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- 10 Best PC Games Of The 90s Ranked -
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In the past, running an older game on a newer PC was often seen as a Herculean task. Having to find the right system patches and download codes was a hassle for most, and simply not worth the effort for some. Thankfully, digital platforms like Steam have made it easier than ever to revisit some of the best retro PC games, giving gamers a new look at old favorites.
While each game was acclaimed and popular during its initial release, some have aged better than others. Still, these classic PC games all offer their own unique sense of nostalgia, especially if you played them growing up. With that in mind, check these 35 nostalgia-inducing titles and vote up all the best '90s PC games, and vote down all the games you'd rather forget about entirely.
That way, new gamers can see which classics to revisit next. It's pretty rare to find a game that practically invented a genre and is still fun as heck to play. Although Doom isn't actually the first FPS that honor probably goes to its predecessor, Wolfenstein 3D , it's the one that put everything together into a completely satisfying experience.
Ultima 1 , or Dune 2 arguably the first true 'RTS' , or the first King's Quest have their charms, but you have to make allowances for the time they were made to really enjoy them. Not Doom. You can just dive right in. The demons are out there. Are you tough enough to blow them away? You can get Doom on gog. The late s were arguably the golden age of the real-time strategy genre, and one of that age's pinnacles was this fantastic followup to 's Age of Empires.
The action moves from antiquity to the medieval era, and improved unit AI check out those sweet marching formations! Although the prevalence of early rush tactics means some matches end before anyone even builds a castle, other games can blossom into true empire-vs.
Some of the greatest RTS units of all time live here, from the deadly English Longbowman to the breathtakingly powerful trebuchet. Half-Life brought a new level of storytelling panache to the still-young FPS genre.
Instead of just dropping the player into monster-filled levels, Half-Life slowly introduced its situations with in-engine cutscenes, expository dialogue, and deliberate-yet-relentless pacing. You play Gordon Freeman, a mild-mannered nuclear physicist at the Black Mesa Research Facility who gets caught up in a teleportation experiment gone horribly awry. Before long, you're grappling with an invasion of hostile extraterrestrials - as well as soldiers whose job is to clean up the mess by eradicating anything that moves, friend or foe.
Overseeing the proceedings is a mysterious G-Man who bears a striking similarity to The X-Files 's Cigarette Smoking Man, and whose presence adds a frisson of government paranoia to the experience.
Half-Life's creative creature designs, superb enemy A. Its graphics are quite dated by now, but the gameplay remains superb - particularly the tense encounters with enemy grunts who will take cover and even try to flank you.
CRPG fans didn't quite know what to make of Diablo when it released in It didn't have much story, character customization was minimal, and the gameworld was mostly limited to a town and the dungeon underneath it.
But Diablo wasn't trying to be Ultima or Might and Magic. It was its own thing - a Skinner-box fantasia in which you clicked on minions of evil, ended their sad little lives, and scooped up loot in their wake. Thus was born the modern action RPG. Diablo was a massive hit, spawning two sequels with a third on the way and imitators too numerous to mention. The graphics and interface have dated somewhat, but that old pull remains. Diablo with its expansion, Hellfire can be purchased on gog. Players must build a base and a military, launch attacks at their enemy, and defend their base, all in real time.
After the success of Doom , John Carmack and the gang at id Software realized how much potential online multiplayer had in first-person shooters. With that in mind, they reworked the Doom code to create the Quake engine.
Its full freedom of vertical movement advanced Quake beyond the "2. Quake was also the first game to have maps designed specifically for multiplayer. It allowed for eight players to play in a match, which was double the standard at the time. The modern FPS can be said to begin here. You can buy Quake on gog. Duke Nukem was the spitting image of what little boys wanted to look like when they grew up. He was a handsome dude with machismo to spare, who wore sunglasses and a red tank top, and didn't take crap from anybody.
Duke Nukem 3D let you live out this fantasy while battling aliens across highly interactive environments with an array of weird, creative weapons. It's a great game to turn your brain off and have some fun. As for its long-delayed sequel, Duke Nukem Forever? That's a long story. You can buy Duke Nukem 3D on Steam. Once in a while, a game design comes along that is so perfect, so sui generis , that it transcends both time and genre.
One such game was Tetris. Here's another. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to shepherd a not-very-bright collection of adorable creatures who insist on walking forward obliviously no matter what is in front of them. Using special Lemmings with certain skills climbers, diggers, etc. The game was a monster hit in its day, and those interested in gaming history should read Jimmy Maher's fascinating blog entry on its origins.
Unfortunately, there's no easy place to buy the original PC version of Lemmings at the moment, though it seems possible to chase down old copies on Amazon.
