Scorched Earth

Scorched Earth arrived on MS-DOS in 1991, written by Wendell Hicken. It was subtitled "The Mother of All Games," a claim that felt true to anyone who played it. The core mechanic was simple: up to 10 players (human or AI) took turns, each adjusting a tank's angle and power to lob projectiles across a destructible 2D mountainous landscape, accounting for wind and gravity. Between rounds, you spent your earnings in a shop stocked with ordinary weapons (Baby Missile, Napalm) and gloriously absurd ones (MIRV, Death's Head, Funky Bomb, Tracer Rounds), plus defenses like shields and parachutes.

The game distributed via shareware—BBSes, floppy disks, and eventually the early internet. No installation, minimal system requirements, and infinite replayability made it a cultural touchstone for PC gaming in the early 1990s. The destruction model was revolutionary for its era: terrain deformed permanently, turning the map into a scarred battlefield as the game went on.

Scorched Earth is the spiritual ancestor of Worms and the direct heir to earlier artillery games like Tank Wars, and a contemporary of QBasic's Gorillas. But it was the weapon shop and the sheer comedic payload variety that made it legendary. A single match could run for hours with eight players bickering over angles and wind, firing off a Napalm strike into someone's tank, and erupting into arguments about whose turn it really was.

The game's legacy in multiplayer PC gaming is immense: it proved that a simple mechanic, executed with polish and humor, could create something endlessly replayable. Decades later, people still fire up Scorched Earth emulated copies for a single nostalgic night of hot-seat chaos.