Windows 95 |
PC GAEMS FROM 1995 TO 1997
Picture | Title | Genre | Description | Where To Buy |
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Age of Empires | RTS | Quality Microsoft (SOMEHOW) RTS, advance your tribe from the stone age to the medieval age while fighting off rival civilizations and managing an RTS economy. BEST FUCKING RTS YOU WILL PLAY EVERY DAY. R.I.P. Ensemble Studios
Version on sale Digitally is remake with enhanced visuals and whatnot. |
Steam | |
Al Unser, Jr. Arcade Racing | Racing | Now here's an old racer that stood the test of time particularly well. It's simple, it's fun, it even looks pretty good, and very importantly for this kind of game, it still gives a great sense of speed. | ||
Atomic Bomberman | Action/Adventure | A different take on the Bomberman series. You should get it because it's just so damn hilarious. | ||
Bad Mojo | Puzzle/Adventure | A gritty, eerie top down adventure game where you play a man who has turned into a cockroach and must travese over a seedy apartment building to find a way to change back into a man. Really clever puzzles and nice creepy atmos makes Bad Mojo one of the best surrealistic games ever made. | GOG | |
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain | Action, Adventure, RPG | The first game of a really important and beautiful saga, what can I say ? is a really exciting game with his incredible dark and gory medieval story, and his good melee\magic combat system, the game has also a good top-down 2d graphics, The real problem is the compatibility but no problem a good soul solved everything for us. Follow the instruction on the website and all will be ok if not perfect. | ||
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars
(aka Circle of Blood) |
Adventure | Great classic adventure game about an american investigating a series of murders in Paris which, of course, are related to something much bigger involving an ancient cult descending from the Templars. Made years before all the templar/DaVinci craze. Serious story, but nice bits of humor here and there. The sequels get gradually worse, although the second game is still good. | GOGHumbleSteam | |
Carmageddon | Racing | Sensationally violent arcade-style racing game. Run down pedestrians and destroy other players to win.Probably best racing PC game to date. | GOGSteam | |
Command & Conquer series | RTS | Classic series of RTS games developed by Westwood Studios with a kickass soundtrack. Construct your base, harvest Tiberium/ore, build a division of Mammoth Tanks and crush the enemy base - infantry, defenses, nuclear weapons, and orbital Ion Cannon strikes optional. The original series involves a conflict betwene the UN-formed Global Defense Initiative and the terrorist cult the Brotherhood of Nod, while the Red Alert series follows an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union (repeatedly) invades the West.
Several expansions are available: The Covert Operations for the original Command & Conquer, Counterstrike and Aftermath for C&C: Red Alert, Firestorm for C&C: Tiberian Sun, and Yuri's Revenge for C&C: Red Alert 2. There is also a spin-off FPS, C&C: Renegade (2002), which incorporates some RTS-like features and which still has a small but undying multiplayer community. A compilation called C&C: The First Decade is available, and includes all of these titles and expansions, patched and with compatibility issues resolved. After the release of C&C: Renegade, several titles were developed and published by Electronic Arts under the Command & Conquer brand, but these are generally held to be of much poorer quality than the original games developed by Westwood. These titles are C&C: Generals, C&C 3: Tiberium Wars, C&C: Red Alert 3, and C&C 4: Tiberian Twilight. They're almost never recommended on /v/. |
Amazon | |
Death Rally | Racing | Sure, it's a rally, but it's a DEATH rally. Load up the car's guns, put spikes on your fronts and sabotage your opponents' cars beforehand. Featuring racers such as Duke Nukem and Farmer Ted. It's a race you don't want to miss. Also released as freeware (without multiplayer) | Steam | |
Dungeon Keeper | RTS | Dungeon Keeper is a strategy video game released for the PC in which the player attempts to build and manage a dungeon or lair while protecting it from (computer-controlled) 'hero' characters intent on stealing the user's accumulated treasures and killing various monsters. | GOG | |
Ecco the Dolphin | Action-adventure | Aliens are draining the Earth's oceans, and a bottlenose dolphin has to save his pod from becoming food. A crazy challenging and just plain crazy game (inspired by a real life experiment with dolphins and drugs). The PC version had the graphics redrawn in higher resolution than the Mega Drive original, among other improvements. There's a fan-made port to make it run on modern systems. (Don't bother with the one they sell on Steam, that's just the original under emulation). | Link | |
Fallout | RPG | The first Fallout game. Developed and released by Interplay in 1997.
