world of warcraft
cross cards (mac game)
crazy taxi

Doom (id Software, 1993) - The FPS that changed PC gaming forever! 😁

Descent (Parallax Software & Interplay Productions, 1994) - I still want a real Pyro GX to fly around with 🤣

Duke Nukem 3D (3D Realms, 1996) - "Come get some!" 😊

There are so many good ones, but I think I would stick with games that have infinite replayability. These aren't necessarily my Top 3 favorite games ever, though:

Red Baron 3D (with Full Canvas Jacket or Hell's Angels mods)
Enemy Engaged Apache/Havoc + Comanche/Hokum (with updates and mods)
Some variant of Falcon 4.0: Allied Force, FreeFalcon, BMS, etc

I've owned Falcon 4.0 ever since it first came out in the big blue binder. I've even got the official ball cap swag promotional item. Sadly, I've never had the time to invest in really learning/playing it. I'm including it in my list because you can spend years just with that one sim. Falcon 3.0 might actually be the better choice, simply because it's a more approachable yet still highly advanced flight simulator.

(Honorable Mention: EF2000)
(Red Baron 3D is definitely in my Top-10-games-of-all-time list.)

1) Perfect Dark (N64)
2) Goldeneye (N64)
3) Timesplitters: Future Perfect (original XBox).

But if you allowed game mods too, then I'd change 2 and 3 to

2) Unreal Tournament (original game from 1999, PC)
3) Deus Ex (PC)

as even though I'd HATE to lose Goldeneye, both UT and Deus Ex have superb mods which massively increase the replayability.

But why ask for three games? Why not eight or ten? That would make the choices much easier!

Consumption is good, creating is even better. So I'd be taking Game Maker or Construct 2 and have a ball making little games myself 😀

Man, only 3? That's a tough call.

I guess if I could only have 3, I'd want something where I could create my own games. That, and some 3D software and Painting/photo editing app.

So I guess my answer is actually zero games, but I'll make my own. And make art.
I don't care how cool the games are or how much you think you love them, if you've only got 3 you'll get sick of them.

But if I had to pick 3 actual games, I'd probably go Pinball Extreme, Falcon 4.0 and Nethack (or maybe Nethack/Falcon's Eye).

Diablo 2, Victoria 2, and possibly Team Fortress 2.

Very tough to narrow it down though the first pick is a pure gimme:
rFactor [1] - all glorious 47.2gb of installed mods of it

Shooting from the hip #2:
European Air War

#3 spot, shooting from the hip once more:
Quake 1 - with the cool Dark Places Engine enhancements

Top 3 most pained not to see in these picks?
Grand Prix Legends [hi-res mods]
Riven
HalfLife 1 - pick mostly likely to change on whim

Strike Fighters 2 with all known mods available for public
World Racing 2 with 30-40 gigs worth of mods
Modern remake of Stunts! (if there's actually any) or Trackmania United.

A TinyCore Distro 8GB USB drive with Dosbox and Munt installed and all my DOS games in their respective directories. 😁

Deadalus wrote:

Strike Fighters 2 with all known mods available for public
...

Good one there - definitely on the Jet Era shortlist.