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Posted by: Caleb Welty at Sep. 22, 2010 1:00 pm

The 90's were the glory days of PC gaming, when 3D was invented, adventure was valued and complex RPGs were loved. Now that we are more than ten years out from this hallowed time, we've decided we need a healthy dose of nostalgia! And what better way to revel in that nostalgia than multiple top ten lists? So with that in mind, we've put together the top ten PC games of 1990...the first in a ten part series.

Click on through and remember PC gaming at its best!It was the end of the Cold War, the beginning of the Gulf War. It was the year Jim Henson, Ava Gardner, and Sammy Davis Jr died. It was the first year of the greatest decade of PC Games we've ever seen and probably will ever see.

We love PC Games. This platform has the best role-playing, adventure, real-time strategy, and 3D games. The platform lends itself to genres with complex control schemes...and so while plenty of these games have been ported to consoles, they just aren't the same. And we haven't even mentioned the massive multiplayer games, which owe everything they have to the PC.

But the PC's biggest asset is also its Achilles heel. Computers can be upgraded faster and easier than any console could hope for. And yet that constant upward mobility in hardware also means that gaming on the computer is far more expensive than on a console.

The 90's glory days of PC gaming are over, though the platform isn't nearly as dead as some would have you believe. Now more than ten years out, we think it's about time for a healthy dose of nostalgia! This is a top ten list of incredible games...and we spent a lot of time analyzing these rankings. A lot of you probably don't agree, and we don't really care because it's our list and this is how we remember 1990.

10. Pharaoh's Tomb

Developed by George Broussard (or is it Broussad?)and published by Apogee, Pharaoh’s Tomb was released during the glory days of shareware. A game almost as famous for its developer misspelling his own name as for its gameplay, Pharaoh’s Tomb is an incredibly difficult game. Most of that difficulty can be attributed to the instant death of your character anytime you touched a trap, enemy, etc.

Designed with Indiana Jones in mind, Nevada Smith is an assistant with a grudge. Tired of being left off the fun trips, he steals a treasure map from the professor he helps...and the rest, as they say, is history.

A basic puzzle game, you start with five lives and a handful of spears and a little courage. With care and precision you must navigate labyrinth-like pyramids, avoiding the booby traps and predictable enemies. By predictable, we mean that they move from point A to point B over and over and over. So the key to winning is timing.

One odd design is that enemies are displayed with bounding boxes. What this means is that you have to imagine a box around the enemy if you don’t want it to touch you, and you don’t. You young whippersnappers may not remember games like that, but such are the difficulties of the old days when games had to be played with punch cards...while it was snowing.

9. Eye of the Beholder

SSI use to be one of our favorite companies. Although they had the tendency to get greedy and go for quantity over quality, they still put out some of the best strategy and role-playing games of all time. They were particularly well known in the 1980s when they purchased the video game license for Advanced Dungeon and Dragons, which was the inspiration for Eye of the Beholder. Because it was published by SSI and developed by Westwood Studies, you might think Eye of the Beholder is one of those typical early ‘90s RPG clones made by now-defunct companies. Well the company might have tanked, but this game was an absolute gem.

To set the stage, the city of Waterdeep has a major problem - there is something evil rising up beneath it and they need someone to take care of it. So they commission a band of adventurers to go down into their sewers in pursuit. No sooner do they enter the sewers than the tunnel collapses and their only way forward is down into dark... this is where you come in. After making your way through the sewer you find a dwarf city, then a drow (that’s dark elves for the none AD&D people) city, and then finally the lair of the evil beholder. If all goes well, you successfully defeat the beholder and emerge from the underworld as a hero. Ok, so the storyline is the weakest part of the game.

A first-person dungeon crawler, Eye of the Beholder was one of the first RPGs with a point-and-click interface that was simple to use. It was also non-linear in that you could retrace your steps, take multiple paths, and skip entire levels. But the most impressive part was how engaging the creepy atmosphere was, due to the superb graphics and music. Heck, we can still remember the haunting sounds of monsters just out of sight.

8. Commander Keen

Ever heard of that company id Software? The one that made Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake? Oh, you didn’t realize they made 2D platformers that seemed geared more towards kids than gamers? Maybe it’s because their name was spelled ID Software at the time, but whatever the reason you’ve missed out one of PC Gaming’s legendary series.

Back in the late 80’s the guys who would eventually become id Software discovered a neat little trick that would allow platformers to smoothly scroll on PCs. They decided to create complete clone of Super Mario Brothers 3 with the hopes that Nintendo would pay them to port them over to the PC. Of course, that dream had about as much chance of succeeding as pigs do of flying and even though they received a hearty clap on the back from Nintendo, the guys were on their own. Fortunately, Apogee (that mega shareware company from the earlier 90s) saw the potential and after an initial investment of $2000 and three months of hard work by id, the rest of the world had Commander Keen.

Commander Keen was an episodic cartoonish side-scroller heavy on humor. The episodes featured references to relevant pop-culture, slapstick humor (such as mooning the player), and even introduced everyone to the infamous dopefish, which is the second dumbest creature in the universe. The game features an eight year-old boy named Billy Blaze who creates his own spaceship out of common household objects. Using this spaceship he travels around the galaxy fighting Vorticons and saving our planet with the help of rayguns, a pogo stick and flower power...although not always all at the same time.

