The 150 best Games of All Time (1996 edition)

I came across this gem that was originally published by PC Gamer in 1996 while looking up a game called The Sword of Fargoal (a roguelike game before there was a rogue). It came up as #147

http://www.cdaccess.com/html/pc/150best.htm

Note that Ultima IV comes up as #2 after Civilization.

You can look at this list and see what would move up and what would go down. I mean, Red Baron at #4 and C&C at 58? Did they even play Red Baron?

There are quite a few RPG's on the list.

That's a real good list over all genres.

Zork before Wizardly 1? Zork was awful and Wizardary was awesome for the time. I can still type Tiltowait in .1 seconds. Doom was the first game that ever made me jump. I remember thinking, "That was awesome!".

#1 should be Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries. BEST GAME EVER MADE! Civ I didn't like at all. Duke Nuken 3D should be at #2 or 3. Best game ever for playing when coming back from the bars while at college. Modem to modem baby! I totally sucked playing it while drunk FYI.

Ultima 3 at 144? Whatever …

I didn't see the original Scorched Earth on the list. The list is now irrelevant.

Watch out you lose a lot of points when you say you don't like Civilization.

surprised to see U3 way down the list too.

As for Duke Nukem - keep in mind it just came out at the time of the writing so I think there was some early bias against it from iD fans. It was more popular than Quake after all…

But hate Zork? Zork was a mainframe game from the 70's after all so when you defend Wiz1 against it with "awesome for the time" remember bringing it to the PC required three separate programs.

Am I missing something or does this list really not have System Shock on it? Hard to take it seriously if that's the case…

Elite is missing, too - nevertheless I found some good memories in the list.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Am I missing something or does this list really not have System Shock on it? Hard to take it seriously if that's the case…

Number 98.

Oh look, War in Russia! That game was great fun! And yes, Zork deserves to be pretty high on the list. The lack of Planetfall, though…

Ultima 4 and #2 and Ultima 3 at #144!? That really is strange. I guess some folks don't like being attacked by the floor?

Mechwarrior mercs came out right at the end of 96 so that is probably why it didn't make the list as this was back in magazine days.

Looks like a pretty solid list and I would like to think some of the glaring oversights are due to it being a lot harder to gather info back in those days. No WC: Privateer?

It didn't come out until 1997, but a great title that never gets mentioned in these lists is the Myth series.

Myth: The Fallen Lords
Myth II: Soulblighter
Myth III: The Wolf Age

I only ever played the first one though, none of the others ever played on any of my machines and even the first one wouldn't load on XP even.

It is a strange list as I thought they were excluding series but they are obviously not. Civilization 2 was released before this list came out and I thought that was far superior to the first and it is not even on the list. Also no Pool of Radiance or really any Gold Box games but at least they got Wasteland. I guess Meridian 59 wasn't out yet or out long enough to be considered. (Also not sure if its really limited to just DOS/Windows, if so where is pacman, pong, …)

If people were to vote today on the top 150 games through 1996, I'm thinking the ordering would be very different. Doom would probably #1 with the Action crowd trumping up the grandfather of the genre.