Gaming on the PC has a long and storied history full of great titles, including the rise and fall of fantastic companies and innovation that kept the industry moving forwards. While some of the games released before the turn of the millenium have aged a little badly thanks to low resolutions or a lack of accessibility options, some have stood the test of time.

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These titles may have very loyal fanbases or have gameplay that just works too well to ignore. Some still have vibrant modding communities and some have even been rebuilt from the ground up to run on modern machines. All of them remain blasts from the past.

10 Myst (1993)

Once the best-selling PC game of all time until The Sims came along, Myst is one of the most iconic puzzle games to have ever been released. Myst deals with a mysterious magical book that transports the player to a deserted island full of puzzles.

What was unique about this game was the way it told its story. The player only learns about themselves through interaction with the game's sparse NPCs and the journals and letters found across the game. With rereleases and ports aplenty, Myst is easily accessible for players who wish to revisit this classic.

9 Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings (1999)

Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition Walled Settlement Under Attack

Following on from the successful Age of Empires, Age of Empires 2 builds upon the original's features and crafts a brand new strategic experience that captivated fans. Set in the medieval period with diverse scenarios based on historical figures, Age of Empires 2 can lay claim to many fans' interest in history.

This real-time strategy game also featured robust single-player and multiplayer modes that got many hooked into the genre. A remake with the subtitle 'Definitive Edition' can now be bought on Steam for those still hankering for that old-school cool.

8 Theme Hospital (1997)

theme hospital top down view of hospital with staff and patients

The only things a management simulation game really needs to be successful, it seems, are great coding and a dash of humor. At least, that's what Theme Hospital seemed to prove. Full to the brim with British humor and bright, clean graphics, this game is as appealing as it is satisfying.

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Training the player to tackle not only the problems of their patients but the problems of their staff, Theme Hospital typified the simulation games where players have to keep a lot of numbers steady and a lot of people happy. These days, the game still plays brilliantly, but fans will definitely want to seek out CorsixTH, an open-source HD remake that works as long as the player owns the game legally.

7 Diablo (1997)

Diablo player entering a dungeon and fighting skeletons

Diablo has given gamers days upon days of gameplay over the many years since its publication. While Diablo 2 remains more of a cult classic than the original, it cannot be ignored that Diablo codified many of the features that loot-based games use today, such as color-coded rarities and incremental, skill point-based progression.

While the game can be a little bit of a chore to get running today on more modern machines, there is still an active community of modders that have released bug-fixes, graphical enhancements, and even huge overhauls that mean the looting never stops.

6 Dungeon Keeper (1997)

Dungeon Keeper dungeon heart gold seam treasure room

Taking aspects of management games and mixing them with the real-time strategy genre was already going to be a recipe for success, but Bullfrog went ahead and made the player the bad guy for maximum cool points. Dungeon Keeper has the player taking the role of an evil overlord who must amass an army of miscreants to attack heroes and rival keepers.

The game started off a mini-genre of its own, with spiritual successors like War for the Overworld and the Dungeons franchise gaining great success as a result. Today though, the original is still a tight gameplay experience that can be enhanced by utilizing the free fan expansion pack, KeeperFX which improves gameplay and graphics.

5 The Curse of Monkey Island (1997)

the curse of monkey island

Guybrush Threepwood got quite the graphical overhaul on his move from Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's revenge to this game. The Curse of Monkey Island sees the wannabe pirate accidentally lay a curse on his own wife and travel across multiple islands to find the cure.

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Chock full of charming humor, memorable characters, a beautiful soundtrack, and the genuinely engaging puzzles that LucasArts was famous for, The Curse of Monkey Island is a highlight of the genre.

4 X-COM: Terror From The Deep (1995)

X-Com Terror From the deep split image geoscape earth and mission at an alien base

Hot on the heels of the frightening and popular X-COM: UFO Defense, X-COM: Terror from the Deep sent players underwater fighting devious aliens in terrifying locales. The game is pretty much an expansion pack to the original but still plays wonderfully with the series standards. Underwater skirmishes are more claustrophobic, and the fleshed-out lore is very entertaining.

Playing this and the original today are easy feats thanks to wide accessibility on internet storefronts. Despite this, it is highly recommended to make use of OpenXCOM and its plethora of bug fixes to make sure players have the smoothest experience.

3 Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (1999)

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri sea settlement

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri takes the gameplay of Civilization and shoots it 4.367 light-years into the sky. This game is a standard 4X game (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) set on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system where the player takes control of one of a set of leaders who each exemplify a certain philosophy, such as capitalism or religious enlightenment.

What makes this game so interesting is how well thought-0ut everything is, from the lore in the research tree to the different ways the players can interact with the planet (and the ways the planet can interact with the players). While Firaxis released Civilization: Beyond Earth in 2014 as a spiritual successor, many fans still prefer the original for the attention to detail and nostalgia factor.

2 Doom (1993)

The big daddy of all First-Person Shooters, Doom is iconic for so many reasons. With players taking the role of a space marine with just a smidge too much bloodlust, Doom remains a significant part of gaming history for thousands upon thousands.

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Doom's legacy is well-known and well-documented, and the franchise is still churning out hits to this day. It seems that the world of gaming caught the demon-killing bug back in 1993 and never recovered, and with scores of mods and overhauls available for players to download, the game will also always be fresh.

1 RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999)

Roller Coaster Tycoon theme park with rides and roller coasters

Theme parks are like skydiving and the Pamplona Bull Run, in that they can be a lot more fun to view through a screen than in real life, and this is proved by the unmitigated success of RollerCoaster Tycoon and its spiritual successors. Running a park is no mean feat but players have such a wide variety of tools and options that it's easy to spend hours on it.

Somehow, the combination of building rollercoasters, decorating the park, and even picking out the color of the umbrellas sold to customers in the rain just works amazingly. Beautiful colors and simple, clean graphics don't hurt, either. The game is so well-built that even today it can be difficult to move on to more modern titles. This is made even harder with the existence of the OpenRCT2 Project which is yet another open-source HD remake of the game that works with legit copies of RollerCoaster Tycoon and its sequel.

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