Rummaging around some old posts in this blog this morning, I came across an old series of VIDEO SCRAPBOOK posts that I had started but apparently never completed. I left off here back in December 2013 with my favorite video games from the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Game Boy era. I mentioned in that post how all three formats were superseded by the dominance of PC games as, for me, they came to their own in the 1990s after I bought my first PC in 1992. So, after an 11-year delay, I thought I'd pick up where I left off and here are some of my favorite games for the PC of the 1990s.
I'll break it down into loose categories. First up, strategy, or generally what's become known as the 4X genre. Inspired by a game I played on the Commodore 64 called Empire, Empire Deluxe from 1993 continued on with better graphics and more options but frankly it was Sid Meier's Civilization that was the true milestone in founding what would be the beginning of my obsession with this entire genre of gameplay.
When I bought my PC in 1992 from Jeff Cooper, it came with a monochrome monitor but it wasn't long before I swapped that out for a color in order to play Civilization. I'd salivated over this game since I saw it being displayed at stores in Emerald Square Mall a year earlier.
Other games in this genre that were extremely important were Master of Orion from 1993, as well as the successors to both titles Civilization 2 1996 and Master of Orion II in that same year.
Another important genre, especially in inspiring upgrades in my PC's graphics abilities were the first person shooter games, namely, Doom from 1993, Quake from 1996 and Half-Life 1998.
Simulation games would also play an important role in chewing up a huge amount of my time from the simple DOS version of Sid Meier's Roller Coaster Tycoon from 1990 to its amazingly graphical second version in 1998 and then Roller Coaster Tycoon in 1999.
Not to be forgotten, RPGs were still much loved and in 1997 a new one had come out that had fallen in the footsteps of a favorite (Wasteland) from my Commodore 64 years. Fallout and its successor Fallout 2 from 1998 lore and vibe that captivated me and redefined this genre.