For me it was Wolfenstein 3D, then Doom, Doom 2. Heretic and Hexen also played them, but not that much, however I remember completing the first three episodes of Heretic and getting very far in Hexen (until some bug in version 1.0 that made a door impossible to open sometimes). Duke 3D, Quake, Shadow Warrior and Blood of course, although I don't think I've seen the ending of Blood. Quake 2 was also played back in the day a lot, along with Unreal, Half-Life, Blood 2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Hexen 2. Never played much Quake 3 or UT99 to be honest. Also Need for Speed 2SE and 3. Grim Fandango, monkey Island and Full Throttle too. Also played Dark Forces, but I disliked the control so I got upto the sewers, only recently managed to complete it using a mouselook patch. Those are the PC games that I remember from back in the day, however the games that bring back most of the memories for me would be Metal Slug arcade and Streets of Rage 2.

Mortal kombat 1 and Mortal kombat 2, Wolfenstein 3d, civilization,california games,stunts ,4d boxing,street fighter 2
epic pinball,command and conquer,red alert, diablo

The decade from 1990-2000 is the golden age of PC gaming as far as I am concerned.

I didn't get into PC gaming until the early 90s; until then all my gaming was done on the Commodore 64 and NES. The turning point for me was when a friend called me over because he had just got a PC compatible and had to show me the latest Ultima game. The moment I saw the beautiful 256 color animated intro and heard the wonderful Adlib soundtrack for Ultima VI, I knew I needed to get a PC.

We did eventually get a PC (an IBM PS/2 386/16SX). It was woefully outdated by the time we got it, but it was marked down to a price we could afford. The thing was built like a tank and performed pretty well considering its specs. I remember playing Wing Commander on it (perfectly playable) and even Ultima Underworld.

Once we got a modem, I spent so much time dialing up BBSs and downloading games. I became a huge fan of the major shareware companies, Apogee and Epic, and actually did purchase the registered versions of a few of these. I ended up being swayed by the superior graphics offered by Epic Megagames releases, and ended up buying registered copies of One Must Fall 2097, Jazz Jackrabbit, Tyrian, and Epic Pinball. I also remember ordering the registered version of Rise of the Triad! Tons of hours of fun with those games.

You also can't discuss the 90s without mentioning Wolf 3D, Doom, and Duke Nukem 3D.

Having said that, my true passion was for RPGs. I grew up playing RPGs on the Commodore 64 and NES, and was completely addicted to the genre. I didn't always complete the games, but that wasn't the point. I enjoyed just wandering around exploring, as though beating the game wasn't even the goal. I spent tons of hours playing the Gold Box AD&D games, the Ultima games, and random RPGs I'd pick up off the bargain bins from software stores. I had a ton of fun just seeking out random RPG games like this, and found some nice hidden gems—Escape from Hell and The Summoning leap to mind.

prince of persia (late 1989, but who cares 😁), lemmings, golden axe, lotus challenge, 4DS, raptor, micromachines, fifa 94, flashback, abuse, sensible world of soccer, speedball, cannon fodder, syndicate, crusader no remorse/no regret, XCOM, mortal kombat I/II/III, wolf 3d, doom I/II, indiana jones: fate of atlantis, day of the tentacle, grim fandango, monkey island I/II, Z (zed?), dungeon keeper, theme park, warcraft I/II, C&C red alert, sim city, GTA, Starwars pod racer, diablo I/II, starcraft, half life, Unreal, quake I/II/III

Probably I'm missing a couple of games but these were the core of my childhood

Prehistoric was a big game in my life all way from 286 cga to 386~486 vga

ofcourse prob half the mentioned titles were big for me also won't repeat them

Supaplex in a friends house in early 90s was the first thing I really played much. Before that was mainly Famiclone games, well these overlap, my last Famiclone broke in 1996 maybe. Most of my time went with Doom and Doom 2 in the 1993-1995 period in school computer room. Then I got my own 486 in 1996 and played also much Wolfenstein 3D and Warcraft 2 and Jazz Jackrabbit. Quake was barely playable before I got my Pentium 133 in 1998. I played many more games in that period, but these were the games I really put my time into.

90's through early 2000's is quite the era! Lots of change through that

thinking of the games i played during that era, rather than 90's-2000's games i played from, say, 2004 onwards;

the usuals like Doom, Doom2, Duke3d, Quake 1, Unreal Tournament, Command & Conquer and Red Alert, Half Life (plus expansions)

plus some others that i spent time in : Deus Ex, Rise of the Triad, Empire Earth, age of empires, rise of nations, Soldier of Fortune, operation flashpoint, populous, GTA1 and GTA3

and then lots I spent less time in, but still played

really i don't play games much now compared to back then, and even then i wasn't spending as much time as 'serious gamers' would spend - all the above is spread evenly over all those years 😀

I played so many games in my life, it's hard for me to tell which ones were made in that time period and which ones were older/newer. When I was a kid/teen, I didn't really pay attention to that. I played both old and new games as long as they had good playability and, most importantly, I could get my hands on them. We only started to get proper game stores in the late 90s and pirated games were widely available.

