The best modem games

Strife from 1996 is a first-person shooter game developed by Rogue Entertainment and published by Velocity, based on the Doom engine. It's often remembered for being one of the ear...

Wing Commander: Armada is space combat simulation game developed by Origin Systems and released by Electronic Arts in 1994 for DOS. Wing Commander: Armada is part of the Wing Comma...

Sid Meier took one look at Earth and said, “Let’s leave this dump.” Thus, Alpha Centauri (1999, Windows XP) was born - a 4X strategy game that takes Civilization ...

Set in the far-off future of 1992, Battle Chess 4000 brings space-age flair to intergalactic checkmate. Now your queen is a laser-wielding dominatrix and your pawns might be robots...

Before Half-Life, there was Chasm: The Rift, a game where time-traveling mutants explode into limbs and every room looks like it was decorated by a doom-metal band. A first-person ...

Need for Speed II is a racing video game developed and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in 1997 as the second installment in the popular Need for Speed series. NF...

This 1994 naval strategy game for DOS is based on the board game of the same name, which means you’ll spend more time squinting at menus than blowing up ships. It’s cer...

Released in 2000, Dark Reign 2 took the futuristic RTS series into full 3D territory. While other games were content with flashy visuals, this one focused on tactical depth and res...

Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is a turn-based strategy video game set in the Star Trek universe. The game was developed by MicroProse Software and published by Infogrames for ...

Mageslayer is an action game developed by Raven Software and published by GT Interactive in 1997 for MS-DOS. It stands out as a top-down, hack-and-slash dungeon crawler inspired by...

Dark Legions is a 1994 strategy gem that asks: what if Archon got a DOS makeover with bloodier battles? You command armies of fantastical creatures, from vampires to trolls, across...

Combat Chess (1997, Windows XP) takes the cerebral game of kings and adds swords, screams, and shameless violence. Every piece battle-animates into Mortal Kombat-lite fights when y...

Darkstone tried to ride the Diablo wave in 1999, and honestly, it didn’t do a bad job. With 3D graphics (impressive for the time) and a soundtrack that takes itself way too s...

Cultures is a charming real-time strategy game about building a Viking settlement from the ground up. You’ll manage resources, assign jobs, and watch your villagers go about ...

Lords of the Realm is top-down kingdom simulation game set in medieval Europe (England and Germany), designed by Christopher J. Foster and David Lester, developed by Impressions Ga...

Before its sequel, there was Dark Reign: The Future of War (1997), a forward-thinking RTS that introduced mechanics ahead of its time, like customizable AI scripts for units. The r...

Powermonger takes the god-game formula of Populous and gives it teeth. Instead of playing benevolent deity, you’re more like a slightly cranky warlord, sending little soldier...

Populous is an abandoned strategy game designed by the video game celebrity Peter Molyneux, developed by Bullfrog. Populous was released by Electronic Arts in 1989 for DOS and for ...

From the people who brought you Dungeons & Dragons, here's Blood & Magic (1996), the RTS that nobody remembers but definitely deserves a second glance. You summon golems fr...

In Armor Alley, you command a helicopter in a warzone that looks like a side-scrolling office meeting gone wrong. It’s strategy meets action: you must manage resources, deplo...

Saddle up, pardner. Billy The Kid puts you in the dusty boots of the infamous outlaw himself. This is the Wild West, DOS-style — pixel pistols, wanted posters, and dialogue t...