Prince of Persia. I guess that was also the first DOS game I played...🤔
Dune 2
Edit: I actually forgot about Commander Keen. That's THE platform game of my childhood.
Commander Keen: Episode 4 was the first game I remember vividly enough and there was always one bit I could never get past or figure out what to do next!
Someone else remembers Crystal Caves! I must’ve played that game dozens of times before I got my first proper gaming console.
That, and Lemmings.
Loom and the other games written for that platform can now be run by the modern Scummvm, if you have the data files.
Gog.com currently has Loom on sale for $2.09. IIRC they have something rigged up to run it on modern systems, though I don't recall if it's Scummvm or some sort of DOS emulation environment.
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)
This is the one. I've been playing Tyrian2k for decades. Honestly I still haven't found a shmup this good. And all the secrets! I remember looking up all the codes to type into the title screen back in the day. Had a sheet printed out and everything haha. It's freeware nowadays if anyone wants to try it. It's also on GOG for like 5 bucks if that's more your thing. Also check out opentyrian2k. It's essentially an enhanced version ported to modern PCs.
Tyrian was great! And also Tyrian 2000 which I was able to play somewhere. Maybe Gametap or some similar service. I remember trying it out as shareware (I think) and thinking it was Epic Games' best published shooter to date. Still holds up, imo.
I loved the upgrades and the fact that you had a health bar instead of a 1 hit kill. Plus all the stuff you said.
Tyrian's data was made freeware, and a modern open-source reimplementation that can use the data was done.
On Debian Linux, it's in apt as opentyrian.
Gotta be TIE Fighter. X-Wing was great too, but TIE Fighter scored extra novelty points for letting us play as Imperials.
TIE Fighter! It's the reason I really got into gaming, PC gaming specifically. Mario on NES and such were fun, but TIE Fighter was the first game I'd spend all day at school thinking about and then spend all afternoon and all weekend playing. It's on Steam and GOG and has aged really well.
Kudos to Sid Meier's Gettysburg, too.
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!
cosmo's cosmic adventure, hocus pocus, the lost vikings, prince of persia. oh shit i miss those days
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.
For me it has to be Quake. I was a bit too late for DOOM, but before then I was playing as a child on the Sega Megadrive (Sega Genesis for my US pals) and going from the Megadrive graphics and gameplay to Quake...
I think that was the first time I was absolutely addicted to a game. Like, I was pretending to delete the game and hiding it using Explorer's hide folder mode so I could secretly sneak some Quake in here and there.
Absolutely love that game.
I will cheat a little but pretty I love whole Commander Keen series of games
Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty, but I'll give Wolfenstein 3D an honorable mention.
I'll always have a soft spot for Jazz Jackrabbit.
UFO: Enemy Unknown was a pretty great game for its time.
Quake 2 was insane. I remember crazy lan parties with my pals. You just had to type a simple command to launch the server (no special configuration needed) and then just launch the client on the PCs and that was it.
The Dig! It's my favourite LucasArts adventure game, and I still play it to this day every so often. Never stops being highly enjoyable, even though I've memorized the puzzles and story.
Highly recommend it to anyone who likes point-and-click adventure games! It's on Steam for super cheap (I think it's on Gog.com too).
The Dig is great! Not my favourite 90s adventure but definitely underrated.
Without a doubt Jazz Jackrabbit. JJ1&2 still hold up better than the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Sonic games.
Gabriel Knight 1, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Sam and Max, Grim Fandango, Quest for Glory 4.
Master of Magic. Still spin it up sometimes. It is a Civilisation clone only with magic.
Yes, that was my favorite strategy game of that time. I tried to recreate the experience by playing Age of Wonders, but it didn't quite feel the same.
Slitherine released a remake of it late last year. Haven't tried it myself, but the reviews seem decent.
Not to seem basics but basically any of the SCUMM games
I only ever played Full Throttle, but damn I loved the music in that game!
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.
I loved the theme so much. The composer of the theme was surprised by the popularity and did an update/remake of it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvlVaQl7kEk
Most people named a lot of the games I would have, so I'm gonna give a shout out to probably the first proper video game I ever played: Mixed Up Mother Goose. Can still remember slowly walking around, trying to figure out what the shit was going on lol.
Dangerous Dave. I think it was the first ever DOS game that I got to play. I like good platformers.
Lots of good shouts here, but I'll add one that I haven't seen: The original Master of Orion. 4X, but in SPAAAAAAAAAAACE
Commander Keen 1: Marooned on Mars. I got it from a demo disc or floppy in a book from the library.
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!
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
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.
Daggerfall sherly, but I gotta add that I didn't grow up on DOS games so I don't have quite the expertise. Although I love older games, growing up with it is a different thing.
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.
One Must Fall or 3D Battle Chess
Could not tell you how many hours my brother and I spent taking turns playing Wacky Wheels
A lot of great games have already been mentioned but one of my favorite early gaming experiences was Kaptajn Kaper, a Danish game released in the 80s. You're a pirate captain sailing around Denmark after the battle of Copenhagen in 1807 looking for English ships to plunder. Most people around my age with an interest in computers remember it fondly and apparently, the source code was donated to the Royal Library for preservation as a part of Danish cultural heritage, which is pretty cool.
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...
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.
It's gotta be DOOM! The first game to introduce me to PC Gaming outside of Minesweeper and Solitaire!