100. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams (Black Forest Games, 2012)
Back in the '80s a little platformer called Great Giana Sisters launched, and while well-received, it was a pretty blatant clone of Super Mario Bros - so much so that Nintendo threatened legal action against its developers and it was quickly pulled from shelves. Well, over two decades later the franchise got a reboot with Twisted Dreams. A platformer where the player can flip between "Cute" and "Punk" mode to change the environment around them, swapping from a bright and sunny to a dark and grim world and changing up their own abilities accordingly. Punk Giana can zip around as a fireball to damage enemies, move about and ricochet through narrow corridors, while Cute Giana can twirl to slow her descent. A fun if fairly short game, and it even got a standalone expansion the following year called Rise of the Owlverlord.
99. MDK (Shiny Entertainment, 1997)
A downright manic action-shooter-platformer hybrid that could only have come to us from the company that created Earthworm Jim. The Giger-esque visuals and story about enormous alien mobile cities strip-mining the planet make it sound pretty grim and nightmarish on paper, but the quirky humor throughout adds plenty of levity, with shooting galleries of aliens that childishly taunt the player, clever moments like having to disguise yourself as a robot to sneak through a heavily guarded corridor, and hilarious powerups and weapons like "the World's Most Interesting Bomb" and "the Very Large Hamster Hammer".
98. Simcity (Maxis, 1989)
The story of Simcity is a famous one - Will Wright developed the top-down shooter "Raid on Bungeling Bay" for the Commodore 64, but had more fun designing maps and upgrading the editor than playing the game itself. Said maps were surprisingly intricate and realistically designed - there are plane runways and seaports, networks of roads and buildings, rivers and inlets, radar dishes tracking your movement and even boats ferrying supplies between the islands, so it made the game world feel more dynamic and alive than most top-down shooters. Eventually he expanded that idea into a full-fledged city planning and building simulation, and the end result was SimCity. It doesn't sound like a particularly fun game on paper - constructing your metropolis while managing crime, pollution, traffic, sim health, entertainment and land value - but its addictive design and random disastrous events like fires, floods, tornadoes and monster attacks kept it fresh and engaging. It has also since been made open-source (albeit under the name "Micropolis" due to copyright concerns) and ported to just about every platform imaginable, so you have no excuse not to check it out in some form
!
97. MegaRace (Cryo Interactive, 1993)
The FMV game genre had a resurgence in the 90s with the advent of CD technology, allowing developers to record and encode videos (usually in very low quality) and stick some gameplay on top of them to create "interactive movie games" (also generally of very low quality). MegaRace stands out from the pack, though, on the merits of its strong presentation. While the game itself is a fairly standard combat racer, having the player destroy all the other cars on the track before time runs out, it's wrapped in a dystopian space-age game show hosted by sleazy corporate stooge Lance Boyle (played by Christian Erickson). Through that, it paints a picture of a zombie-like populace permanently enamored by trashy TV, though with a sardonic and humorous tone that makes it quite an enthralling one to experience; not completely unlike Robocop. The great soundtrack by Stéphane Picq is certainly worth a listen in its own right too.
96. Diablo (Blizzard Entertainment, 1997)
Warcraft and Lost Vikings were fairly popular games in their time, but Diablo is the game that really put Blizzard on the map. Taking the concept of games like Rogue, adding an action bent and dousing the whole thing in a heavy grim atmosphere, it definitely awed people at a glance. It only became more immersive thanks to its fantastic soundtrack and a surprisingly good story with some high quality voice over, and the fact that you got a random shuffle of quests, items and spells each time you played lent it quite a bit of replay value. It had an official (though non-canon) expansion in Hellfire as well, adding in several new quests and three new playable classes (though you do have to do some file-editing to make them all accessible). While largely overshadowed by its sequel these days, Diablo is a historic game that is not to be missed.
