What are your favorite pre-2000 computer games?
What are your favorite pre-2000 computer games?
I'm setting up my MiSTer FPGA and want to prioritize a bit. I currently have DOS and Win 95 running, but plan to setup Macintosh and any other worthwhile computer platforms. Any computer platform welcome (I already have the consoles figured out). What are your "must try" game suggestions?
Edit: I just got back to this post and am pleasantly surprised by the response. I'll probably be adding most if not all of these to test since I have the space. Thank you to everyone who commented.
- MECHWARRIOR 2
- QUAKE 2
- Broken Sword 1
- Half-Life 1
- Jedi knight dark Forces 2
- Police Quest 1
- Aliens vs predator
- System shock 2
- Unreal tournament
- Star Trek Starfleet Academy
- Zork 1 and 2
- Heavy Gear 2
- Jazz Jackrabbit 2
- Pandemonium
- Total annihilation
- Transport Tycoon
- C&C Red Alert and Tiberian Sun
- Anno 1602 (1602 A.D.)
- Theme Park
- Commander Keen
- Doom 2 (and Wolfenstein 3D to some extend)
- GTA2
- Half-Life
- Dungeon Keeper (mainly DK2)
- Leisure Suit Larry 6
- Worms 2 & Armageddon
- Age of Empires 2
- Sim City 2000 & 3000
- SimTower
- The Settlers 2
- Lemmings
- Incredible Machine
- Commandos
- Outcast
- Quake 3 Arena
- Descent
- StarCraft (although I started playing it later)
Half Life. While I am too young to have played it when it released, it still was an astounding game for its time.
Obligatory shout-out for any Bullfrog games of that era, especially Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2. Lionhead's Black & White is 1 year out of your window, but such a good game.
Also:
Syndicate Wars
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Grim Fandango
Rollercoaster Tycoon
Descent
Grand Theft Auto- Quake II
- The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
- Power Dolls
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert
- StarCraft with the Brood War expansion
- Fallout
- Star Wars: Dark Forces
- The Oregon Trail (obviously)
- Syndicate
- Star Wars: TIE Fighter (X Wing was good too, but TIE Fighter was better)
- Dune II: Battle for Arrakis
- Ultima Underworld: Stygian Abyss
- SimCity (1989)
- X-COM: UFO Defense
Late and I cannot possibly read everything here, but I'll come back to it as well.
And just to do some due diligence:
- Saw it multiple times already, but Homeworld.
- Star Wars Rogue Squadron or many of the other Star Wars flight games before it.
- Imperium Galactica 2. Amazing space RTS with space and ground combat.
- I think one of the Formula 1 games from the era is considered among the best, but I'm not sure which. If you like F1 and racing that's worth checking out.
- Star Trek Armada is from 2000, but very good too.
- Sid Meier games.
- Nintendo games, including Mario Kart 64. Unfortunately the first Mario Party isn't as good as modern ones I hear, but may also be up your alley.
- Scorched Earth or Tank Wars for DOS. Worms for a more modern take on the genre.
Very space- and RTS-themed, but that's what got my attention at the time. And they were having their golden age. Also I was very young in the 90s, so that's all I have.
My top of the pops are:
- Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (With Tim Curry)
- Dungeon Keeper
Honorable mentions:
- Starflight
- Pirates! Gold Plus.
- Loom (Which is sadly ignored despite it's fantastic gameplay mechanic).
- Ultima VII
- Sam & Max Hit the Road
- Lands of Lore
- Cannon Fodder
- Caesar II (Plebs are needed!)
- Broken Sword
- Theme Hospital
- Turok
- System Shock 2 (I think it is playable in Win98? Probably in Win95 but it is a stretch.)
The dig. The game is inspired by an idea originally created for Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories series.
Rollercoaster Tycoon is an obvious must-play. And Zeus: Master of Olympus came out in 2000 but runs on Windows 95. It's a Sierra city builder, and I have thousands of hours in it.
Anything by Blizzard
Anything by id
Most things by Maxis
Half Life
Deus Ex bends the rule a bit, being 2000, but I can't not mention it
Maniac Mansion. I never got far, but it's a silly little point and click game.
