Turn-based games

Released in 1984 for DOS, Felony! is a strange and ambitious early action game that puts you in the role of a criminal on the run. Instead of focusing on a single mechanic, it thro...

Fidelity Chessmaster 2100, released in 1989 for DOS, is chess with a very clear mission: beat you, patiently and without mercy. At the time, it was a serious achievement in compute...

Firezone is one of those late-80s action titles that seems determined to test both your reflexes and your optimism. It drops you into hostile territory and expects you to cope. The...

Floor 13 hands you the keys to a shadowy government office and suggests you protect national stability by any means necessary. It’s part strategy, part moral dilemma, and ent...

Fooblitzsky (1986, DOS) sounds like a sneeze and plays like a strategic puzzle wrapped in Cold War paranoia. You control a spy navigating a city grid, dodging capture while sniffin...

Football Fanatic (1998, DOS) is pure arcade chaos dressed in cleats. It doesn’t care much for the finer tactical nuances of the sport; it wants you sprinting, tackling, and g...

Football Manager 3 (1993, DOS) trades grass stains for spreadsheets and proves that tension can thrive in numbers. You’re not scoring goals; you’re negotiating contract...

After publishing a plethora of Gold Box titles, SSI decided to release a fantasy RPG based on the Forgotten Realms scenarios of Dungeons & Dragons where the player could create...

Free Enterprise from 1996 is business simulation with a distinctly ’90s sense of ambition. You’re tasked with building and managing a corporate empire, juggling finance...

Front Lines, released in 1994, is a straightforward DOS action game that wears its inspiration proudly. You’re thrown into military combat scenarios with minimal narrative fr...

In 1990, strategy games were still figuring out how serious they wanted to be, and Frontline sits comfortably in that experimental phase. This DOS title drops players into a tactic...

Strategy fans with a taste for sci-fi and logistics will find something special in Full Metal Planete. Released in 1990 for DOS and Mac, the game is essentially a futuristic board ...

Miniature golf is already a whimsical sport, but Fuzzy's World of Miniature Space Golf decides Earth simply isn’t strange enough. Released in 1995, this quirky DOS game sends...

Galaxy is a relic from the early days of PC gaming, when the idea of exploring space could be conveyed with a handful of pixels and a lot of imagination. The gameplay is simple, re...

If you’ve ever looked at a map of the Pacific theater in World War II and thought, “Yes, but what if I micromanaged all of it?”, Gary Grigsby’s Pacific War ...

With Gary Grigsby’s War in Russia, the scale somehow gets even bigger, and the margin for error even smaller. This is strategy at its most unforgiving, where moving a unit on...

Gateway to the Savage Frontier is a Dungeons & Dragons computer role-playing game released in 1991. It was developed by Beyond Software (later known as Stormfront Studios) and ...

If medieval politics, giant fire-breathing monsters, and backstabbing your allies sound fun, then Gemfire will keep you busy. Released in 1992, this Koei strategy game throws you i...

In Gengis Khan, you’re not just playing history—you’re rewriting it with pixelated armies. This 1989 Koei classic lets you lead the great Mongol conqueror (or oth...

Bigger, deeper, and just as punishing, Gengis Khan 2: Clan of the Gray Wolf (1992) expands the formula with more maps, more rulers, and more ways to fail spectacularly. Want to uni...

With a name like Genocide (1996), you know you’re not in for a lighthearted romp. This DOS platformer is dark, moody, and filled with enemies that seem genetically engineered...

Global Conquest is strategy boiled down to its essentials, offering a streamlined take on world domination that’s easy to pick up but harder to master. You’ll move armi...

As the title suggests, Global Domination doesn’t aim small, throwing you into a contest for control of the entire planet. It leans into a more arcade-like approach to strateg...

There’s a certain dark humor baked into Global Thermo War, a game that tackles nuclear conflict with a mix of strategy and unsettling realism. It’s not exactly cheerful...

Gold of the Americas: The Conquest of the New World is a strategy game that invites you to rewrite history, usually by making the same mistakes but with more confidence. You manage...

Grand Prix Wizard sounds like it might involve spells, but sadly no one is casting fireballs at rival drivers. Instead, Grand Prix Wizard leans into management, asking you to handl...

Grand Slam Bridge is exactly what it says on the tin, which is both comforting and slightly intimidating if you are not already fluent in the mysterious language of card games. In ...

Grandmaster Chess is not here to hold your hand, compliment your moves, or pretend that losing is part of the fun. In Grandmaster Chess, you are up against a computer that takes it...

Great Napoleonic Battles is the kind of game that assumes you are ready to command armies and possibly rewrite history before breakfast. In Great Napoleonic Battles, strategy is ev...