Wing Commander helped define a clear line between PC and console gaming, with a moderate level of complexity and Hollywood-style production values possible only on the Personal Computer. Yes, there was the SNES port. It sucked without a joystick.

Still some of the best turn-based strategy you can find, if you can break the copy protection.

Indiana Jones is a great adventure game that captures the character of Dr. Indiana Jones. If LucasArts did a remake and sold this as a downloadable title, they'd have a surplus of hats made of money.

Sleeper hit of the DOS era. If you play one game that requires you to allocate over 600k of memory...

Syndicate is reminiscient of X-Com, in where you control a squad of dudes who generally go around shooting at things until life works out in their favor. There's resource development, territory to conquer, the whole deal. Except it's real-time, there's no sympathy for people with slow mousing skills and no hope for most folks who reach the last level. It was madHard. Like last boss in Final Fantasy IV hard.

Stunts was a racing gem back in its day, with an unrivaled track editor which amounted to infinite replayability. For 15 year olds anyways. Creating practically satanic courses for your friends to race on was devilishly fun, especially when they'd phone you up afterwards, cursing your name and vowing to create one assuredly more evil. 4 loopty-loops in a row for the win!

The first flight sim for pretty much everyone born around 1977, Red Baron was the reason to go over to your friend's house and use his computer. Sure, you were going to play Axis and Allies together and stay up late to watch Saturday Night Live or whatever, but truth is you were waiting for him to just fall asleep so you could spend the entire night on the new PC his Dad just bought (4 megs of RAM!!!!) and shoot down Gerries.

I only got so far with this one. The sandworms made me paranoid. Still, recognized as a classic that did for the PC what Herzog Zwei never did for consoles, really: define the real-time strategy genre.

While some would say the sequel, Silveball, took it to the limit, I'm here to tell you that there really hasn't been a pinball game as fun as Epic Pinball since. Also, built entirely in Assembly. I just heard that somewhere. *oontz oontz oontz*

Poor Wing Commander. X-Wing pretty much brought to life every Star Wars fan's dream, after which flying around in Rapiers or whatever they're called just seemed silly. Killing that first Tie Fighter and watching in disbelief as it split apart exactly as you'd imagined was a magic moment, which is only marginally diminished by anything George Lucas has done since 1997.

Another Holy Moses title. The initial demo for this game was released about 2 years into the title's development. It was god awful. 2 or so years later, this thing came out, which played completely different from the crappy demo. And holy moses, was it amazing. It captured what people expected from being able to control massive walking battletanks. It also had a killer sound track that warranted sticking the game cd in your car stereo, skipping the horrendous sound created by the first track and then driving around town like a huge flipping nerd to your videogame bassgasm.

This is the only flight sim I've ever played that allows cooperative play as pilot and copilot. This amounted to flying around at 2 frames per second over a 2400 baud modem, one player controlling the plane and shooting things, the other sitting in the back scanning for targets on tiny multi-function displays and assigning locks for enemy ground units. It was flipping awesome.

I received my first computer virus ever through this game, thanks to someone loaning me the floppies back in the day. He didn't know it had a virus, or that it came from his computer after he ran diskcopy a: a:. It was then that I realized that STDs were probably spread in the same fashion--you get excited about something with someone else, and amidst all that excitement, boom you got the nasty. Better hope it's something F-Prot can cure. Oh, and Warcraft was awesome.

An amazing, realistic RPG. If you're harvesting abandonware, this is a great find.

In 1992, Spectrum Holobyte inadvertently trained approximately 5 million thirteen year-olds to be technically competent with piloting the U.S. F-16A Falcon. Despite puberty weighing on their attention, this army of child Falcon drivers managed to consume the 300 page game manual and complete missions on the hardest difficulty level. So what if Jenny from second period likened you as a brother to her--Falcon 3.0's faithful representation of the bird's fly-by-wire controls guaranteed an intimate experience with enemy surface-to-air missiles every time. In the event of massive layoffs in the Air Force, we stand ready. Just don't ask us to land after take off.

A polished dungeon crawler in its day, Eye of the Beholder II was the best D&D game prior to Baldur's Gate.

Doom took the next bold step in First Person Shooters with the introduction of stairs and rocket launchers.

The last good game John Romero was involved with, pretty much ever.

"Safe and secure!" World of Xeen is a combination of two games, Clouds of Xeen and Darkside of Xeen, which in themselves were designed to function together by allowing the player to travel to either part of Xeen if both games were installed on the same pc. Definitely an engrossing RPG that could so go for a remake with a modern 3d engine.

This game is funny, clever, and way better than any Space Quest game. Well, maybe Vohaul's Revenge gives it a run for it's money. What's up with "Badguyname's Revenge" in the title and a game being actually good?

Any game that lets you die in the first 30 secs through typing "GET BROOM" deserves some serious mention.

The one and only game my father ever played with me. After failing to educate him on every possible weapon available (how many were there, 50???), he called shenanigans after being dominated by a massive rain of MIRVs, vowing to never again play videogames. Going on 15 years, his promise stands. What could have been, if not for Scorched Earth? A father and son, bonding over some Tiger Woods 09? Who can say!

By today's standards, this game probably sucks. However, before the advent of fancy pants, fully-3d game engines, you were working for John Connor in the wastes of Los Angeles, fleeing from Hunter Killers by hauling ice at 90 degree angles. It nailed how it will definitely feel when we're staring at the business end of a plasma cannon wielded by one of our cyborg oppressors.

The Cro-Magnon of tactical combat games, Sentinel Worlds 1 (was there a 2? I don't know) combined elements of sci-fi and magic to...man, honestly, I can barely remember this game, but I remember it being dope as crap. It reminded me of the movie Aliens, except with really cruddy graphics. Not recommended, but I feel it's worth the mention for those who are as hardcore as I am. *deposits a portion of his 40 oz onto the sidewalk*

While it might look goofy by today's standards, the original Alone in the Dark was creepy for its time and was a precursor to a new genre of games called Survivor Horror. Also, don't bother trying to escape the house by opening the front door. Not a real good move, not at all.

I think this was for DOS, wasn't it? I can't remember crap these days. Was yesterday Tuesday? Still kind of fun to play and look at, with a unique art style partially dictated by the limitations on 3D graphics at the time.

Nothing George Lucas can do will ever tarnish the perfection that is Tie Fighter. Hopefully The Force Unleashed won't poose out but instead recreate the feeling of dark satisfaction found only in working as the Emperor's Hand. Happy Tarek?