Skip Navigation
RetroGaming @lemmy.world
NewEnglandBlueberry @lemmy.ca

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.

156 comments

  • Some of my favorites in a variety of genre:

    • TIE Fighter and/or Freespace
    • Planescape: Torment
    • Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
    • Pharaoh

    Also one of Sierra's adventure games. A popular one is King's Quest VI.

    • I remember the difference between xwing and tie fighter. How tight where the missions and the campaign... If there's a remake to make that's the one for me.

      • For sure. Kinda surprised one never got made, really.

  • 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.)

    • I unforgivingly forgot:

      • Master of Orion 2
      • Thief Gold (I think it does work with Win9x)
      • Outlaws (Despite showing its age, it has some fantastic level design and very tense shootouts.)
      • Legacy of Kain
      • Anno 1602
      • Sid Meier's Covert Action
      • The Colonel's Bequest

      And by law any PC running DOS is mandated to have a copy of Tyrian 2000 installed in it.

  • *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)

  • Maniac Mansion. I never got far, but it's a silly little point and click game.

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Jazz Jackrabbit Epic Pinball Elder Scrolls Daggerfall Monkey Island 1, 2 and 3 Heretic and Hexen

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

156 comments