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Lead a tribe from one settler through several thousand years of history, one turn at a time, in the 1991 MicroProse game that Computer Gaming World called "more addictive than crack" and then named the best game ever made. Civilization II (1996) is the version most people lost their nights to.
Westwood's 1995 real-time strategy war between the UN's GDI and Kane's Brotherhood of Nod, told in live-action cutscenes shot in spare rooms with Westwood's own staff. The 1996 prequel Red Alert added the Soviets and Frank Klepacki's "Hell March." Three million copies, and a name that became shorthand for the whole genre.
![Video thumbnail — Commander Keen 1 (1991, MS-DOS) - Marooned on Mars (Full Longplay)[720p60]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YUyQSfKRU1w/maxresdefault.jpg)
Billy Blaze, age eight, in a football helmet and red sneakers, pogo-sticking across Mars in the 1990 shareware platformer that gave the PC the smooth, console-style scrolling it had never managed. The team that made it at night on borrowed Softdisk computers used the royalty checks to found id Software.
Racing, but with machine guns. DeathTrack put you on a futuristic circuit where winning meant crossing the line first — or being the only car left that could. Prize money went straight into bigger weapons, and the next city's grid found out.
"The Mother of All Games"—a turn-based artillery tank battler where physics, wind, and an absurd weapon shop turned a single shared keyboard into hours of hot-seat chaos and sudden laughter.
Strap into a cockpit on the carrier Tiger's Claw and fly against the Kilrathi — cat-faced aliens in a war the game dared to let you lose. Wing Commander was World War II in space on a 1990 PC, and it made every other game on the shelf suddenly look cheap.
![Video thumbnail — Wolfenstein 3D - Episode 1: Escape From Castle Wolfenstein - Floor 1 (E01L01) [MS-DOS]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jND1EBIe-aQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
May 1992: Apogee uploads id Software's free first episode to the bulletin boards and the PC learns to run and gun in first person. Escape Castle Wolfenstein as B.J. Blazkowicz, shoot everything in a uniform, find the hidden Pac-Man level, order the rest by mail. The "grandfather of 3D shooters" and the game that proved shareware was a business.