What are your favorite pre-2000 computer games?

My guy, we have the technology. You can edit that title to fix the horrible grammar lol.

"What are your favorite pre-2000 video games?"

Quarantine

• Transport Tycoon
• C&C Red Alert and Tiberian Sun
• Anno 1602 (1602 A.D.)
• Theme Park
• Commander Keen
• Doom 2 (and Wolfenstein 3D to some extend)
• GTA2
• Half-Life
• Dungeon Keeper (mainly DK2)
• Leisure Suit Larry 6
• Worms 2 & Armageddon
• Age of Empires 2
• Sim City 2000 & 3000
• SimTower
• The Settlers 2
• Lemmings
• Incredible Machine
• Commandos
• Outcast
• Quake 3 Arena
• Descent
• StarCraft (although I started playing it later)

• MULE
• Might and Magic VI
• Master of Orion
• Civ 1 & 2

Quake, Doom, Half-Life, One Must Fall 2097, Microsoft Encarta's Mind Maze

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.

I was a fan of Midtown madness, both 1 and 2.

I had LAN parties with my friends by booting the game, then ejecting the CD and passing it along.

Sadly the third one wasn't on PC.

Blood (1997) Pretty much the best OG build engine game IMO.

Late and I cannot possibly read everything here, but I'll come back to it as well.

And just to do some due diligence:

• Saw it multiple times already, but Homeworld.
• Star Wars Rogue Squadron or many of the other Star Wars flight games before it.
• Imperium Galactica 2. Amazing space RTS with space and ground combat.
• I think one of the Formula 1 games from the era is considered among the best, but I'm not sure which. If you like F1 and racing that's worth checking out.
• Star Trek Armada is from 2000, but very good too.
• Sid Meier games.
• Nintendo games, including Mario Kart 64. Unfortunately the first Mario Party isn't as good as modern ones I hear, but may also be up your alley.
• Scorched Earth or Tank Wars for DOS. Worms for a more modern take on the genre.

Very space- and RTS-themed, but that's what got my attention at the time. And they were having their golden age. Also I was very young in the 90s, so that's all I have.

*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)

My mom got us this “Kids Cube” game collection in CompUSA when I was a kid and there were some gems in there. I’ve been looking for years to try and find the list of games but it’s one of those cheap dollar bin software collections. Anywho, some of the games I loved from that included:

Battle Bugs Jetpack Mice Movers Loader Larry

Non Kids Cube games: Doom (duh) Hero’s of might and Magic 3 Kings Quest VI Return to Zork Raptor: Call of the Shadows Battle Chess Jazz Jackrabbit Prince of Persia (the classic DOS 2D) Duke Nukem 2D

Did a quick search and thank you Archive! Found the Kids Cube! There’s a lot of weird stuff on there but I would spend hours just trying stuff out. https://archive.org/details/aztech_kids_cube

Rollercoaster Tycoon is an obvious must-play. And Zeus: Master of Olympus came out in 2000 but runs on Windows 95. It's a Sierra city builder, and I have thousands of hours in it.

Out of This World - 1991

Ultima VII - 1992

Doom - 1993

Magic Carpet - 1994

Myth: The Fallen Lords - 1997

Ultima Online - 1997

Die by the Sword - 1998

Quake 3 Arena - 1999 and Quake 3 Weapons Factory Arena

Everquest - 1999

Pc games I really loved masters of orion 2

Crash Bandicoot 2

Star Flight

Fairy Tale Adventure

Both from the 80s

Starquest v

Oregon trail II

Widget workshop

That drawing program with the programmable turtle

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.

Where do I even start ?

• Raw vs Smackdown
• IGI 2
• Freedom Fighter
• KKND

Transport Tycoon

Tie-fighter was a good one.

And StarCraft like someone mentioned and Warcraft.

• MECHWARRIOR 2
• QUAKE 2
• Broken Sword 1
• Half-Life 1
• Jedi knight dark Forces 2
• Police Quest 1
• Aliens vs predator
• System shock 2
• Unreal tournament
• Star Trek Starfleet Academy
• Zork 1 and 2
• Heavy Gear 2
• Jazz Jackrabbit 2
• Pandemonium
• Total annihilation

My family’s first PC was hand-me-down Amiga 2000; so these games helped shape me growing up:

Dune 2: Battle for Arrakis T-Rex Warrior* Cannon Fodder Sensible Soccer** The Settlers After the War

• Funny anecdote, if memory serves - it took my child brain over a year to figure out that holding down both mouse buttons made you move forward..

** Namely, the demo disk version which was set in 1945 and replaced the ball with a bomb that would periodically explode, killing nearby players and removing them from the match.

The dig. The game is inspired by an idea originally created for Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories series.

Bubble Bobble

Command and Conquer: Tiberium Sun

Tomb Raider

Mortal Kombat 3

Streets of Rage

Metal Gear Solid

Duke Nukem 3D

Metal Slug

Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy. I still own this series on steam and play it when I get nostalgic.

Baldur's Gate
Lords of the Realm 2
Descent (1, 2, and 3)
Sim City 2000

Gothic I from '98

Obligatory shout-out for any Bullfrog games of that era, especially Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2. Lionhead's Black & White is 1 year out of your window, but such a good game.

Also:
Syndicate Wars
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Grim Fandango
Rollercoaster Tycoon
Descent
Grand Theft Auto

Half Life. While I am too young to have played it when it released, it still was an astounding game for its time.

• FFVII (and VIII)
• Homeworld
• Shadowrun (Sega Genesis version)
• Parasite Eve
• Wing Commander Series
• Colony Wars: Vengeance
• Gran Turismo 2
• Freespace (can't believe I forgot about that one)

...I'm in my late forties, so pre-2000 was my peak gaming time. As a result the list could go on and on and on....

