The most popular science fiction games

Ever wanted to pilot a walking death machine through a series of exploding industrial hellscapes while being shot at from every angle? Welcome to Amok. This 1996 mech-shooter is a ...

Few games capture the feeling of “the galaxy is huge and you are spectacularly insignificant” quite like Frontier: Elite 2. Released in 1993, this ambitious sequel thro...

If Star Trek: 25th Anniversary isn’t on your DOS nostalgia list, fix that now. Released in 1992, it’s a point-and-click adventure that actually feels like classic Star ...

It Came from the Desert is a cinematic masterpiece of giant ants, paranoia, and 1950s sci-fi homage. Released in 1990 for DOS, it blends action, strategy, and storytelling into a u...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a humorous free text adventure game based on the novel of the same name written by Douglas Adams (if you never read it, shame on you!). The ...

MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries is a standalone expansion to MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat, released in 1996 by Activision. Part of the larger BattleTech universe, the game puts pl...

Rick Dangerous 2 is a clear example of a sequel done right. Developed by Core Design and released in 1990 on a plethora of platforms, Rick Dangerous 2 is a classic platform game wi...

In Altered Destiny, a perfectly average guy named P.J. Barrett gets sucked into a bizarre alien dimension because he answered a phone call. Seriously. What follows is a classic poi...

Space Rogue is what happens when Elite and Ultima decide to have a baby… in space. You’re dumped into a universe of hostile aliens, smugglers, and zero-g dogfights, an...

Manhunter 2: San Francisco continues the unsettling science fiction saga with another blend of investigation, puzzle solving, and dark storytelling. Once again humanity struggles b...

Released in 1995, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is the cheerful little tale of humanity being tortured by an all-powerful AI for eternity. In other words, not exactly a feel-g...

In Syndicate, you don’t just play the bad guy—you manage a full corporate evil empire, complete with mind-controlled agents in trench coats and a suspicious lack of HR ...

Hired Guns is what happens when someone looks at a dungeon crawler and thinks, “Yes, but what if it were louder, messier, and slightly unhinged?” Released in 1993, this squad-b...

MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy is a science fiction role-playing game (RPG) released in 1990. The Zhodani Conspiracy is the first installment in the MegaTraveller ser...

Before space marines were gritty and everything exploded in brown and grey, there was The Adventures of Captain Comic. This is early PC platforming in all its clunky, jumpy, 4-colo...

Marathon 2: Durandal builds confidently upon the original by refining the action, expanding the story, and introducing multiplayer features that became legendary among fans. The ca...

Jetpack is a classic 2D platformer video game developed by Adept Software and released for MS-DOS computers in 1993. Created by Adam Pedersen, it became popular for its addictive g...

Imagine Doom got abducted by aliens, experimented on, and sent back to Earth with a case of amnesia. That’s Alien Cabal (1997). It’s a weird mix of FPS action and X-Fil...

Quarantine is a futuristic racing/driving game released by GameTek in 1994 for DOS. Quarantine is set in a dark dystopian futuristic city where the player drives around in a taxi c...

Then there’s Martian Dreams, the Ultima game where you travel to Mars in the 19th century with none other than Sigmund Freud and Nikola Tesla. Yes, it’s as delightfully...

Before the shades, the muscles, and the one-liners, Duke Nukem was just a guy in a 2D platformer trying to save the world from an evil scientist. It’s bright, fast, and glori...

Crystal Caves is a bright, cheerful platformer starring Mylo Steamwitz, an entrepreneur whose business plan involves raiding dangerous alien caves for profit. The levels are full o...

1990’s Back to the Future Part 2 for DOS is a game that tries very hard to be as confusing as time travel itself. You’re Marty McFly, zipping between timelines, avoidin...