People are definitely asking for a gog. The Fallout series is still one of the most popular RPG franchises in the world. Although the original Fallout didn't have the fancy graphics and fluid gameplay that exist today, the premise was the same. You controlled a person who is trying to survive a post-apocalyptic wasteland. If you've played the new games, you'll recognize some factions such as the Brotherhood of Steel and features like the Pip-Boy.
As you'll notice in your playthrough, many features from the first game have survived for over 20 years. You can get Fallout on gog. Its sequel is pretty great too.
Which would emerge to be the king of the multiplayer FPS genre? The question was never really resolved, and to this day it can trigger flame wars in online discussion groups. UT brought some great things to the table, like dazzling sci-fi settings, a campaign mode that's more fun than a tacked-on single player experience has any right to be, and an impressive array of weapons that added much-needed punch to the imaginative Unreal arsenal.
The graphics at the time were best-in-class and honestly they still look pretty good , and the bot AI set a new standard. You can get Unreal Tournament on Steam and on gog. Some games just achieve a kind of alchemy - all the parts fit together and are perfectly of their time.
Heroes of Might and Magic II is just such a game. The charming pixel graphics, executed with a sophistication belying their surface naivete; the trilling fairy-tale music; the evocation of a high-fantasy world in which a colorful landscape is dotted with treasures and mysteries begging to be investigated - it all flows together seamlessly.
Tactical combat presents an intriguing range of challenges as you learn the strengths and weakness of various unit types, from modest halflings and pixies to awe-inspiring titans and black dragons.
However, with the second game, they made significant improvements that made it an even bigger hit than the original. The adventure classic's storyline focuses on the pirate LeChuck being resurrected as a zombie after the events of the first game. That's right, Pirates of the Caribbean wasn't the first franchise to feature undead pirates.
An updated special edition is available on gog. Civilization is a franchise that continues to make advancements and improve the player experience. There are currently six editions of the game, but the second edition is still a standout; it was immediately recognized as an improvement over its predecessor in almost every way.
If you've only played the newer games, the graphics here will look decidedly unimpressive, but you'll notice the core mechanics are quite similar. End-game pollution cleanup can be a bit tiresome, but mostly the game has a zippy pace, and the constant bombardment of decisions gives Civ II a classic "just one more turn" feel.
Plus, the inspiring "Wonder" mini-movies have not been topped. Unfortunately, it's not an easy game to find these days. There are still some box copies floating around , but it might take some tweaking to run on Windows 10 systems. Myst is the best-selling adventure game of the '90s. Actually, it's the best-selling PC game of the '90s.
The player starts with a magical book that they can use to hop through different worlds. As they travel from world to world, they must solve puzzles and find missing pages from the book to continue. The objective is to eventually save one of two brothers who are trapped inside another book. Alternatively, if you're feeling a little evil, you can leave them to rot in their prisons. The game's ray-traced 3D environments and strange, eerie atmosphere were like nothing '90s gamers had seen before.
You can find Myst on gog. If you'd rather be able to move about its environments in real time, check out RealMyst. Though not as acclaimed as Half-Life , the other big single-player FPS of , Unreal continues to be an important game, and not just for the still-evolving tech it pioneered.
Fondly or not-so-fondly? Its beautiful, mysterious planet of Na Pali, inhabited by peaceful denizens but beset by invasion from interstellar races, develops a real fascination.
More perhaps than any other FPS, Unreal is a place you find yourself wanting to go back to. The music's fantastic, too. Get Unreal on Steam or on gog.
- 90s pc games
The level design is clever and elaborate, without being overwhelming, as Doom 2 is sometimes criticized for. If Quake represents FPS pioneers id Software getting comfortable with their style and flexing their creative muscle, Doom was the company exploring new terrain and striking gold.
The game drops you into a number of environments which leave an impression without being too complex. It also provides a number of satisfying weapons — especially that cool Plasma Gun — for you to unload on tons of awesome creepy monsters out to kill you. What more can be said about this all-time classic real-time strategy odyssey?
The game masterfully balances interesting and innovative RTS sensibilities with an accessible interface that allows the player to thrive. The 3 campaigns, which follow 3 different factions, are all distinct and provide their own sense of enjoyment, as do these factions themselves. Yet the true value of this RTS comes from its insanely appealing multiplayer and its endless array of customization. One of the most highly acclaimed first-person shooters, Half-Life made it a point to try to keep players immersed in the game by cutting out cut-scenes and allowing the story to play out in front of the player in-game.
