Best old school computer games

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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. You will try to save has many slaves as possible.

You need to do as well as you can because the ending is affected by the number of slaves you save. You can find Oddworld on Steam and on gog. Often, when people ask that old, tiresome question, "But are videogames art? Its beautifully production-designed world, which is like a '40s film noir crossed with a Dio De Los Muertos parade, is worthy of a Pixar movie, and its offbeat humor is a classic example of adventure designer Tim Schaffer's inimitable style.

Some consider it the best game of , which, when you consider the competition Half-Life , Starcraft , Baldur's Gate , just for starters , is a heck of a compliment. You can find the excellent remaster of Grim Fandango 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. 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.

Super Mario Bros. It featured an open-ended design where players could build and design their own city. This was a tough concept to swallow. Nintendo released the Game Boy in , which came bundled with Tetris. But it was a breakout hit on the Game Boy. It was simple enough to play on the go, and it was popular with both adults and children alike.

Many people credit Tetris with popularizing the puzzle genre of games. Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog in to compete with the Nintendo juggernaut. Originally called Mr.

Needlemouse, Sonic was positioned as the cooler, spunkier, edgier alternative to Mario. The game emphasized speed—unlike Mario, Sonic zoomed around in a quick blur—which was unprecedented at the time. Street Fighter II came out in in the arcades, and it was so successful that it was ported to multiple consoles. The graphics were also detailed, rich, and beautifully animated. Street Fighter II was hugely influential—it popularized the fighting genre and influenced later fighting games, like Mortal Kombat.

It was a pioneer of the modern first-person shooter genre, and it introduced 3D graphics and networked multiplayer gameplay. This online multiplayer mode was revolutionary at the time, and it was a forerunner for applications like Counter-Strike and XBox Live. For many people, it was the first mobile game they ever played, and it set the stage for the mobile gaming explosion a few years later.

Christina Wang. April 14, We often write about how much technology has changed the way we work, but how has it affected the way we play games? The main campaign leads players through several different views i. The lore, like most Blizzard games, is deep, and adds an extra dimension to what is already a very good game. A point of note here is that it is not exactly fast-paced — units will be engaged in combat for a comparatively long time before either perishing, or taking down their targets.

The third game in the Splinter Cell series before it somewhat changed its playstyle, Chaos Theory does an admirable job, keeping most of the good stuff from previous games, while adding gameplay features made possible by better technology. The player takes on the role of Sam Fisher, covert agent. Sam goes where no one else will go, and do things no one else can do — all without being detected. The game focuses heavily on stealth, sticking to the shadows and pouncing on enemies from behind, above, and underneath — or better yet, avoiding them altogether.

There are some minor puzzle mechanics i. The story is, unsurprisingly, yet delightfully, worthy of a Tom Clancy novel, with plenty of international intrigue, betrayal and plot twists.

Unlike most games on this list, this one could be mistaken for a modern game in bad light, boasting very impressive visuals for its time. Rise of Nations is an empire building game, with elements of Risk, and Age of Empires. A player nurses their civilization from a nomadic tribe settling down for the first time, through the various ages, right up to the modern age.

The remake mainly adds HD support, leaving the excellent core gameplay untouched. This series is based on the tactical command of — you guessed it — commandos.

The games are set during the Second World War, giving the player control of a handful of elite soldiers. The commandos themselves are quite individual, having different skillsets and specialties. The game is quite unforgiving of sloppiness in planning or execution — which only adds to the sense of achievement in finally beating a mission. On the next page , 8 more legendary titles. Want to take a guess?

Adjustable after first playthrough.