I'd give a list but it'd be at least 200 games long.

Ultima VI
Wing Commander (I and later III)
Civilization
Colonization
Elite Plus
Battle Isle
Master of Magic
Battle Isle III
Civ II
Worms
GTA
Unreal Tournament

Definitely wasted half my youth on 4x games. At one point even started doing CivNet on a LAN, but getting people together for the length of time that took was just too challenging.

What's more intesting perhaps is the games I didn't play - certainly until 1997 or so, availability was a big issue; even though NL (and BE 1995-1997) was hardly a backwater, there were few PC gaming shops and the places you could buy stuff had very limited selection and sky-high prices (100% markup was common). And without home internet access until january 1998, that wasn't a source either. I particularly missed out on Privateer and Elite Frontier.

These are the games I played the most during that time period:

• Duke Nukem 3D
• Command & Conquer
• Red Alert
• WarCraft 2
• Mortal Kombat 2&3
• Heroes of Might and Magic 2&3
• Master of Orion 2
• Diablo 1&2
• StarCraft
• Unreal Tournament
• Gothic 1&2

For that reason, they are also the ones that I remember the best.

C&C Red alert.
Transport Tycoon
Dungeon Keeper
Theme hospital
Simcity 2000

Been stuck with a 486 till '98 you'll notice a gap during the early 3d era.

DOS
Raptor was the first game I purchased, it was my shareware game that came pre installed.
Doom 1 &2, Shareware Duke3D to a lesser extent.
Original GTA (Making up my own missions)
Original Need for Speed (Not SE)
But after getting C&C I got into RTS's big time namely
C&C/RA
Warcraft 1 &2

Win98
Need for Speed 3, 4 Porsche
RA2
Diablo 1 &2
AOE
Age of Empires
GTA 3 and Vice City were probably the last games I played in my mid 20's at which point I kinda lost interest in gaming for a while.
Since getting back into gaming these are the games I still fire up for a week or two at least once a year.

Well I also had a gap, those early 3D (Glide, DirectX before 7), well only Quake2 and Half-Life all other things were in DOS and I was happy. Or well I did not have much time then to play computer games. We drinked, partied, did drugs, I had many cars(Russian Moskvitch IZ 412 and Fiat Ritmo) and a bike(Czechoslovakia Jawa) in the period from 14-19(1998-2003) years old. Then I got my act together, got a driving license and a permanent girlfriend, got an engineering degree. And started to play my old games and the Medal of Honor was the thing then.

DynaBlaster
Supaplex
JazzJackRabbit
LostVikings
EpicPinball
PinballFantasies
Dune2
Duke3d
ShadowWarrior
RiseoftheTriad
Screamer
WingCommander
MortalKombat

DungeonKeeper
Outcast
Motoracer
Command&Conquer

Got my first PC compatible (80386DX-20) in 1990 with monochrome video, 1MB RAM and 40MB HDD. The first game I got addicted to was Railroad Tycoon and had become Sid Meier's fan ever since. My choice of THE most memorable game if only one can be picked.

newtmonkey wrote on 2021-07-28, 02:37:

The decade from 1990-2000 is the golden age of PC gaming as far as I am concerned.

Seconded. Other great games of the era:

Sid Meier, Bruce Shelly and others (MPS Labs / Ensemble / Firaxis):
Railroad Tycoon / Deluxe
Civilization / Civilization II / Alpha Centauri
Colonization
Age of Empires / Age of Empires II

Warren Spector, Ken Levine and others (Looking Glass / Irrational / Ion Storm):
Ultima Underworld
System Shock / System Shock 2
Thief / Thief 2
Deus Ex

John Carmack, John Romero and id:
Wolfenstein 3D
Doom / Heretic
Quake / Quake III Arena

Blizzard:
Warcraft II
Diablo / Diablo II
Starcraft

Flight sims:
JetFighter II (off topic: I still consider Black Widow II a much better plane than Raptor)
Chuck Yeager's Air Combat
F-15 Strike Eagle III

Other memorable games and genre:
Day of the Tentacle
Fallout / Fallout 2
Half-Life: Counter-Strike
Monkey Island 1-3
Need for Speed: High Stakes / Porsche Unleashed
Outcast
SimCity / SimCity 2000
Star Trek: A Final Unity / Star Trek: Armada
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (original series)
Tun Town (I bet most VOGONS users have never heard of it)

