cycle after their release. A lot of patience was required also to manage the hosting of Abandonia. Due to our continuous growth in visitor numbers we changed servers multiple times during this period. We switched at least 10 servers.

To avoid wasting time on this neverending process, in 2006 a deal was concluded with Studentis in Sweden. This company acquired Abandonia and Reloaded and therefore is responsible for the site's hosting expenditures and fixing the bugs. This allows us to concentrate on what is really important on the abandonware scene: updating and adding games, maintaining the information up-to-date and offering a community-based support for all game titles, in general.

You probably noticed how I mentioned that our team is new and we're just starting to get the hang of things. Indeed, the greatest enemy that could block Abandonia's progress is indifference from the community. In 2007, after changing the site's layout a lot of bugs made the work and the updates difficult to accomplish. After Kosta and Tom Henrik left the site in order to realise their real-life dreams, some people started to leave Abandonia. Losing the upper pyramid affected considerably the land of Abandonia: the "daily updates" tradition was temporarily down.

But those days are gone! After some major reorganisation we've gathered a new team of updaters and moderators. We're actively seeking to fix the biggest problems which stand in our way. We revived the "one update per day" policy and sparked the interest in people's eyes.

In July 2010 Abandonia was acquired by Abovo in Sweden and the Abovo team is supporting the crew with regular support and updates around the site. In June 2019 Abandonia turned 20 years.

Abandonia Awards

DaFastLane Award: Best Community
DaFastLane Award: Best Designed Site
DaFastLane Award: Best Review/Download Site
DaFastLane Award: Most Active Scener, Kosta
DaFastLane Award: Most Dedicated Webmaster, Kosta
DaFastLane Award: Most Helpful Scener, Tom Henrik
EchoRing Award: Best New Site Oct 2003
EchoRing Award: Most Dedicated Oct 2003
Gamer.HR Award: Game Site 2005
EchoRing Award: Most Updated Nov 2003

  • 21 Jun 1999 - Abandonia is founded
  • 3 Aug 2002 - New Site
  • 16 Jan 2003 - Utility Section
  • 2 Oct 2003 - First Award From Echo Ring
  • 8 Oct 2003 - Innauguration of the First Forum
  • 19 Oct 2003 - News Archives are created
  • 24 Oct 2003 - Implementation of the Compatibility Icons Feature
  • 11 Nov 2003 - Opening of the Music Section with Lord Titan in charge
  • 18 Jan 2004 - Abandonia voted the best design on the Abandonware scene
  • 4 Feb 2004 - New genre - RPG, mika in charge
  • 19 May 2004 - Tom Henrik joined the crew
  • 24 Jun 2004 - VIP Section is up
  • 26 Aug 2004 - New site layout
  • 6 Sep 2004 - 200 Games. Added Arcade genre
  • 21 Sep 2004 - New Genre - Puzzle
  • 28 Sep 2004 - New Genre - Interactive Fiction (text-based)
  • 24 Oct 2004 - Maikel's Introductory NewsPost
  • 28 Oct 2004 - Record of 16.000 visitors per day.
  • 6 Nov 2004 - A quiz-based contest with The Niles' Fallout copy as a prize
  • 30 Nov 2004 - Record of 45.000 visitors per day
  • 4 Feb 2005 - "Outcast" Big Prize Giveaway
  • 7 May 2005 - Unveiling of Abandonia Reloaded, in production since january
  • 25 May 2005 - 500 Games
  • 2 Jul 2005 - First Oldwarez List
  • 9 Jul 2005 - Third Abandonia Prize Giveaway
  • 13 Nov 2005 - First International Abandonia Meeting
  • 31 Nov 2005 - 1000 songs in Music Section
  • 23 Feb 2006 - Abandonia Shop opened in collaboration with LowRez Retroshirts
  • 4 May 2006 - AB Contest Nr. 3 (2 AB store items and Batman Forever CD)
  • 23 May 2006 - 800 Games
  • 29 Sep 2006 - 4th Official AB Contest (IPod Shuffle, 4 Sierra Collector's Items)
  • 21 Jun 2007 - Bioforge becomes the 1000th game on Abandonia
  • 10-19 Oct 2007 - Site template change. Migration to Drupal.
  • 19 Feb 2008 - Abandonia Competition Nr. 5 (Two NDS Lite bundled with Zelda)
  • 22 Aug 2008 - X-COM Online Tournament (Organized by Dave)
  • 12 Apr 2009 - Closure of the Crypt genre
  • 2 May 2009 - Warlords becomes the 1000th downloadable game
  • 13 May 2009 - The first issue of Abandoned Times, our magazine, is released.
  • 23 June 2009 - Implementing the AB Network concept (Twitter, Youtube, Facebook etc.)
  • 23 June 2009 - Abandonia Competition Nr. 6 - The Big Bag of Booty (organized by red avatar)
  • 30 June 2009 - ISO Cellar is open for everyone
  • 1 January 2010 - Happy new year AB! Big update of unprotected games.
  • 21 June 2010 - 11 years of Abandonia celebration.
  • 10 June 2010 - New Arena forum section - Mêlée Island
  • 24 November 2010 - Our Magazine is readable online.
  • 25 Dec 2010 - XMas MMO Revival: The ImagiNation Network.
  • 21 June 2011 - Abandonia Birthday Contest! by Lulu_Jane (GoG prizes!)
  • 20 Jul 2011 - HOTU Gamebooks Archive on Abandonia!

Top 10 Reviewers

  • Sebatianos Slovenia 243 Reviews
  • Kosta Croatia 99 Reviews
  • Tom Henrik Norway 95 Reviews
  • marko river Serbia 55 Reviews
  • bruno Portugal 30 Reviews
  • Taskmaster USA 27 Reviews
  • swiss Germany 25 Reviews
  • Reup Netherlands 22 Reviews
  • Kon-Tiki Belgium 21 Reviews
  • Fawfulhasfury USA 19 Reviews

Top 10 Extras Providers

  • Geezer USA 578 Extras
  • Ermuli Finland 334 Extras
  • Chris Germany 195 Extras
  • Nightkin Germany 98 Extras
  • Frodo Scotland 95 Extras
  • Sebatianos Slovenia 93 Extras
  • red_avatar Belgium 92 Extras
  • Dragom Portugal 86 Extras
  • Luchsen Germany 76 Extras
  • Paco Switzerland 66 Extras

Top 10 Uploaders

  • Sebatianos Slovenia 237 Archives
  • Kosta Croatia 117 Archives
  • Tom Henrik Norway 100 Archives
  • marko river Serbia 55 Archives
  • The Fifth Horseman Poland 33 Archives
  • Kon-Tiki Belgium 31 Archives
  • Taskmaster USA 27 Archives
  • Chris Germany 24 Archives
  • swiss Germany 23 Archives
  • Luchsen Germany 22 Archives

Top 10 Translators

  • Scarface Colombia 729 Translations
  • Sebatianos Slovenia 677 Translations
  • Shrek Portugal 452 Translations
  • Tom Henrik Norway 250 Translations
  • Luchsen Germany 231 Translations
  • Dino Croatia 215 Translations
  • bruno Portugal 208 Translations
  • Luso Portugal 186 Translations
  • Strobe Germany 161 Translations
  • Reup Netherlands 136 Translations

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