10 PC gaming classics - get your nostalgia on!

Part of the joy of being a PC gamer is that “backwards compatibility” is much less of an issue compared to unfortunate console gamers. Okay, sometimes you have to worry about whether or not games built for Windows 95 will work properly in a modern OS environment, or if your processor will run DOSBox fast enough. But my point is that if you play games on a PC, and you’re prepared to put in a bit of effort, there is a huge back catalogue of excellent games for you to choose from.

Hopefully my strained introduction will have fired up your nostalgia glands (yes, nostalgia glands – they’re by the back of your neck. Trust me: I’ve played Theme Hospital) and gotten you thinking about some old classics. Well, here’s one of those lists Den of Geek is so fond of – I’ve decided to point the finger at 5 well-known classics we can all agree on, matching each one with a lower-profile title that I think is worth your time. I freely admit that I’ve not played every game ever, and that my selections are almost all drawn from the early to late 1990s. It’s inevitable that favouritism will play a part in lists like this, so here we go: I hope you enjoy some of my favourites.

1. StarCraft

Nowadays StarCraft is perhaps most famous for being the RTS that virtually every young person in South Korea plays; you know, the one that’s a genuine national sport. It’s easy to overlook the fact that this is because the game is extraordinarily well-balanced, despite providing three entirely unique playable factions with very different strengths and weaknesses. The game shines in both single- and multi-player modes; its lengthy campaigns explore the setting and characters of the StarCraft universe in-depth (alongside some FMV cutscenes that, in typical Blizzard style, were astonishingly good back in 1997), whilst its online or LAN skirmishes provide endlessly replayable and fast-paced frenetic fun.

A. MissionForce: Cyberstorm

So who remembers the EarthSiege/StarSiege series? It was a franchise backed by the publisher Sierra and for years was the only competitor for Activision’s superb MechWarrior series. The series most famously spawned the Tribes games which were online multiplayer hits, but also produced the less commercially successful Cyberstorm games. The sequel (Corporate Wars) was a horrendous mess and is best avoided, but if you can find a copy of its predecessor then you should snap it up. It’s a turn-based strategy game on hexes (no wait, come back!) and sees your team of custom robots and pilots squaring up against AI-gone-bad enemies the Cybrid. There’s more strategy and customisation on offer in this effort than in the later and more famous MechCommander, and although you pay for this with a much weaker story it’s a worthwhile trade-off that should earn this classic a spot on your shelves.

2. UFO: Enemy Unknown (or X-COM: UFO Defense to the yanks).

Perhaps I should have paired Cyberstorm up with this, as - for the three of you who don’t yet know - this is also a turn-based tactical game backed up with a strategic overlay. Chances are that if you played PC games in the 90s you’ve already invested countless hours in this title, but why not fire it up again? The tactical combat is tremendously atmospheric and, dare I say it, genuinely scary thanks to the tension and sense of risk that comes with every ground mission (like defending against alien terror raids at night – especially when Chryssalids are involved). The strategic overview is simple but well-designed, with the base-building, radar coverage, research and manufacturing elements of the game helping to make you feel like you’re the last line of defence against the Earth’s alien invaders. Did I not mention that? You’re fighting aliens, see, sending out your air fleet to shoot down UFOs so that your ground forces can move in and mop up. Oh, just play it if you haven’t already – and persevere with what today seems like a slow and clumsy control system. Soon enough you won’t even be bothered about such superficial concerns.

B. Chaos Overlords

If you’ve heard of this one I’ll be impressed, so much so that I’ll award you twenty worthless fictional points. Chaos Overlords is a very basic strategy game that sees you and up to five other crime lords (human or AI) competing to take over a city and achieve dominance over the opposition. Each player acts as a Kingpin, masterminding the recruitment of street gangs, the research and purchasing of equipment, the raising of funds through extortion, and the ‘influencing’ of local areas to consolidate your control. It’s a simple but involving mix, encouraged by the equal parts stylish, slick and silly character and environment design. The game is, unfortunately, deeply flawed – the mid-game stretch usually becomes a tedious fight for survival against very aggressive and seemingly endless enemy gangs, and it’s rare to actually finish a game before giving up, but those hours before the grind begins are just wonderful. I should also warn that the game can be buggy and crash - a problem even on Windows 95, for which it was originally released - and so you should save often. These days the game is abandonware so just pick it up wherever you can, and give it a go. It’s worth a few hours of play at the very least. Reportedly, a sequel is in the works.

3. System Shock

These days the System Shock name is a fairly well-known one. Of course most people who claim to have played System Shock and its sequel back in the day are lying because hardly anyone bought the bloody games when they were first released, but fortunately they attained cult classic status even before the success of spiritual sequel BioShock. It’s easy to see why: Citadel Station, the setting of the first Shock game, is dripping with atmosphere. Of course these days the interface is appallingly clumsy (it’s often overlooked these days how big an innovation mouselook was for early first person games), and even on modded versions at high resolutions the game is not pretty. But so what? The game was unique, brave and incredibly well-realised, with a story and characters that fused the best of cyberpunk and horror. If nothing else the game should be played to experience the character of SHODAN, easily the greatest villain in videogames history.

