This is top 3 of the games I enjoyed/played the most within a specific decade of my life and obviously are subjective to whatever games I had access to/what consoles I had along with whatever my specific tastes and interests were at that given point in my life etc, etc, etc. It is also not based on release of game but on the time of my life in which I played them.
During this decade is when a legitimate obsession with games began and I fell in love with them.
On television CNet did a segment on the multiplayer component of Quake and how Clans and Clanring/its tournaments were becoming a unique phenomenon. I was hooked to the concept of playing FPS (A genre I already loved) competitively with others and most of all to the concept of making friends across the world doing so. I became obsessed with this game to an extent that it would be hard to argue it wasn't unhealthy but I cannot deny the memories of those teenage days are still fond to me.
I already loved Street Fighter II but couldn't get into playing against others because of how crowded arcades were and how hard it was just to get in some decent training and consistently play against people. In highschool our local gas station had this game. My best friend and I soon found ourselves playing it for hours every day both before and after school with a good half dozen other people regularly.
I enjoyed this game's single player a little bit but what really drew me in was multiplayer functionality using Kali on DOS. I believe this is the first game I ever played online and it was before the introduction of Windows 95 and the game itself didn't even support online play. Kali was required so as to convince the game that online matches were over LAN.
While I would probably have dropped the game had I solely been dependent on the online component, I eventually found myself literally addicted to making custom maps and multi-map scenarios that I would either convince my Father to play through or play against my friends on.