My most vivid memories are about:

Prehistorik 2
Stunts
Command & Conquer
The Lion King
Psycho Pinball
Wolfenstein 3D
Carmageddon
Tomb Raider 2
Need for Speed 4: High Stakes
Half-Life
Mortal Kombat 4
Twisted Metal 2
Worms Armageddon
International Rally Championship

Forsaken
Quake III Arena
Hitman II Silent Assassin
Unreal Tournament 2004
Need for Speed: Underground
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Call of Duty
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Half-Life 2
Doom III
Far Cry
GTA III
GTA Vice City
Postal 2
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Colin McRae Rally 2
Alien vs. Predator 2
WarCraft III

There were a lot of games I didn't get into back then or played only much later. Like for example I "played" Baldur's Gate 2, but I didn't know any english and I don't know if I ever got past character creation, then a little Neverwinter Nights, but the first game that got me into RPGs was Fallout 3 when I had S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fewer in the late 2000s and wanted something similar.

I did play these back then from 1997-2007, these are prob most nostalgic..

DOS:
Dungeon Keeper
Time Commando
Warcraft II Tide of Darkness
Battle Arena Toshinden
C&C: Red Alert
Big Red Racing
MegaRace 2
Mechwarrior 2
Tomb Raider Gold
Outlaws
Quake
Doom II
The Lion King
VR Soccer '96

Windows 95:
Diablo 1 + Bnet
POD Gold
Dark Colony
Fury 3
Thief: The Dark Project
Diablo 2 + Bnet
Starcraft 1 + Brood War
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines

XP:
Morrowind + mods
Medieval Total War + mods
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
Icewind Dale II
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Homeworld 2
Severance Blade of Darkness
Battle for Middle Earth
Dungeon Siege + online
The Temple of Elemental Evil
Fallout Tactics
Neverwinter Nights + SoTU + some PW
Fifa World Cup 2002
Guild Wars trilogy

I think it might have been 94 or 95 when I was in middle school, a friend down the street showed me Doom for the first time. After that, I was a total PC Gamer.

Began totally obsessed with anything based on the Doom engine. Doom, Heretic, Hexen, even Strife. My friend actually tried to get me interested in Wing Commander, the Gold Box games and a smattering of less flashy tactical or simulation games. But I pretty much felt like Doom and it's ilk were video games, and branched out relatively little. The radius of my interest expanded to cover RTS after I discovered demos for Warcraft and Command & Conquer too though. That's when Blizzard and Westwood popped onto my radar. Eventually Diablo and Diablo II came along through that exposure. My relationship with Westwood was less fruitful outside of Command & Conquer.

I was insanely excited for Quake, and ran around the empty halls of QTest obsessively. I only ever got the shareware version of it though. And never played GLQuake either. It wasn't until Quake 2 came out that I had a card with a 3d accelerator. A Riva 128. In a P120. And I remember it was a Shuttle HOT-555 motherboard too.
It was the first computer that was all mine. A smattering of hand me down parts and budget items. My father built it with me, doing most of the work, Christmas morning. He showed me how to connect the AT power supply to the motherboard. A bit of knowledge immediately rendered obsolete by the ATX standard. I've never plugged in an AT power supply since.

My friend did succeed in planting the seed of having an interest in RPGs. And despite losing touch with him, when CGW gave Might & Magic VI downright radiant reviews I played it and totally fell in love with it. And I eventually played and loved Wing Commander: Prophecy as well. Early in highschool I was obsessing over Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment and the like coming out of Interplay.

By the back half of highschool it was all LAN parties and Quake 3, later supplanted by Counter-Strike 1.6 which I enjoyed far less. Those two games, and a bajillion mods we'd just try out when we were bored. Action Quake, Science & Industry, others far more forgettable. Some games we'd be super excited about, and pirate off IRC channels, only to play a single evening. Like the night we were all racing to pirate Freedom Force and make immature gimmicky heroes. We laughed late into the morning, and then never picked the game up again.

When I interned in college, I finally had enough money for a real, few compromises gaming machine. I built myself an Athlon 64, Geforce 6800 GT system just to run Doom 3 as well as my money could run it. That machine also took me through Half-Life 2. I dabbled in Prey and Farcry, but they made much less of an impression. This is also when I got into overclocking, and I eventually burned out the machine. Unless someone threw it out, it's still sitting in my parent's basement. A part of me is tempted to try to scavenge it for parts, see if anything is salvageable. But that would involve actually speaking to my mother, and that's just not going to happen.

I gotta admit, I donno if it's just getting older, or games not being as good, but very little has made the impact on me those games did. Maybe when I discovered Minecraft during it's alpha or beta around 2009 or so?