Strangely enough, one of our strongest memories from this series is the built-in Pong game called Paddle War. It was accessed through Keen’s wrist watch.

7. Red Baron

Once upon a time people actually played games with a joystick (please keep your minds on the subject at hand...darn it). Yes this was an era when a flight simulator was actually appreciated, evidenced by the two flight simulators on our list. And while Wing Commander (the second flight simulator on our list) was the master of space flight, Red Baron was master of our own planet’s fair atmosphere.

Developed by Dynamix and published by Sierra Entertainment, Red Baron takes place during World War I and as the name implies, involves a lot of either flying with or against the famous Red Baron. The game’s gem was a griping campaign mode which allowed the player to work their way up to a decorated ace throughout World War I. Just like in Wing Commander, performance affected gameplay. The better your performance, the better the squadron you were assigned and the better the aces you would confront. As the war progressed, aircraft got better and less susceptible to the annoying technical glitches of that era, which included gun jams and failing instrument panels. One cool feature was that if you were shot down, you would either spend months recovering in either a friendly hospital or trying to escape an enemy POW camp. Once you returned to flying you could suddenly be thrust into new technology as the timeline of the game had advanced while you were detained.

They don’t make flight simulators like this anymore...in fact they really don’t make flight simulators anymore. We think that's a real shame, and it isn’t just because we have a collection of expensive Logitech joysticks collecting dust.

6. King’s Quest V

The King’s Quest series was already well established by this time, which is obvious from the V at the end of it’s name. But what had been a silent and type-driven series suddenly jumped into the modern 256-color point and click ‘talkie’ era. And what a worthwhile jump that was.

The storyline goes something like this. King Graham is out walking one day when an evil cloaked figure uses a whirlwind to make the King’s castle disappear. When King Graham returns to the scene of the crime, he meets a talking owl who not only explains what happened but also takes him to meet a good wizard who provides the King with everything he needs to reclaim his castle and his family. And that is pretty much it. Oh, there are little details here and there, but the vast majority of the game is spent searching for the evil wizard and defeating him.

What can we say about this game? It was great because it took the solid storyline, gameplay and puzzles of the previous games and upgraded all of the technical aspects. As long as you could ignore that annoying owl with his constant babbling, you were in good shape!

5. Loom

You know that we’re in the midst of LucasArt’s glory days when they have two games mentioned in our top ten list and neither of them are about Star Wars. Loom is one of the company’s best adventure games and comes with a unique gameplay and in-depth storyline, as evidenced by the 30 minute audio introduction.

The gist of the storyline is this. You play the character Bobbin, who was unexpectedly and illegally created by the Loom. The Loom is a giant machine which is used to weave "subtle patterns of influence into the very fabric of reality" by the Guild of Weavers. Because Bobbin is an unwanted member of society, his mother and caretaker are turned into swans as punishment. Bobbin, who has been taught to play tunes on his distaff, must leave the Guild to fend for himself. He decides to find the flock of swans who have been trying to save the world from the evil Third Shadow. One thing leads to another and, before you know it, he is fighting a being called ‘Chaos’ who has entered the world through the torn fabric of the Universe. It’s pretty complicated.

This is a really rough attempt at summarizing Loom’s storyline, but you get the idea of how in-depth it was.

What made Loom so unique was that most actions were performed by playing tunes on the distaff, the only item your character was allowed to carry. On the most difficult modes this was performed by ear...not a game for the tone deaf. All puzzles were solved by playing a tune that you had learned and memorized. Loom was also the first game to follow the design that the player could never be killed or forced to restart...a marked contrast from Sierra’s products.

In an era of adventure games, Loom stood out because it was unique.

4. Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon

Who have thought that a game dealing entirely with running a railroad company would be any fun? Apparently, Sid Meier did. And if we’ve learned only one thing in the last 20 years, it's that if Sid Meier thinks it would make a good game, it's going to be a good game.

Railroad Tycoon is, at its heart, a standard business simulation. You build stations and lay track, choosing the paths that will allow the quickest and most efficient deliveries. Trains can carry mail or other commodities which are chosen based on supply and demand. There is also a stock market simulator where you can trade either your own or your competitor’s stock. The game lasts for 100 years and at the end success is determined by your company's assets. If you do well enough you can even become the President!

The gameplay could be summed up in three words: speed and stocks. From beginning to end, you focused on developing the fastest trains and routes possible. As the game progressed you were able to upgrade or modify your trains in order to increase that route speed. The stock market was also a lot of fun to play with. You could use company money to conduct buyouts or even fund rate wars.

Gaming history is replete with Sid Meier gems and while the strategy genre has morphed far beyond Railroad Tycoon, in its time it was the pinnacle of what the market had to offer.

3. The Secret of Monkey Island

They don’t make flight simulators anymore and they don’t make adventure games anymore. Which is a real stinking shame, because adventure games were simple, beautiful, and aggravatingly difficult to play. Ok, maybe there is a reason they don’t make adventure games anymore.