They also upped the ante by making the game a visual masterpiece at the time and made it fun as hell to play as Gordon Freeman, a scientist turned badass. As a fan of the Rambo movies growing up, the idea that I could use a select number of Commandos to take down enemies was a blast, especially considering the tactical element of the game. Each Commando had their specialty and had their own objective in each mission, which meant you had to be on point with all your guys, because if one died then the mission is a fail.
Every mission in the single-player campaign started with a briefing that allowed you to map out how you would like other SWAT teams to approach the objective. I was never great at mapping it out, but I loved the stealth portion and being able to take down enemies one by one. The realism of being killed by a single bullet or two made the margin of error that much smaller, which was a great challenge, and like other FPS' on this list, it had an addictive multiplayer. Another RTS coming from Blizzard Entertainment, StarCraft dove into the world of science fiction with players being able to choose from three races, each with their own pros and cons for how many resources it will take to build your army and bases.
It was this great balance that had so many people in love with the game, especially when it came to playing online. I've always loved stealth games, and this one was no different, set in the Middle Ages with a steampunk flair, you would go and sneak around castles and the city with your blackjack, sword, bow, and array of arrows to get you by. Ultimately your goal was usually simple: sneak in and get your treasure and sneak out. Obviously, that gets more difficult, but with water arrows to take out torches or moss arrows to muffle footsteps, this game always had you strategizing on the best way to approach any situation.
It not only beefed up the graphics from the previous games but also featured some notable actors in the game like Star Wars' James Earl Jones and Terminator's Michael Biehn. Whether it's the awesome story progression or the fact that I played this game with my friends for hours, this one is a classic for me. If you ever want to know what it's like to build and manage an amusement park, then this game is for you. As the successor to Doom, id Software developed a new game engine that made for real-time 3D rendering, which really stepped up the graphics from its predecessor and also invested in the multiplayer aspect of the game.
I never realized Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails was involved with the music, but it makes sense why I was always bopping in all my multiplayer matches. One of the many IP's coming out of Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo brought us an action RPG that made for an engaging story involving the titular Diablo as the final boss. After choosing between a Warrior, Rogue, or Sorcerer, you go and cut through waves and waves of demons and monsters while collecting better weapons and armor to be fit to take on the ruler of the underworld.
Another FPS that I probably shouldn't have been playing as a kid, considering Duke's filthy mouth, but it was the first game I played that had multiplayer where I could kill other players instead of the alien NPC's I was used to. It stole my attention away from Doom , since not only did it allow me to play online, but also, who else is gonna save all the civilians from aliens if I don't? I remember seeing a friend of mine playing Age of Empires at his place and thinking, I need this game immediately.
I was impressed with the advancement through the different ages but also the strategy you had to take with your resources. Once a resource is acquired you have to choose wisely on how you spend it, and man did I make some mistakes before I figured that out. Like many other RTS games, this one had plenty of sequels that improved on an amazing game, but I have to acknowledge the first.
One of the most highly acclaimed first-person shooters, Half-Life made it a point to try to keep players immersed in the game by cutting out cut-scenes and allowing the story to play out in front of the player in-game. They also upped the ante by making the game a visual masterpiece at the time and made it fun as hell to play as Gordon Freeman, a scientist turned badass. As a fan of the Rambo movies growing up, the idea that I could use a select number of Commandos to take down enemies was a blast, especially considering the tactical element of the game.
Each Commando had their specialty and had their own objective in each mission, which meant you had to be on point with all your guys, because if one died then the mission is a fail. Every mission in the single-player campaign started with a briefing that allowed you to map out how you would like other SWAT teams to approach the objective. I was never great at mapping it out, but I loved the stealth portion and being able to take down enemies one by one.
The realism of being killed by a single bullet or two made the margin of error that much smaller, which was a great challenge, and like other FPS' on this list, it had an addictive multiplayer.
Another RTS coming from Blizzard Entertainment, StarCraft dove into the world of science fiction with players being able to choose from three races, each with their own pros and cons for how many resources it will take to build your army and bases. It was this great balance that had so many people in love with the game, especially when it came to playing online. The jetpack wearing, and initially flame-thrower wielding Harry could collect coins from downed aliens, and use the coins at certain stations to buy different weapons from missiles to mini Nukes and an Omega Bomb.
The shareware version was simply called Halloween Harry when it was released and later named Alien Carnage for all four episodes. The Bitmap Brothers certainly knew how to make a cracking game, and Chaos Engine was one such example. With their usual flair for top-down mayhem, The Bitmap Brothers gave us this wonderful steampunk themed game, filled with tons of enemies, two-player action, loads of power-ups, and great sound effects with a cool sound track playing continuously in the background.
Seriously, one of the best DOS games of the mids, although originally banned in Germany due to excessive violence, it still looks and plays pretty well today. But the canny DOS gamer would, among those titles, name Descent.
This seasickness-inducing true 3D game was an absolute marvel to behold. Flying through the various mines looking for the exit and the reactor to destroy, while trying to work out whether you were the right-way-up or still upside down, was one of the most visually impressive gaming experiences of Even when you entered a cheat code and had the computer voice call you a cheater.
Ocean Software and Digital Image Design have a number of great games under their collective belts. One memorable DOS game is Epic , an immense space shooter with a fantastic story and beautifully rendered graphics. It had plenty: fast space combat, a Battlestar Galactica — like storyline, and quite splendid visuals. MDK was a thoroughly strange game I picked up on sale from a local computer game shop in Leeds towards the end of This third-person run and gun, with hints of puzzles, has you as Kurt Hectic in a bio-armor suit taking on waves of enemies on board giant, city-sized Minecrawlers heading towards various locations on Earth.
Obviously, you need to stop these Mincecrawlers and save the planet. Apparently, there was supposed to be a film made of the game some time ago.
Hewson Consultants Ltd. The likes of Firelord , Uridium , Nebulus , Ranarama — all for various platforms — were played countless times by us in our youth. Incidentally, the Sega Mega Drive version had to be cleaned up before it was allowed on sale — cleaned up as in the fairies had to put some clothes on. The pretty bland looking first episode of a trilogy of games, Jill of the Jungle , was surprisingly good.
Okay so it was a basic platformer, and it was awful to control, but this shareware competitor to Commander Keen and the like worked quite well. You play as Jill, an Amazonian warrior who has to get from one end of the jungle to the other.
A decent enough, harmless game this, with the strange addition of having every key on the keyboard mapped to a sound effect in the game. Tyrian has you as ace pilot Trent Hawkins, seeking revenge against MicroSol, who killed your best mate Buce Quesilliac over the discovery of an ultra-rare mineral called Gravitium. You could also link up a couple of PCs with a Null Modem cable or network and get some two player action against the onslaught of MicroSol henchmen.
Jazz Jackrabbit — A fantastic platformer, one that really put the PC out there as a proper games platform capable of knocking the consoles off their perches. Day of the Tentacle — Credited as the father of the cartoon adventure, Day of the Tentacle is a great adventure title with superb writing and gameplay.
Aces Over Europe — An immense combat simulator with a huge page instruction manual to weigh the box down. Rogue — Everyone mentions Rogue-like games these days, but this is where it all started.
Skip to main content area. This article first appeared at Den of Geek UK. Pure Base Case Dope Wars Another DOS game that caused something of a stir from various focus groups, churches, parents against things corrupting their young and pretty much everyone on the planet with a moral consciousness. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!
Rise of the Triad Apogee had a lot to answer for back in its shareware days. Happy memories… Albion Albion is easily one of best DOS games of the mids.
Red Baron Enjoying the flight simulation genre with the likes of Falcon on the ST was a fantastic experience, but these modern fighters lack the intense dogfights of World War I games. Alone in the Dark For a lot of gamers, Alone in the Dark was the beginning of the survival horror genre. Wing Commander DOS was no stranger to 3D space combat simulators, and while there were some incredible titles to be had, not many gamers seem to recall the original Wing Commander too much these days.
An odd, but also rather good Sierra-like adventure at the same time. Magic Carpet Bullfrog Productions brought us Populous and Syndicate , both of which were immensely popular. Comanche NovaLogic, of Delta Force fame which was an amazing game , first toyed around with its Voxel Space engine technology in Comanche , or Comanche: Maximum Overkill as it was also known. Silent Service 2 This is one I picked up as part of a compilation MicroProse pack from a charity shop in the mid to late 90s.
Master of Orion Master of Orion , the game that invented the 4X strategy term. Scorched Earth Where Gorillas. Simon the Sorcerer Classic point and click adventure gaming in a very LucasArts vein. SimAnt SimAnt was an interesting game I picked up at one of those travelling computer fairs — one that was held in Bolton.
Further Reading: Hands-on with Google Stadia Alien Breed This top-down, Gauntlet -like game was immensely enjoyable back in the day. Archipelagos Archipelagos is by far one of most intriguing and absorbing puzzles games ever created. Superfrog Superfrog is one of the most enjoyable sidescrolling 2D platformers for DOS, an absolute treat. As you'll notice in your playthrough, many features from the first game have survived for over 20 years.
You can get Fallout on gog. Its sequel is pretty great too. Which would emerge to be the king of the multiplayer FPS genre? The question was never really resolved, and to this day it can trigger flame wars in online discussion groups. UT brought some great things to the table, like dazzling sci-fi settings, a campaign mode that's more fun than a tacked-on single player experience has any right to be, and an impressive array of weapons that added much-needed punch to the imaginative Unreal arsenal.
The graphics at the time were best-in-class and honestly they still look pretty good , and the bot AI set a new standard. You can get Unreal Tournament on Steam and on gog. Some games just achieve a kind of alchemy - all the parts fit together and are perfectly of their time.
Heroes of Might and Magic II is just such a game. The charming pixel graphics, executed with a sophistication belying their surface naivete; the trilling fairy-tale music; the evocation of a high-fantasy world in which a colorful landscape is dotted with treasures and mysteries begging to be investigated - it all flows together seamlessly. Tactical combat presents an intriguing range of challenges as you learn the strengths and weakness of various unit types, from modest halflings and pixies to awe-inspiring titans and black dragons.
However, with the second game, they made significant improvements that made it an even bigger hit than the original. The adventure classic's storyline focuses on the pirate LeChuck being resurrected as a zombie after the events of the first game. That's right, Pirates of the Caribbean wasn't the first franchise to feature undead pirates. An updated special edition is available on gog. Civilization is a franchise that continues to make advancements and improve the player experience.
There are currently six editions of the game, but the second edition is still a standout; it was immediately recognized as an improvement over its predecessor in almost every way.
If you've only played the newer games, the graphics here will look decidedly unimpressive, but you'll notice the core mechanics are quite similar. End-game pollution cleanup can be a bit tiresome, but mostly the game has a zippy pace, and the constant bombardment of decisions gives Civ II a classic "just one more turn" feel.
Plus, the inspiring "Wonder" mini-movies have not been topped. Unfortunately, it's not an easy game to find these days. There are still some box copies floating around , but it might take some tweaking to run on Windows 10 systems. Myst is the best-selling adventure game of the '90s.
Actually, it's the best-selling PC game of the '90s. The player starts with a magical book that they can use to hop through different worlds.
As they travel from world to world, they must solve puzzles and find missing pages from the book to continue. The objective is to eventually save one of two brothers who are trapped inside another book. Alternatively, if you're feeling a little evil, you can leave them to rot in their prisons. The game's ray-traced 3D environments and strange, eerie atmosphere were like nothing '90s gamers had seen before.
You can find Myst on gog. If you'd rather be able to move about its environments in real time, check out RealMyst. Though not as acclaimed as Half-Life , the other big single-player FPS of , Unreal continues to be an important game, and not just for the still-evolving tech it pioneered. Fondly or not-so-fondly? Its beautiful, mysterious planet of Na Pali, inhabited by peaceful denizens but beset by invasion from interstellar races, develops a real fascination.
More perhaps than any other FPS, Unreal is a place you find yourself wanting to go back to. The music's fantastic, too. Get Unreal on Steam or on gog. X-Com hadn't been out for long before it started climbing to the top tier of "best PC game of all time" lists.
More than a quarter-century later, it remains the gold standard for tactical combat games, the bar against which everything else is measured. Its tale of a global defense team tasked with heading off an extraterrestrial invasion featured incredibly tense small-scale combat, given meaning and context by a persistent strategic wrapper. You can find it on gog. Twenty-plus years on, Thief: The Dark Project remains the definitive stealth game. Its graphics haven't aged well, but everything else has.
The sound design holds up beautifully, the gameplay can be as violent or nonviolent as you like true experts prefer "ghosting" their way through a level without even knocking guards unconscious , and creeping past moaning zombies can be an unbearably tense experience.
Add to the mix sprawling nonlinear levels, evocatively moody cutscenes, and an imaginative steampunk world, and you've got a straight-up classic. Thief and its sequels also worthwhile are available on gog.
The even-better followup to the already-classic Dark Forces , Jedi Knight brings the franchise into the post- Quake era with fully-3D, mouselook-enabled action. The game takes full advantage of the new tech; while the graphics look poor now, the massive, vertiginous level designs have arguably never been surpassed. Lightsaber combat and potent Force Powers are just icing on the cake.
The cutscenes, a relic of the '90s FMV video fad, are on the cheesy side, but actually pretty decent compared to much of what was being produced for games in those days. Find Jedi Knight on Steam and on gog. Everyone loves a good prison break, and that's exactly what you get in Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. However, it isn't your typical prison break. Instead, you'll be escaping from a meat processing plant that is grinding up the local species into treats for aliens.
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