Command and Conquer: Tiberium Sun
Tomb Raider
Mortal Kombat 3
Streets of Rage
Metal Gear Solid
Duke Nukem 3D
Metal Slug
I was a fan of Midtown madness, both 1 and 2.
I had LAN parties with my friends by booting the game, then ejecting the CD and passing it along.
Sadly the third one wasn't on PC.
*your
Doom (1 then 2) Dune 2
Command & conquer: Red alert
Quake 2 & 3 Unreal tournament
Rise of the triad
Heretic
Hexen
Space Quest 4
Quest for Glory series
Simcity 2000
Leisure Suit Larry 6
Grand Theft Auto (top down)I spent hours playing Transport Tycoon.
Quake, Doom, Half-Life, One Must Fall 2097, Microsoft Encarta's Mind Maze
Total Annihilation. It was released in 1997 and brought inspiration to games like Supreme Commander and Planetary Annihilation.
Also, mother fuckin' Cap'N Crunch's Crunchling Adventure. I don't have to explain that one.
Tie-fighter was a good one.
And StarCraft like someone mentioned and Warcraft.
- MULE
- Might and Magic VI
- Master of Orion
- Civ 1 & 2
Pc games I really loved masters of orion 2
When I was. Small child in the early 90s, my dad was a network engineer and he setup our family computer with DOS and lots of games. I don't remember all of them but I do remember the following:
- Various arcade games that began running too fast to play after he upgraded the processor
- Commander Keen
- After Dark, which wasn't really a game so much as a cool and highly adjustable screen saver. But for some reason me and my siblings spent many hours playing this "game".
Anyway, I guess Commander Keen is my only real suggestion here and I do believe it's a great game. Just wish I could remember some other games he had installed on the DOS system for us that weren't baby games like Mickey's ABCs and 123s.
Most of my 80s/90s gaming was console games, but here's a bunch of computer games that I liked back then :
Lemmings 1 and 2 (the tribes). You can try 3 if you're curious, it's kind of its own thing, different scale and some think it's kind of not the same game anymore. 3D is interesting, but not easy on the eyes.
Lands of Lore. Very good real time maze dungeon-crawler with many obscure secrets, and full voice acting (that blew my mind back then. And there's Patrick Stewart in the cast).
Lands of Lore 2 is a very ambitious sequel in 3D, with FMV incorporated directly into the 3D world. It's quite hard and weird, very creepy at times, moreso if you're the kind who stray off the path.
Creatures. Life simulation with a bunch of furry things you can make hatch and take care of. You teach them to speak, make them breed, watch them interact with the world, reinforce their behaviour with friendly scratches or slaps, and hopefully make them smarter (or miserable, it's your choice). The game simulates their neural system, internal chemistry, immune system, DNA, it's kind of crazy. Requires typing to speak. 3 is the most complete version but requires a bit of tinkering for it to work.
Jazz Jackrabbit Epic Pinball Elder Scrolls Daggerfall Monkey Island 1, 2 and 3 Heretic and Hexen
What I spent ages on:
- It came from the desert
- Moria
- Nethack
- Sierra games, PQ and KQ and Manhunter in particular
- Rainbow Islands
- Hillsfar
- Motor Massacre
- Monkey Island, first 3
- Populous
- IK+
- North and South (multiplayer)
- Nuclear War (multiplayer)
There are tons. The game that I considered my first "proper" game was World of Xeen. It's phenomenal. And it's actually two games. Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen and Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen. When you combined them you could travel between the two sides of the flat world and had more quests to solve and an ultimate end.
It was always hard to make space for them even though we had a gigantic 250 MB hard drive. Each game took up 20-30 MB.
Edit: Other must haves: Jazz Jackrabbit, Commander Keen, Doom, Quake, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
C64: Elite. the game is my personal number one as I played only Elite constantly for a long time, despite all other games available for C64.
Amiga: Chaos Engine, Transarctica.
486: Elite Frontier, Descent, Descent II.
Oh what a wonderful chance to share.
Princess Maker 2. Great life sim game where you raise a girl and try to make her into a princess. (Includes optional final fantasy combat and exploration)
SimCity. If you don't know what that is you need to experience it.
Tank Wars, great turn based shooter.