Features the best story in the Fallout games. Lots of choices with character development and you'll have very different playthroughs depending on your characters' stats and choices. Thematically tight game. Combat is turn-based. Engine sucks ass though. Patching is absolutely essential if you don't want to drown in bugs. Fallout 2 (1998) is also very good and also listed here. |
GOGSteam | |
Fury³ | Flight/Combat | Players assume the role of a pilot named Councilor flying a fighter craft to eight planets (many based on real places, like Mars and New York) controlled by a militant robotic force called the Bions. Players fight three missions on each planet. Each of the missions involves destroying vital military targets in order to halt the Bions' progress on the planet. Players must then destroy either one or two Guardians who are the commanders of the particular Bion invasion force. Once players are done with one planet, they then move on to the next one. | ||
Heroes of Might and Magic
(1-6) |
TBS | Great games where you control an army of creature in turn based combat again another team (AI or and other person), on a hexagonal battlefield (games are all in 2D goodness, up until 5).Each new title bringing something new to the table, 5 finally making the transition from 2D to 3D successfully. Heroes 3 has a gold edition with all the expansions and the original game all on one disk, as does 5, so it's recommended you grab these. Heroes 4 features a deep change in gameplay from the rest of the series, but it's advised you get it just because of the incredible soundtrack that trumps the other Heroes games. | GOG: | |
Interstate '76 | Car Combat | Arguably the greatest vehicular combat game that nobody has played. Taking place in 1976 where the U.S. oil crisis never ended, auto-villians now terrorise the American Southwest. As auto-vigilante Groove Champion, you drive your murdered sister's armed muscle car over 17 missions to take out the creepers responsible in a quest for revenge. In terms of mechanics, the game is best described as Mechwarrior 2 with cars, with its missions often consisting of more that just destroying everything in sight. Also like Mechwarrior 2, you have free reign to customize the car with parts and weapons salvaged from previous missions, as well as customize the armor and chassis strength for the sides. The soundtrack is amazingly funkalicious as well. | GOG | |
Leisure Suit Larry: Love For Sail | Erotic Adventure | The final Leisure Suit Larry adventure designed by the series creator, Al Lowe, Love for Sail boasts some pretty attractive cel animation while giving the gamer even more goodies. There are heaps of easter eggs throughout the game that provide the well animated nudity, the game uses a very flexible and easy drop down menu mechanic and the humour is stronger than ever with amazing voice acting. There are so many goodies hidden in this game from the Where's Dildo mini-game to secrets in the actual games file directory. Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail is one of the best adventures of all time. | GOG | |
Little Big Adventure 2
(aka Twinsen's Odyssey) |
Action Adventure | Cute mix of Science fiction and fairytale. Play the role of Twinsen, young wizard that goes on a crazy quest that quickly becomes a really, really REALLY awesome adventure. The graphics are good, gameplay is smooth and the music is very cool. The weapons vary from a blowgun to a laser pistol and the story starts like "go buy medicine at the drugstore" and gets like "you are the chosen one who must save the world!" | GOG | |
Marathon trilogy | FPS | The year is 2794 and you are a security officer aboard the UESC Marathon, a multi-generational spacecraft converted from one of Mars's moons. As the ship and the Tau Ceti colony are attacked by hostile extraterrestrials, you find that something is amiss with the ship's artificial intelligences - one of which having gone quite insane after figuring out a secret greater than universe itself.
An FPS series famous for its abstruse plotline (in the final game it turns into a mind-boggling multilinear mess of time travel and alternate realities). In fact, only Marathon 2 was released for Windows back then, the rest of the series used to be a Mac exclusive. Now available free and open-source. |
Open Source Homepage | |
Master of Orion 2 | TBS | Old-ass space 4X game with well-balanced and varied gameplay. Lots of tech and economy management, with optional tactical battles. Many different valid strategies to win the game. | GOG | |
MDK | Action/Adventure | Game made by Shiny, creators of the Earthworm Jim series. You play a guy name Kurt Hectic who goes up against an invading alien army trying to strip-mine the earth. Full of classic Shiny light-hearted and quirky humor like the "world's most interesting bomb" and human shooting range. The graphics are odd but beautiful and the game engine was completely software-based so it could run on weaker machines that didn't have 3d accelerated graphics. The fantastic soundtrack was composed by none other than Tommy Tallarico, and it really brings the whole world to life. There was a sequel made by Bioware that is also awesome (but even more insanely difficult). | GOGSteam | |
Pajama Sam | Adventure/Puzzle | Quirky adventure series. Bit for |
GOG | |
Quake II | FPS | You're a soldier in the war against the Just as with Doom, you should use a modern source port (Yagami is faithful to the original, while quake2xp and KMQuake2 add some heavily improved visuals). |
GOG | |
Road Rash | Racing | Build up a bike from scrap, customize your biker, then beat the crap out of all the other racers on the way to the finish line. Did I mention all of this takes place in a normal city street with pedestrians you can run over, cars you can fling other bikers into, and cops to outrun? And all of it is set to a 90's grunge and metal soundtrack where you pick the tunes! It's racing, only awesome.
