1990s
43 games
Wolfenstein 3D
id Software recast the 1981 stealth game Castle Wolfenstein as a fast first person shooter spread through shareware epis...
Doom
The shareware phenomenon of 1993 put lightning fast first person carnage on millions of PCs. Deathmatch coined a word, i...
Quake
True polygonal 3D, colored lightmaps and internet native play made Quake the ancestor of the modern 3D engine. QuakeWorl...
GoldenEye 007
The licensed game that proved consoles belonged in first person. Four player split screen deathmatch defined late 90s li...
Half-Life
A tram ride into Black Mesa introduced seamless scripted storytelling where the scientist Gordon Freeman never speaks. T...
Super Mario World
The Super Famicom pack in sold over 20 million copies and hid a whole second quest in secret exits, ghost houses and the...
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sega needed an answer to Mario and Yuji Naka speed technology delivered attitude in blue. Green Hill Zone loops made the...
Super Mario 64
Nintendo solved 3D movement on day one of the Nintendo 64: analog control, a controllable camera and acrobatic moves ins...
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
The 16 bit refinement set the series grammar: master sword, parallel dark world, heart pieces and dungeon item loops. It...
Super Metroid
Atmosphere, sequence breaking depth and handcrafted ability gates made planet Zebes feel alive and lonely. Together with...
Tomb Raider
Lara Croft with dual pistols, tank controls and acrobatic ruin vaulting became a global icon and pushed 3D action advent...
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Z targeting solved 3D combat, ocarina songs built time travel puzzles, and horseback Hyrule earned a 99 Metacritic score...
The Secret of Monkey Island
Guybrush Threepwood wants to be a pirate, and insult swordfighting plus the SCUMM engine point and click interface carri...
Myst
Robyn and Rand Miller island of linking books became the killer application that sold CD-ROM drives, the best selling PC...
Shenmue
Yu Suzuki weather systems, daily NPC schedules and a Yokosuka you could inspect drawer by drawer cost a reported 47 mill...
Final Fantasy VI
A full ensemble cast with no single hero, an opera scene in 16 bit and Kefka, a villain who actually wins and breaks the...
Chrono Trigger
The dream team of Sakaguchi, Horii and Toriyama built time travel where choices echo across eras, with combo techs in ba...
Final Fantasy VII
Squaresoft bet on CD-ROM and won: three discs of pre rendered spectacle, chocobo breeding and the most famous plot death...
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Koji Igarashi inverted the Castlevania formula into an explorable gothic castle of ability gates, RPG stats and secrets....
Fallout
Interplay post apocalypse kept the 1950s optimism ads and buried the dread beneath them. SPECIAL builds, dark humor and ...
Baldurs Gate
BioWare Infinity Engine adaptation of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons revived party based CRPGs with real time with pause ...
Pokemon Red and Blue
Satoshi Tajiri collecting obsession met the Game Boy link cable and turned trading into a social phenomenon. Released in...
Diablo
Blizzard North click driven loot loop with random dungeons and Battle.net matchmaking made the action RPG a juggernaut. ...
Resident Evil
The Spencer mansion, tank controls and scarce ammo branded survival horror as both a term and a genre. The 1996 original...
Street Fighter II
The cabinet revived arcades worldwide, and a bug discovered in development turned into the combo system, a genre pillar....
Mortal Kombat
Digitized actors, blood and fatalities triggered the 1993 Senate hearings that created the ESRB rating board. Behind the...
Virtua Fighter
Yu Suzuki flat shaded polygons made the first 3D fighting game, deep enough that Japanese arcades studied its frame data...
Super Mario Kart
Mode 7 curves, item chaos and Battle Mode invented the kart racer, one of the most copied formulas in games. It became a...
Gran Turismo
Kazunori Yamauchi obsession put real handling physics and licensed cars into a console best seller with over 10 million ...
Civilization
Sid Meier loop of explore, expand, exploit and exterminate compressed human history into one more turn. The 4X genre and...
Dune II
Westwood distilled the spice war into mouse driven base building, harvesting and unit production lines: the real time st...
StarCraft
Blizzard balanced three asymmetric races into a sport that South Korea televised, with pro team houses and superstar pla...
Ultima Online
Thousands entered Lord British Britannia at once, with player housing, emergent economies and famously chaotic early day...
EverQuest
3D Norrath punished corpse runs and rewarded guild coordination, earning the nickname EverCrack for its grip on players....
Dance Dance Revolution
Four arrows and a steel pad turned arcade cabinets into dance floors and exercise machines. The global wave set the stag...
Metal Gear Solid
Psycho Mantis read your memory card and told you to move the controller, breaking the fourth wall on PlayStation. Cinema...
Lemmings
Players assign jobs like digging, blocking and building to a stream of mindless creatures to steer them safely to an exi...
Star Fox
Built with Argonaut Software, it used the Super FX chip inside the cartridge to render polygon 3D graphics on the Super ...
System Shock
Set on a space station run by the rogue artificial intelligence SHODAN, it blended first person action with role playing...
X-COM: UFO Defense
Julian Gollop and his brother Nick combined a global strategy layer with tense turn based squad combat against alien inv...
Command & Conquer
Westwood built on its earlier Dune II to deliver a polished real time strategy war between GDI and the Brotherhood of No...
Thief: The Dark Project
Players guide the master thief Garrett through a dark city using light, shadow and sound to stay hidden. Rather than fig...
Tony Hawks Pro Skater
A two minute timer, open skate parks and a punk and hip hop soundtrack made skateboarding tricks addictive for a mass au...