Games That Defined PC Gaming of the 20th Century

[CRTGAMER]

I'd wager to say that Microsoft Solitaire is one of the most played games of all time and is critical to PC gaming of the 20th century. It is the precursor to "casual" gaming.

Any list of PC gaming is going to be woefully inaccurate to where it is just a fan favorite list that is passed over by the other lists. When this subject was last approached we tried to do it by the decade and the list grew to an unmanageable size quickly. I honestly think if you are going to do this, you need to do it by year. Every year in the 90s had at least a dozen important PC games released.

I just updated the Wolfenstein 3d post
So true everyone will submit their own favorites, based on past game play. I submitted Wolfenstein 3D (DOS 5.0) as a game I enjoyed; but also due to ground breaker of FPS, shareware scene and home brew level capability. This game was one of the leads encouraging many PC owners to invest in a sound card; defined PC sound card addition.

Perhaps break down the chapters by original operating system supported? That would put an average of two year mark. Note that Dos 6.22 with better memory management follows Windows 3.1; some games needed the memory allocation in Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files. I placed Win 95/Win 98 together due to similar OS.

1. DOS 5.0 - April 1990

2. Windows 3.1 - April 1992 / Windows Workgroups 3.11 November 1993

3. DOS 6.22 - June 1994

4. Windows 95 - April 1995 / Windows 98 - June 1998

5. Windows XP - October 2001

Taken further, perhaps a dedicated thread created by Racketboy as the OP linked from each Published Article chapter? Each game title in the thread should include a few lines of description for a continual expanding game review list. This could lead to a huge data base researched by contributors of Operating System for emulation DOS Box or Virtual PC. A growing list of games to rediscover.

For an idea, here is a very good list. Ah a memory lane read; Bookmarked!

http://kotaku.com/the-classic-pc-games-you-must-play-1246823468/1440923931

A Complete Directory Of The Classic PC Games You Must Play
After our readers so enthusiastically took to the idea of listing the best classic PC games of all time, I wanted to pull out the alphabetical directory in order to make it easy for everyone to find their favorite games. Updated over several weeks in September of 2013, the list has an absolutely absurd number of excellent PC games—we’ve stopped doing official updates, but there are still new PC games coming in every now and then. Thanks so much to everyone who contributed. 2015 note: Sometime between when this article originally ran and now, Kinja decided to insert related links/images for every entry. On the one hand, it looks a little bit weird to see every game’s title listed twice. On the other hand, I really like the image thumbnails. So, for now, I’ll leave em in.

Microsoft Flight Simulator was huge for flight sims.

Seconded! Surprised no discussion on this game, so many incarnations keeping up with each generation of MS OS.

[marurun]

I had Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego when I was a kid. They made a TV show, even. More than one. And I never owned Oregon Trail. I only ever played that at school.

Remember, we're talking about the 20th century. I think there's a case to be made for including Carmen Sandiego in a longer list of contenders. Winnowing this list down to an actual article is going to be a blood bath that nobody will be happy about.

[racketboy]

Winnowing this list down to an actual article is going to be a blood bath that nobody will be happy about.

Awe, that's half the fun!

[Gunstar Green]

I had Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego when I was a kid. They made a TV show, even. More than one. And I never owned Oregon Trail. I only ever played that at school.

Remember, we're talking about the 20th century. I think there's a case to be made for including Carmen Sandiego in a longer list of contenders. Winnowing this list down to an actual article is going to be a blood bath that nobody will be happy about.

When I think Oregon Trail I think more of it being defining of the Apple II, anyway.

[Erik_Twice]

Not sure if some of these count as being for "PC" but here it goes:

Nethack
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Simcity (Mac original)
Sid Meier's Civilization
Myst (Mac original)
Dune II/Command & Conquer
Doom
Ultima Underworld/Deus Ex
Half-Life
Counter-Strike
Ultima Online


Note that Wizardy, Ultima, the Infocom text adventures, Sid Meier's Pirates and Prince of Persia are all Apple II games!