(Note: this is a port of the 3DO game, not the Mega Drive one.) |
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Star Wars Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight | FPS | Shoot things, punch things, use the force to bitchslap the universe. | GOG | |
The Curse of Monkey Island | Adventure | Third game in the Monkey Island series. Less witty, worse story and stupider puzzles but still worthwhile mostly because of qualities it inherits from the previous, excellent game. You take on the role of Guybrush Threepwood on his quest to become a pirate. |
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The House of the Dead | On-Rails Shooter | One of the games that founded the rail-way shooter genre. Play as Agent Rogan (PC version has a mode where you can choose different characters with different guns too) and his team-mate G as they stop the plans of Dr. Curien, intent at unleashing a zombie apocalypse upon the world. Fun to play. | ||
The Last Express | Adventure | Set on the Orient Express in 1914, the player takes on the role of Robert Cath, an American doctor on the train's final journey from Paris to Constantinople (nowadays Istanbul) before World War I. Cath, already wanted by French police as he is suspected of the murder of an Irish police officer, is contacted urgently by his old friend Tyler Whitney, to join him on the Orient Express, gateway to the East, and a possible exit from all his troubles. Cath boards the train via a motorcycle and looks for Whitney, who is already on board (seen during the introduction). But as soon as he steps onto this luxurious train, Cath becomes involved in a maelstrom of treachery, lies, political conspiracies, personal interests, romance and murder. | GOGSteam | |
The Neverhood | Adventure | You play as Klayman wandering through The Neverhood solving puzzles to save the creator of The Neverhood.Also it's the first game to be fully made using stop motion clay animation. | ||
Thexder 95 | Platformer | Western remake of the Japanese 1980s cult classic. You're a robot that can transform into a jet fighter and a tank, and you have to fight other robots because... well, someone in Japan must know, but whatever, just blast them. Excellent graphics and sounds for the time, and very complex levels to traverse.
Also on PS3 and PSP, hugely upgraded, as "Thexder Neo". |
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Tomb Raider
(first era) |
Action/Adventure | Be a badass aristocratic adventurer, travel around the world, and explore ancient ruins full of magical treasures, brain-melting puzzles, and deadly traps.
Tomb Raider was huge in the 90s for a good reason, and I don't mean Lara's tatas. Well, not just them. The "first era" by Core Design had five great games (I, II, III, The Last Revelation, and Chronicles), all with excellent gameplay and delicious ambiance. But they kept using the same designs and tech for way too long, so people started complaining. Then they did the ambitious sixth one, The Angel of Darkness. As it was rushed to release, the result was a glitchy unfinished mess. After that, the series was handed to a new developer and rebooted. Twice. Note: the games may have issues with modern system. Check the PC Gaming Wiki for patches. |
GOGHumbleSteam | |
Toonstruck | Point&Click Adventure | A classic adventure featuring the voice talents of Dan Castellaneta, Tim Curry, Dom DeLuise, Jim Cummings, Tress MacNeille and an FMV Christopher Lloyd who's been sucked into a cartoon world filled with parodies of all types of cartoons. Definitely worth a look. | GOG | |
Total Annihilation | RTS | Very popular/good RTS up there with Starcraft, but released a year earlier. Features fully 3D terrain, realistic projectile physics, and land + sea + air. Expect huge, epic battles to huge and epic music. Similar to the more modern Supreme Commander games, but a whole lot better. | GOG | |
Z | RTS | You're a troop of red robots on a campaign to beat all the other colored robots in the universe. On your side you have a screaming robot-sergeant ready with a cigarr in mouth and a cowboy-hat. This isn't Halo, it's hardcore robot RTS-massacre. Everyone's got good voice acting and it's another take on RTS where your unit-building is limited by a timer which decreases with the amount of territories you acquire. | GOG |