Games That Defined PC Gaming of the 20th Century

[prfsnl_gmr]

Solitaire? Minesweeper? Spider Solitaire?

[Gunstar Green]

Solitaire? Minesweeper? Spider Solitaire?

Maybe "Games that defined office work in the 1990's."

[Tanooki]

I'm not reading any existing posts as if I can't come up with 20-25 I don't deserve to make a list. I got my PC in Christmas of 1990 so I had plenty of stuff to look into and look a little back into too even then. In no particular order at all here, and some are so obvious it's sad...

- Sim City (Classic Win/DOS)
- Wing Commander
- X-Wing
- DOOM
- Commander Keen
- Pinball Dreams/Fantasies
- Zork
- The 7th Guest
- Lemmings
- Wolfenstein-3D
- Star Control II
- Star Trek 25th Anniversary
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
- Test Drive
- STUNTS
- Dune II
- Diablo
- Railroad Tycoon
- The Sims
- Quake
- M1 Tank Platoon
- Microsoft Flight Simulator
- Ultima
- Sid Meier's Civilization
- Oregon Trail
- MechWarrior

I think the best explanation for this list, outside of Star Control 2 as it was so different than the first, they're all the beginning of a franchise and in ways a genre for some, or a distinct style of genre that people still cherish and look back upon for inspiration. This is why sequels aren't more or less noted instead even if they're better, and in some cases you have inspiration. Westwood gave us Dune II, which then turned into C&C and inspired Warcraft.

Other oddities like M1 Tank Platoon (my best friend is a retired USMC Staff Sgt who was a tanker said it was as real as you can get to the original, other games looked up to it for accuracy (he also had a pilots license) -- just as MS Flight Simulator does for commercial flight.)

[racketboy]

Solitaire? Minesweeper? Spider Solitaire?

This managed to make me laugh out loud, I have to admit.

[racketboy]

I'm not reading any existing posts as if I can't come up with 20-25 I don't deserve to make a list. I got my PC in Christmas of 1990 so I had plenty of stuff to look into and look a little back into too even then. In no particular order at all here, and some are so obvious it's sad...

That's a REALLY good list. You're missing a few titles I would count as essentials from the tail end of the decade, but that seems pretty solid from my memories of the early to mid 90s. I forgot about Test Drive

[marurun]

I think with PCs, you might have to do it by decade. Best PC games of the 1980s. Best PC games of the 1990s. Best PC games of the 2000s. That might help with the granularity, because you can separate out all that super important early stuff from Doom and Quake, for example.

[racketboy]

I think with PCs, you might have to do it by decade. Best PC games of the 1980s. Best PC games of the 1990s. Best PC games of the 2000s. That might help with the granularity, because you can separate out all that super important early stuff from Doom and Quake, for example.

I'll think about it. But I also like the challenge of really thinking hard about which ones were the most impactful and influential.

Follow-up pieces might be fun to focus on each of them and the other games that spawned off of them and build up the PC gaming landscape.

[isiolia]

Even decades might stretch things thin. Mainly because there are some pretty big shifts in technology there. You start the 90s with DOS being the main platform, CD-ROMs on the horizon, rudimentary online (BBS, Compuserve, AOL, etc), hot new tech like the first Sound Blaster cards on the shelves... you end up in the middle of 98SE, 3D acceleration, broadband internet, and online multiplayer.

It's like trying to sort through the most influential console games from the Atari through to early Dreamcast stuff. Just so much larger in scope than looking at any one of them individually.

[noiseredux]

It's like trying to sort through the most influential console games from the Atari through to early Dreamcast stuff.

yes! This articulates exactly what I was thinking about such an endeavor.

[racketboy]

It's like trying to sort through the most influential console games from the Atari through to early Dreamcast stuff.

yes! This articulates exactly what I was thinking about such an endeavor.

I get what you're saying, but I don't know if that's a completely fair comparison. Maybe I'm just biased, but I feel like the console world had so much more selection and variety than the PC market did. Am I wrong?