• 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

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

• 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)

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

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

• 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....

• 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

Total Annihilation
Starcraft

Duke Nukem 3d

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.

Civilization II

Settlers

X-COM: UFO defence

Monkey Island

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

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.

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

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

Tie-fighter was a good one.

And StarCraft like someone mentioned and Warcraft.

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.

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.)

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.

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

Command and Conquer: Tiberium Sun

Tomb Raider

Mortal Kombat 3

Streets of Rage

Metal Gear Solid

Duke Nukem 3D

Metal Slug

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

*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)

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.

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

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

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.

Quake 1, UT99

I spent hours playing Transport Tycoon.

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

Transport Tycoon

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.

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

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)

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.

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?

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? ^^'

Pc games I really loved masters of orion 2

Bubble Bobble

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

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