You might wanna consider getting qbasic going on it. There's a large collection of homebrew games for it. http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/topten/topten.shtml
StarCraft Diablo1 MechWarrior 2 Need for speed 2
Starcraft!
My mom got us this “Kids Cube” game collection in CompUSA when I was a kid and there were some gems in there. I’ve been looking for years to try and find the list of games but it’s one of those cheap dollar bin software collections. Anywho, some of the games I loved from that included:
Battle Bugs Jetpack Mice Movers Loader Larry
Non Kids Cube games: Doom (duh) Hero’s of might and Magic 3 Kings Quest VI Return to Zork Raptor: Call of the Shadows Battle Chess Jazz Jackrabbit Prince of Persia (the classic DOS 2D) Duke Nukem 2D
Did a quick search and thank you Archive! Found the Kids Cube! There’s a lot of weird stuff on there but I would spend hours just trying stuff out. https://archive.org/details/aztech_kids_cube
Die Hard Trilogy
- Sonic the hedgehog
- Golden axe
- Streets of rage
- Micro machines
- Super Mario Bros 3
- Super Mario world
- Cool boarders
- SSX tricky
- Speed freaks
- Crash bandicoot
- Soul Reaver
- Tony hawk
- Tomb raider 3
- Abes oddesy
- Crazy taxi
- Duke nukem 3D
Little Fighter 2
Jagged Alliance 1 and 2
The descent games someone else already mentioned were fantastic. Starcraft was outstanding. Also, it just barely made the cut but I even still play it, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is phenomenal.
Blue Byte's "Albion" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion_(video_game)
Terranigma. Still my favorite RPG to this day and one of my favorite games to this day, but it's hard to gush about this game without any spoilers and its written in a way that requires a bit of attention from the player. You do need to either have an EU / PAL SNES or emulate it though, because it never released in the Americas due to publisher drama.
Secret of Mana is great too, or if you already played that, Seiken Densetsu 3, which is the sequel title that never got released in the West, but got fan translated roms out there. Seiken Densetsu 2 being SoM, and the original Seiken Densetsu 1 was released as Final Fantasy Adventures and sort of a side story to the Final Fantasy franchise, which got dropped and became its own franchise with the second game. SD3 (or "Secret of Mana 2") is a significant step up to the first game in many aspects and even has multiple characters & branching endings based on your character selections.
On the PC definitely the Command & Conquer's Tiberian series, starting with the first game and a GDI campaign run, followed by a NOD campaign run. It got those cheesy but amazingly entertaining little clips between the missions that actually get you immersed into the story and it has a killer soundtrack too. It's one of the many great franchises ruined by EA, but I heard the remastered version is actually decent (I still won't buy because I still boycott them). The already suggested Red Alert is a spin-off series with some references to the Tiberian series, so I would not start with that one until you played the Tiberian one.
I don't know how popular it was since none of my friends remember it but I loved Phantasmagoria. Its a point and click horror mystery game with video captured graphics.
My family’s first PC was hand-me-down Amiga 2000; so these games helped shape me growing up:
Dune 2: Battle for Arrakis T-Rex Warrior* Cannon Fodder Sensible Soccer** The Settlers After the War
- Funny anecdote, if memory serves - it took my child brain over a year to figure out that holding down both mouse buttons made you move forward..
** Namely, the demo disk version which was set in 1945 and replaced the ball with a bomb that would periodically explode, killing nearby players and removing them from the match.
Carmageddon is a game that I loved at the time, and am very hesitant to revisit... I suspect it hasn't aged well!
Xwing, day of the tentacle, Sam and Max hit the road, terminal velocity, half-life, journeyman project, Myst, that weird Encarta cdrom trivia game, counterstrike, EverQuest, you don't know Jack, Spiderman cartoon maker, master of Orion, monkey Island, Commander keen, and DOOM
Might and might 3 F19 stealth jet Doom Wolfenstein Red alert Warcraft 3
Wolfenstein and Hover.
I loved the Harpoon series of naval warfare simulation games. I haven’t played since the late 90s but they were a lot of fun.
Heavy Gear? Monster truck madness? Age of Empires?