95. Are You Afraid of the Dark? The Tale of Orpheo's Curse (Viacom New Media, 1994)
A tie-in to the Nickelodeon horror anthology show, which plays out much like an episode of it, even featuring the Midnight Society for the framing device around the story (with the player telling the Tale of Orpheo's Curse in hopes of becoming a member). The game itself is also a surprisingly good point-and-click adventure, with environments rendered from still photos and CGI, a lot of bizarre sights to see and some eerie music making for a creepy and tense experience. Even the acting in-game is surprisingly good and the puzzles actually make sense, so it's a good experience despite being a horror themed title for kids. Sadly it hasn't resurfaced on any digital platforms owing to licensing issues, but if you can find a copy it's a pretty fun adventure.
94. Kingsway (Andrew Morrish, 2017)
Roguelikes are definitely a hallmark of PC gaming, bringing a unique brand of challenge and staggering replayability that few other genres can even hope to match. I'm not the biggest fan, that said - they generally have to have a pretty unique hook to hold my attention for very long, otherwise it's just monster bashing with cheap deaths mixed in. Kingsway is one that certainly has a unique presentation, putting you at the helm of a Windows-95-esque operating system to travel about the world, manage your inventory and stats, accept quests (via a messaging app) and even play background music on a Winamp look-alike. Combat similarly has enemies pop up in windows that constantly move about the screen, with you having to hit buttons to attack, defend and use abilities, as well as evade their attacks (in the form of a popup that flies across the screen or arcs, simulating things like firing arrows or thrown bombs). A clever idea that's executed well, and the end result is some good tongue-in-cheek entertainment.
93. One Must Fall: 2097 (Diversions Entertainment, 1994)
Fighting games were definitely the hot genre throughout the '90s; Street Fighter II was a huge hit in the arcades, so everyone was trying to make their own similarly-styled fighters to cash in, sometimes quite successfully (Mortal Kombat and King of Fighters being two prominent examples). The PC didn't get too many well-received fighters of its own, but One Must Fall: 2097 definitely stood out from the pack. It had style to spare with its anime-inspired characters and story and smoothly-animated combatants, and quite a bit of gameplay variety - there were ten robots to choose from, each with their own sets of special moves and flashy combos, and your choice of pilot would tweak their parameters, changing up how they play. There were stage hazards too (like jets that fly overhead and bombard the arena with bullets), which definitely kept you on your toes. The game was released as freeware in 1999, so you can check it out for yourself at no cost.
92. VVVVVV (Terry Cavanagh, 2010)
An open-world platformer with some moody music, simplistic graphics reminiscent of early 8-bit computer games and some inventive mechanics that lend themselves to puzzle solving. By default you don't jump, but instead flip gravity for your character, so navigating environments is a bit more involved than you'd expect. Then the game throws challenges at you like bouncing surfaces, autoscrollers, wires that flip your gravity when you pass by them and wrapping screens (among many others), and you've got a game with quite a lot of variety and challenge despite its relatively short length. Of course, there's also extra challenge in hidden Trinkets to discover (some of which require some very honed skills) and a whole plethora of fan-created campaigns and levels to challenge you further.
91. Horizon's Gate (Rad Codex, 2020)
A
game that has been described by many as "Final Fantasy Tactics by way
of Uncharted Waters", and upon playing it, I can confirm that is indeed
the case. You build a character, take part in turn-based battles both
on foot and by sea, unlock new classes as the game progresses, and can
basically explore, trade or become a privateer at your leisure, taking
part in ship battles or legitimate business to earn loot for later
upgrades. Inventory management and item manipulation is simple as can
be too, using a keyboard-and-mouse interface that reminds me a bit of
the classic Ultimas. It's certainly not the deepest example of anything
it attempts to be, but it is a lot of fun, and really, that's what I
come to a game for anyway. Sacrilege, I know.
Warcraft and Lost Vikings were fairly popular games in their time, but Diablo is the game that really put Blizzard on the map. Taking the concept of games like Rogue, adding an action bent and dousing the whole thing in a heavy grim atmosphere, it definitely awed people at a glance. It only became more immersive thanks to its fantastic soundtrack and a surprisingly good story with some high quality voice over, and the fact that you got a random shuffle of quests, items and spells each time you played lent it quite a bit of replay value. It had an official (though non-canon) expansion in Hellfire as well, adding in several new quests and three new playable classes (though you do have to do some file-editing to make them all accessible). While largely overshadowed by its sequel these days, Diablo is a historic game that is not to be missed.