You played the part of Guybrush Threepwood, an aspiring young pirate who must prove himself worthy through three terrible challenges. Speaking of Guybrush Threepwood, what is it with adventure game character’s names? Only in this genre will you find a hermit with the last name Toothrot and a heroine with the last name Firmflanks. Ok enough of that. While completing the challenges, Guybrush encounters a beautiful lady named Elaine whom he falls in love with, but unfortunately the ghost of the dead pirate LeChuck is also in love with her...and you can imagine that doesn’t go over well with him. One thing leads to another and before you know it Elaine is kidnapped, forced to marry the ghost pirate, rescued by Guybrush (really she kind of saves herself) and then watches as Guybrush fights and destroys the pirate with an exploding bottle of root beer.

The Secret of Monkey Island was one of the most successful of LucasArt’s adventure games - heck they even released a version for iOS! It relied heavily on comedic dialogue, as was typical with LucasArt’s adventure games.

2. Prince of Persia

When your top ten list involves games released more than two decades ago, they can’t just be good games they have to be industry-changing games. Prince of Persia fits that criteria perfectly. Developed by Jordan Mechner and published by Broderbund, Prince of Persia is famous for introducing close-combat and life-like animation to the platform genre. And if you thought this game was released in 1989, you’d be right. But that was for the Apple II which means no one else saw it till 1990...that’s how we’re counting it!

The premise of the game is that your character (who looks remarkably anglo-saxon for Persia), has attracted the eye of the Princess, much to the chagrin of Jaffar (must all Persian stories include a Jaffar?). In one vicious cutscene, Jaffar issues an ultimatum to a house-arrested Princess...marry him within the hour or die. The Princess throws all her hope into your character who, unfortunately, has been thrown into prison by Jaffar. The game starts with your character stuck in a prison cell. Within one literal hour you must escape your cell, find a sword, defeat countless guards, defeat Jaffar and rescue the princess and the kingdom at the same time.

The game was simple but clever. It contained well designed puzzles, where even failure was rewarded with gruesome death animations. You also fought with a sword which you could use to both attack and parry, which provided a sense of strategy that was missing in the typical shoot and dodge mechanics of platformers of that time. But probably most important were the innovative character animations. While developing the game, Mechner video-taped his brother performing various actions (jumping, running, slicing, dodging, etc) and than frame-by-frame he traced his brother’s movements to create the animations found in the game. The result was spectacular.

Prince of Persia, along with its sequel, was one of our favorite games. In a day when games were simpler and adventure was valued higher than action, this game was one of the best. But playing this game wasn’t all roses, just hearing the game’s name brings back vivid memories of how frustratingly difficult it was to solve some of those puzzles and time the jumps. Oh, and you really didn't need to go exploring for that sword in the first level...apparently there was one hiding in the stairway leading to level 2. Who would have known.

1. Wing Commander

It’s easy to write off this series if you’ve only seen the craptastic movie, but the original Wing Commander was a remarkable breakthrough in technology and a damn fine game. Designed by Chris Roberts and developed/published by Origin Systems, Wing Commander brought space simulators to the masses. It combined gorgeous graphics and gripping storyline with an innovative gameplay system.

Wing Commander threw us into the middle of a massive galatic war with the Kilrathi, the cat-people players loved to hate and the series' main protagonists. They were vicious, aggressive, and they would insult you during gameplay. We also met a group of fellow crewman who fought along side us. Each crew member had unique personalities and you felt torn when they died because you failed to support them. I still remember replaying one level multiple times just so that I could keep Angel alive. She was nice, helpful, and hot in that pixelated sort of way. And there was also Maniac who was a bit of a competitor, kinda scary, and who would eventually have a mental breakdown. Sounds like a dependable wingman, right?

One of the game’s most endearing aspects was how the storyline was dependent on gameplay success. Each mission would reflect the successes or failures in the previous missions. If you repeatedly failed missions, your crew and mothership would begin retreating and if you didn’t turn things around, you would eventually lose the game. This design might seem obvious in this day and age, but at that time there weren’t many action games that had attempted to implement this, never mind succeeding.

Wing Commander was the unanimous number one pick for all of us. Its legacy not only created and shaped multiple genres but it also birthed one of the greatest series gaming as ever seen. Almost every title that bore the Wing Commander name was excellent, including the amazing Privateer spin-off. The series would be practically perfect if it hadn't ended with the bungled Wing Commander: Prophecy. And while not everyone approved of Mark Hamill (and the live-action shots period), the series' beginnings are some of the finest we’ve ever seen!

That's It

So that's our top ten games of 1990. If all that nostalgia didn't bring tears to your eyes, then either you spent the 90's stoned or you're more of "The Sims" kind of gamer. That's ok, we'll still let you visit our website.

Did we miss any gems? Would you have put another game at number one? Was there another female sensation you were in love with in 1990? Let us know by dropping a comment below!

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Tags: Commander Keen, Eye of the Beholder, King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!, Loom, Pharoah's Tomb, Prince of Persia, Railroad Tycoon, Red Baron, The Secret of Monkey Island, Wing Commander