Crash Bandicoot 2
Killer Instinct
Quarantine
Age of empires Star wars galactic battlegrounds Deus ex (I think that was pre 2000) Cossacks European wars
Amiga:
- Sensible Soccer
- Soccer Kid
- The Chaos Engine
ZX Spectrum:
- Chaos
- Robocop
- Midnight Resistance
Myst is an all-time classic. I'd just wander around exploring the world.
I tried so hard to get anywhere in Magic Carpet but our home computer ran the game too fast. I needed the "turbo button" to slow the game down but we didn't have one.
Also had the PC version of Garfield Caught in the Act (just called Garfield on PC). Played through it over and over again. The Genesis game with improved graphics, an exclusive level and one of the most underrated soundtracks in gaming. Seriously, look up the soundtrack to the PC version, the entire thing jams.
EDIT: Also, Age of Wonders. I actually spent more time in the level editor than in the game itself, building Middle Earth as a map and placing cities, factions and leaders on it as something of an "old school" (for the time) Battle for Middle Earth.
I always go back to the original Age of Empires as a classic.
I'm old so a lot but I always mention SSI DnD games like Pool of Radiance. I think the games would be a bit of slog for most people today. All the Ultimas besides 9.
- Turrican 1-3 [Amiga]
- Command and Conquer
- Monkey Island 1 [Amiga]
- Sim City 2000 (Network edition)
- Unreal Tournament
- Super Metroid [Super Nintendo]
- Metal Slug [Neo Geo/Arcade]
- Pinball Dreams/Illusions (made by DICE before they renamed themselves)
Lords of the Realm 2, the OG X-Com trilogy, Total Annihilation, Dark Reign, Civ II Test of Time
SSI gold box D&D titles and Dungeon master, though both are better on Amiga
Chips Challenge for Windows, Sim City 3000, Age of Empires 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 (Technically not pre-2000 because it was released in 2000.)
1995ish, Starfighter 3000 - DOS Windows 95
Janky as fuck by today's standards, but that was my gateway drug into PC gaming.
Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator
Myst and Obsidian
Boy that is tough. There are a few just after 2000 but I was not doing much in the late nineties. I can't think of anything after xwing series that was not after 2k. Doom2. I honestly cannot remember what I was doing computer game wise in the late 90's.
Ocarina of time Red Alert .. yeah probably just those two would do me
Infantry. My first online multiplayer game. Somehow I made it into a squad that got 2nd place in the seasonal tournament and also had arguably the best player in the whole game. I didn't play in the matches but I was in the squad!
amiga wings of fury
atari 1040ST outrun (the audio on atari!!!)
c64 zak mckraken
Fate of Atlantis is pretty good
Squarez Deluxe (which is now Freeware!)
It's a thinking man's Tetris and about 100x more rewarding to play
Ganja Farmer...
There was this older 90's (I think?) game I loved but I can't figure out the name or find it, despite some googling. You played the part of someone piloting a drone on a space station that had a viral outbreak. The virus alerted the DNA of the victims that the automated security system could no longer identify them as friendlies and so went on a killing spree. You're trying to find video clips from the inhabitants, collecting DNA samples, very point and click adventure with neat animated scenes with FMV. If this rings a bell or if anyone knows it, let me know!
Ore Truck Simulator '96
Myth The Fallen Lords and Myth 2 on the Macintosh. This was my favorite multiplayer game I’ve ever played by far.
Other great Mac games from my youth: The Odyssey (1994) by David Larkin Sim City and Sim City 2000 Rogue Sim Ant Prince of Persia The Scarab of Ra Realmz Path Ways into Darkness and Marathon
And my favorites on BBS were Major Mud and Legend of the Red Dragon.
I didn't have a PC, but when I went to friend’s houses I would play the shit out of Doom.
X-Com - UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep (I remember hacking my demo copy of UFO Defense and bypassing the shareware check. Still my all time favorite strategy game)
Doom
Duke Nukem 1, 2, and 3D
Wolfenstein 3D
Jetpack
Commander Keen
Raptor: Call of the Shadows
Rise of the Triad
Monster Bash (Just pretty much anything 3D Realms or Apogee related was gold)
Moraff's Dungeons of the Unforgiven(Only ever had the shareware version as a kid, but I played it over and over)