Starcraft!

• Quake II
• The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
• Power Dolls
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert
• StarCraft with the Brood War expansion
• Fallout
• Star Wars: Dark Forces
• The Oregon Trail (obviously)
• Syndicate
• Star Wars: TIE Fighter (X Wing was good too, but TIE Fighter was better)
• Dune II: Battle for Arrakis
• Ultima Underworld: Stygian Abyss
• SimCity (1989)
• X-COM: UFO Defense

Oh what a wonderful chance to share.

Princess Maker 2. Great life sim game where you raise a girl and try to make her into a princess. (Includes optional final fantasy combat and exploration)

SimCity. If you don't know what that is you need to experience it.

Tank Wars, great turn based shooter.

You might wanna consider getting qbasic going on it. There's a large collection of homebrew games for it. http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/topten/topten.shtml

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.

Total Annihilation
Starcraft

ZZT is number one for sure

Sierra's Quest for Glory series

Heroes of Might and Magic

Warcraft 2 slapped. Was WC3 also in the 90's?

Duke Nukem 3d

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

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.

Kings Quest 5, 6, & 7

Jill of the Jungle trilogy (free on GOG!)

Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth

Torin's Passage

... Can you tell my dad was a Sierra Online fan? ^^'

I don't know how popular it was since none of my friends remember it but I loved Phantasmagoria. Its a point and click horror mystery game with video captured graphics.

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.)

Speedball 2 Brutal Deluxe and Cannon Fodder are must try (there are both Amiga and dos versions for both).

Lemmings is really good. Original Worms. Lost Vikings. Syndicate.

Star Control 2

All challengers can GTFO 🧐

Gex

Mario Teaches Typing

All of the ‘Blaster Learning System’ games like Math Blasters: In Search of Spot

I was pretty young still so those educational ones were hella fun and my parents would let me play as much as I wanted

Civilization II

Settlers

X-COM: UFO defence

Monkey Island

Quake 1, UT99

Myst is an all-time classic. I'd just wander around exploring the world.

I tried so hard to get anywhere in Magic Carpet but our home computer ran the game too fast. I needed the "turbo button" to slow the game down but we didn't have one.

Also had the PC version of Garfield Caught in the Act (just called Garfield on PC). Played through it over and over again. The Genesis game with improved graphics, an exclusive level and one of the most underrated soundtracks in gaming. Seriously, look up the soundtrack to the PC version, the entire thing jams.

EDIT: Also, Age of Wonders. I actually spent more time in the level editor than in the game itself, building Middle Earth as a map and placing cities, factions and leaders on it as something of an "old school" (for the time) Battle for Middle Earth.

Ganja Farmer...

Chips Challenge for Windows, Sim City 3000, Age of Empires 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 (Technically not pre-2000 because it was released in 2000.)

The fact that nobody has said Warcraft II yet saddens me.

Definitely go and find Marathon and it's sequels, preferably in their original form on the Mac. But you don't need to go through all that trouble necessarily, Bungie released all the source some time ago and it is all freely available for new hardware now.

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

Infantry. My first online multiplayer game. Somehow I made it into a squad that got 2nd place in the seasonal tournament and also had arguably the best player in the whole game. I didn't play in the matches but I was in the squad!

I spent hours playing Transport Tycoon.

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

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.

What I spent ages on:

• It came from the desert
• Moria
• Nethack
• Sierra games, PQ and KQ and Manhunter in particular
• Rainbow Islands
• Hillsfar
• Motor Massacre
• Monkey Island, first 3
• Populous
• IK+
• North and South (multiplayer)
• Nuclear War (multiplayer)

I'm old so a lot but I always mention SSI DnD games like Pool of Radiance. I think the games would be a bit of slog for most people today. All the Ultimas besides 9.

Homeworld

• Turrican 1-3 [Amiga]
• Command and Conquer
• Monkey Island 1 [Amiga]
• Sim City 2000 (Network edition)
• Unreal Tournament
• Super Metroid [Super Nintendo]
• Metal Slug [Neo Geo/Arcade]
• Pinball Dreams/Illusions (made by DICE before they renamed themselves)

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

Die Hard Trilogy

I always go back to the original Age of Empires as a classic.

Right on Y2K was NFS Porsche Unleashed aka Porsche 2000. As long as you play the PC version it's an amazing game and there are a few graphics enhancing mods too.

StarCraft Diablo1 MechWarrior 2 Need for speed 2

The descent games someone else already mentioned were fantastic. Starcraft was outstanding. Also, it just barely made the cut but I even still play it, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is phenomenal.

Blue Byte's "Albion" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion_(video_game)

Might and might 3 F19 stealth jet Doom Wolfenstein Red alert Warcraft 3

Little Fighter 2

Jagged Alliance 1 and 2

Wolfenstein and Hover.

I loved the Harpoon series of naval warfare simulation games. I haven’t played since the late 90s but they were a lot of fun.

Killer Instinct

Age of empires Star wars galactic battlegrounds Deus ex (I think that was pre 2000) Cossacks European wars

Heavy Gear? Monster truck madness? Age of Empires?

The Last Express - really great story

Pizza Tycoon - this was such a fantastic management sim, I spent ages playing it back in the day

Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain (1997 on Windows, 1998 on Mac), a real time 4X game set in space.

This game is one of my all-time favourite.

1995ish, Starfighter 3000 - DOS Windows 95

Janky as fuck by today's standards, but that was my gateway drug into PC gaming.

Ore Truck Simulator '96

Boy that is tough. There are a few just after 2000 but I was not doing much in the late nineties. I can't think of anything after xwing series that was not after 2k. Doom2. I honestly cannot remember what I was doing computer game wise in the late 90's.

Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator