About Us
The video game museum
OldGamesDownload was launched in 2017 to archive video games no longer available for purchase or download. These games hold sentimental value for millions of people worldwide. We believe it is not right to let these games fade into history and be lost forever.
Gaming is an important yet often underrepresented part of human history, and through this project, we humbly hope to help preserve its timeline and progression. On our website, you will find a small piece of that vast history in original game files, patches, translations, scanned manuals, readmes, and official artwork.
We maintain a list of "lost" video games which are abandoned by their publishers, and do not exist anywhere in digital format. These are games that, unless archived, risk being lost forever.
Mission statement: creating a community-driven database of abandoned video games to be preserved for future generations.
A note about copyright
The project only archives video games classified as abandonware. A game is considered abandonware when the developers, publishers or rights holders are no longer selling or in any way supporting it. In such cases, players have no legitimate means to buy or play the game again.
We do not want to infringe anyone’s copyright, and that is not the purpose of this project — only to keep the history of video games alive for future generations.
We respect all rights holders’ requests to remove games from our database, as well as all legitimate DMCA requests. These can be sent via our contact page.
For more information about copyright, see our FAQs.
Credits
OldGamesDownload is by no means alone in the world of video game preservation. We owe many thanks to other websites, projects and individuals who have made this project a reality:
- MobyGames, one of the largest catalogue of video game information, covers and screenshots.
- The Internet Archive, which provides a protected space for user-uploaded files.
- MyAbandonware, preserving games, patches and manuals across many platforms.
- Vimm’s Lair, a database of original ROMs and manuals.
- Macintosh Garden, a database of abandoned Mac games.
- And everyone who has donated game files directly to the project — thank you.