In bold games that I think are some of the most important games ever made in the history of the medium, not just the platform.

It'a also a hard question because there are a lot of games that are unimportant on their own but massively important as a whole, say, Lemmings or The Incredible Machine.

[MrPopo]

The Infocom adventure games were platform agnostic; they were written against an interpreter that would just get ported from machine to machine. If you want to get technical Zork was PDP-10 (which was what we now know as Zork 1-3 in a single game), Zork 1 was originally TRS-80, then Apple II, then the other popular computers.

[marurun]

Yeah, the problem with the PC games list is that early computer products were usually aggressively cross-platform. Apple II and C64 were usually the origin platforms, with later ports coming to Atari, Amiga, and DOS. Though later games in long series often transitioned away from those early platforms to be DOS/Mac/Amiga exclusive. Only DOS and Amiga got the full line of SSI Gold Box products, for example, but they are also strongly associated with the Apple II and C64, despite those platforms only getting early titles in the line. In fact, SSI and Westwood specifically designed the Gold Box engine so that it would work within the limited memory of the C64 and Apple II (though the Apple required 128k).

With consoles there were fewer platforms in competition with each other, since there wasn't necessarily a lot of competition across generations. With home computers it was another story altogether. And maybe this would lead to solutions like this: I consider the Gold Box games collectively as defining for DOS, even though the engine was originally designed for leaner platforms, because DOS ultimately became the premier platform for later games using that engine. But I would say Pool of Radiance specifically was a defining title for the Apple II and C64, but not the Gold Box line of games as a whole, since the later titles moved away from those humble origins. Wizardry (as a series) I would consider only defining for Apple, however, since the original, iconic core of the series (1-3) were all developed for Apple first, and later titles just hopped all over the place and aren't necessarily associated with a single platform outside of the Apple.

[marlowe221]

At the risk of being repetitive, I'll toss a couple of suggestions into the thread.

I'll speak up for turn-based strategy games and suggest:

Master of Orion (or Master of Orion 2) - this is the game that prompted a review to coin the term "4X." Still, the sequel was a vastly more popular game.

Civilization (or Civ 2).

[chuckster]

As a poor kid growing up, I'll throw in a few games I knew of very well even though I was in no way a part of the PC gaming scene.

-Doom
-Half-Life
-Eye of the Beholder
-King's Quest
-Myst
-Age of Empires (this one may be too late, C&C and Warcraft had a bigger impact no doubt)
-Flight Sim
-Carmen Sandiego (thanks to my school's computers)
-Baldur's Gate
-Monkey Island
-Diablo


Does Zork count? It eventually came out on PC. Of course if the list isn'[t limited to games that originally launched on PC, you could put D&D on the list.

[o.pwuaioc]

I want to add another vote to King's Quest. I started out with V, but it definitely made me go back and play earlier versions. I didn't have a lot of PC-playing friends, so my impression of it as an iconic game comes from retrospectives and people talking about it, but it was definitely emblematic of my PC gaming in the 90s.

I'm also surprised that Heroes of Might and Magic series hasn't been mentioned yet. The third is often said to be the best, and that was 1999.

Ill throw in votes for:

7th Guest
Chip's Challenge*
Choplifter
Civilization
Doom
Duke Nukem 3D
Everquest (though I only really heard about this post-2000)
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Incredible Machine
JezzBall*
Lemmings
Maniac Mansion (though everyone I know had it on the NES instead)
Math Blaster
Myst
Oregon Trail
Pipe Dream*
Populous (though I think I remember this more from the SNES than PC)
Prince of Persia
Risk: The Game of Global Domination
Roller Coaster Tycoon
Rodent's Revenge*
SimCity/SimCity 2000
SkiFree*
StarCraft
Where in the X is Carmen Sandiego
Wolfenstein 3D

These were the biggest of the big in my circles. I know some really great gaming is left out, but some games (like Neverwinter Nights or Elder Scrolls) just weren't on my radar back then.