Gaming

I cannot remember the name but you got to choose between a boy character and a girl character and each stage you had to get all the collectibles to open the door. It was a 2d platformer as well.
Edit: Turns out the game is called Word Rescue.

ZZT was an amazing game where you could make your own games and program "objects" using a simple scripting language. It was my first programming language.

It was Tim Sweeney's first game. I've never played Fortnight.

Dangerous Dave. I think it was the first ever DOS game that I got to play. I like good platformers.

Doom, Duke Nukem 3d, Zak McKraken and the alien mindbenders, One Must Fall 2097

I got into ZZT, a "topdown" 2d game with its own map editor and even a rudimentary scripting language. Stumbled on it because I wanted to make games. People made some seriously impressive shit on that thing and its successors.

cosmo's cosmic adventure, hocus pocus, the lost vikings, prince of persia. oh shit i miss those days

Tyrian. Vertical shooter with top-notch visuals for the time, a ton of secrets, good replay value and an amazing soundtrack (with a jukebox mode)

Gabriel Knight 1, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Sam and Max, Grim Fandango, Quest for Glory 4.

Not to be the hispter, but my fav. is a very niche game called "Het Yogo Yogo Spel", it's a promotional game for a drink in the Netherlands. for some reason i have such strong nostalgic feelings for it, i really loved playing it as a kid and even more as an adult because it reminds me of that time so much. and no, it's not an amazing platformer (not bad either) but man...

Wolfenstein 3D, my first ever PC game

my dad gave me a floppy disk from one of his coworkers with instructions on how to navigate and run the game from DOS and I felt like a hacker lol

One of my favourite DOS games was One Must Fall 2097. It’s a fighting game with giant robots piloted by humans (similar to Pacific Rim). I really appreciated the diversity in design and move set for the different robots, and it had a killer main theme.

Crusader: No Remorse/No Regret

Sometimes I wish they made an FPS reboot, then I remember EA owns it.

Not to seem basics but basically any of the SCUMM games

Star Wars: TIE Fighter was my favorite. Learning how to run the game from DOS and figuring out the joystick controls are great memories of that first computer my family ever had.

Basing it on time played, probably Doom II.

Magic Carpet was my favorite dos game I think, that or Loom.

Magic Carpet had you flying around on a Carpet, blasting fireballs at snake things, collecting mana orbs, building castles, and destroying castles of the enemy.

Loom was a Lucas Arts game where you played as a "can't look at the face of" mystical weaver of reality.. Dude under a robe with a Hoodie. You pick up a Magic staff, learn combo's of letters to play on the staff (I had a little notebook next to me with them all written down) and the game got absolutely wild. Fabric of reality breaking sorta wild.

I remember playing a lot of Stunts, trying to beat the track times and designing tracks with many loops and jumps and some more jumps and loops... I think I spent more time in the editor than driving.

They have it at the Internet Archive!

I never had a DOS computer back then and only played a few games through emulators in recent years. It has to be DOOM for me.

Ultima 6. It was Baldur's Gate before Baldur's Gate, and it had very deep conversation and morality systems. Also amazing VGA graphics (for the time, 256 colors!) interesting PC Speaker AND Sound Blaster music, and an interesting open world and story that showed that preconceived notions and prejudices can be bad, and that sometimes you can solve cultural misunderstandings through communication and sharing instead of conflict.

Ultima 6 was a masterpiece and way ahead of its time. If any of the Ultima games needs a remake, it's that one, imo. I also played Goblins 2, but never got around to 1 or 3. Did enjoy it, but got stuck on some puzzles and gave up. You couldn't just go online and find a solution like you can nowadays. If I ever got back into the Goblins series, I probably would finish them using those online hints though. I've lost the patience (and more importantly, time) to do it the hard way nowadays.

Wing Commander 2. My Dad sourced it and the manual was a B&W photocopy. It took ages to get onto it sometimes as the photocopy was so bad I'd be unable to decipher what letter 6 on line 8 of page 10 was.

I didn't play it on DOS, though it also saw a DOS release, but Syndicate would be high on my list.

Carmageddon was a late DOS release that I liked.

I never did actually get around to The Ancient Art of War, though I did want to play that.

I didn't play it on DOS, though it saw a DOS release, but the original Sim City aged pretty well.

Star Command was my favorite. Loved recruiting crew members, buying and upgrading ships, and going around the galaxy to complete missions. It's the game that got me hooked on RPGs as a kid

I'll always have a soft spot for Jazz Jackrabbit.

Sid Meier's covert action. Absolutely amazing spy game with lots of minigames and a randomly generated hierarchy of bad guys to catch every mission. Really want a remaster but I don't think I'm getting one.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. Still amazing to this day.

DOOM

Duke Nukem 3D, absolutely no question whatsoever. The first game I played that had environments that aped real life and had real life levels of interaction detail... Light switches, CCTV cameras, so much incidental detail and environmental transformation. No other game had done that to the same extent before then and I'd argue that no other game has done it since!

Master of Magic. Still spin it up sometimes. It is a Civilisation clone only with magic.

It's gotta be DOOM! The first game to introduce me to PC Gaming outside of Minesweeper and Solitaire!

Dune 2

rise of the triad has got to be a classic for me. it was the best when the guards would drop to their knees and beg you to spare them

Prince of Persia. I guess that was also the first DOS game I played...🤔

Commander Keen 1: Marooned on Mars. I got it from a demo disc or floppy in a book from the library.