C. Terra Nova

Veteran geeks among you will already be nodding and mentally “aha”-ing at this. Why? Well, Terra Nova was developed by Looking Glass Studios, the makers of the System Shock games. Unfortunately Terra Nova was even less of a commercial success than its stablemates. It did tactical first-person shooting two years before the much more successful Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. Ahead of its time? No doubt. Like System Shock it’s a little difficult to get used to the controls thanks to the absence of mouselook, but it remains more fluid than its sister title. Once you get used to the way it works you’ll be happily commanding your small team of power-armoured soldiers through the game’s numerous missions, steadily unfolding a plot packed with political intrigue and atrocious FMV. Oh yes: it’s set on another planet, and the soldiers are clearly inspired by the heavily armed and jetpack-toting mobile infantry of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (that’s the book, not the movie, obviously).

4. X-Wing & TIE Fighter

I’m throwing both of these in together as they’re really two sides of the same coin. Back in the day, these games were the closest it was possible to get to the excitement of Star Wars action sequences. I say this as a man who doesn’t much like Star Wars but loves dogfighting in space. These games are brilliant fun and the missions available to players – whether they fought with the Rebels or the Empire – were varied and challenging. One downside that seems even crueller in 2008 than it did in 1994 is the possibility that your pilot – and your hard-earned progress through the game – could be killed or captured if your ship was destroyed, meaning that you had to begin all over again. Grr.

D. EV Nova

My list doesn’t include the classic Elite but it does include a similar indie effort. Escape Velocity Nova is a wonderful space trading/combat/adventure game that allows you to explore a galaxy colonised by various human factions, populated with traders, pirates and mercenaries, with scores of different ships and weapons to choose from. It’s top-down rather than 3D but many old-school PC gamers will probably regard this design choice with a great deal of affection. When I first started playing EV Nova I didn’t play anything else for weeks - not until I had completed the main story. Shortly after that I learned that the game features multiple different plotlines to enhance replayability – which is already a strength of the title as it’s plenty of fun just to explore, trade and fight. There’s also a great fan community around the game, as well as plugins and mods to customise your gaming experience.

5. Heroes of Might & Magic III

Dear New World Computing. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone would combine the two most addictive gaming genres – role playing games and turn-based strategy games – into one beautiful, addictive whole? Perhaps it could be set in a fantasy world populated by a mish-mash of mythological creatures, with different playable factions to meet everyone’s demands. Perhaps it could be lovingly drawn with 2D sprites and be built around an intricate yet simple web of rock-paper-scissors unit balancing?

Oh happy days! It’s Heroes of Might & Magic III!

Be warned: the HOMM series was, back in the day, widely recognised as crack for computer gamers. It’s not uncommon to start playing and not stop until 7am the next day. NWC found a winning formula with Heroes of Might & Magic, and III is perhaps the pinnacle of the series.

E. Star Control 2

It is difficult for me to write about Star Control 2. This is not because I lack for things to say. No, it’s because I run the risk of being just too effusive, because Star Control 2 is a very, very special game.

Its story begins with an isolated Terran colony – cut off from Earth during the great Alliance war against the enslaved Hierarchy – discovering an ancient hidden facility beneath the surface of their home. This facility is a factory for building starships, which is soon used to build a vessel which must return to Earth to discover what has transpired. From here the game expands enormously in scope. The war between the Alliance and the Hierarchy is long over: the Alliance has been smashed, its fleets destroyed and its member races exterminated, trapped beneath slave shields on their homeworlds or themselves working for the rulers of the Hierarchy, the terrible Ur-Quan. But even the dominion of the Ur-Quan is not the greatest threat to be faced, because an equally ancient and malevolent evil has at last made its away around the galactic spiral…

This lovingly-told story is an obvious mish-mash of space opera clichés, but it’s such an obvious homage to all things SF that you can’t help but love it. It also provides a suitably epic backdrop to an action-adventure game that blends space and planetary exploration, resource gathering, ship construction and upgrades, and a perfect – perfect – one-on-one combat engine. Over the course of the game you’ll converse with brilliantly-realised alien characters (the dialogue is superb, featuring some of the best writing in games to date, and is at times genuinely hilarious), rebuild the shattered Alliance, and decide on a plan to save the free sentient species of the galaxy from slavery or death.

Best of all, I’m not the only person who loves this game deeply. Its creators have released those assets of the game that they legally own to the fan community, and that community have used these assets to rebuild the game as a hybrid of its PC and 3DO releases. It’s no longer called Star Control 2, but in every other respect The Ur-Quan Masters is the definitive version of the game. You can download it for free from SourceForge.

P.S. Some games that almost made the cut were Wasteland, Fallout, Syndicate, Quake, Strife, Tyrian 2000, Abuse, Albion, Privateer 2: The Darkening, Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate 2, Dungeon Keeper, Half-Life, Deus Ex and Theme Hospital. This list could have been a lot longer but, sadly, I have to go and play some games. Why not share some of your own nostalgic favourites in the comments?