The best PvP (player VS player) games

Radix: Beyond the Void is a 1995 first-person shooter that combines fast combat with a distinctly futuristic setting. Players control a heavily armed combat vehicle and blast throu...

With a title like Pray for Death, you know you’re not signing up for a cheerful platformer. This is a fighting game with a gothic, heavy-metal aesthetic that screams 1996. It...

Dominium (1992) is an ambitious mix of real-time strategy and empire management, though perhaps “ambitious” is just another word for “slightly overwhelming.&rdquo...

Operation Combat II: By Land, Sea & Air is a 1993 military strategy game that takes the ambitious approach of covering warfare across multiple environments. Players must think abou...

Gorillas, also known as "Gorillas.bas," is a turn-based artillery game that was included as a sample program with Microsoft QBasic, an IDE and interpreter for a variant of the...

Released in 2001 for PC, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is what happens when someone looks at Age of Empires II and says, “This is good, but what if there were AT-ATs stom...

Ultimate Body Blows is a fighting game that boldly enters a genre dominated by arcade giants and says, “We can do this on a PC keyboard.” Inspired heavily by Street Fig...

StarCraft is a classic RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released in 1998 for Windows and Macintosh. StarCraft takes the Warcraft experience to ...

Chessmaster 9000 is a chess game developed by Ubisoft and released in 2002. It's part of the Chessmaster series, which has been around since the 1980s. Chessmaster 9000 was known f...

Ah, Advantage Tennis—where the graphics are flat, the physics are questionable, and the grunts are blessedly absent. This DOS-era sports sim serves up matches that somehow fe...

Released in 1990, Kick Off 2 is one of those football games that politely refuses to hold your hand. The ball does not magically stick to your player, meaning every sprint becomes ...

Before Remedy Entertainment was known for moody shooters and mind-bending narratives, they gave us Death Rally in 1996—a top-down racer with a mean streak. Imagine Mario Kart...

Forget missiles—Blue Max: Aces of the Great War takes you back to when air combat meant leather helmets, canvas wings, and a healthy fear of gravity. Released in 1990 for DOS...

Mortal Kombat 3 expands the series with new fighters, faster combat, additional mechanics, and an increasingly elaborate mythology surrounding Earthrealm and its many supernatural ...

Face Off! (1989) wastes no time telling you exactly what it wants to be: fast, noisy, and slightly unhinged. This DOS arcade sports game throws subtlety out of the window and repla...

If Speedball was a fistfight on skates, Speedball 2 is a televised riot with endorsements. More teams, more power-ups, more everything. The game’s slogan might as well be &ld...

Gulf Strike places you in the cockpit during a very contemporary-for-1986 conflict, blending strategy and simulation with a dash of headline-inspired drama. You manage missions, al...

The original Command & Conquer (1995, DOS) is the game that launched a thousand LAN parties. It’s gritty, fast-paced RTS warfare with full-motion video cutscenes so chees...

Mortal Kombat 2 takes the original formula and turns the intensity up several notches with more fighters, new arenas, additional special moves, and an even greater supply of specta...

Army Men 2 doubles down on everything from the first game - more weapons, more plastic carnage, more trips to “The Real World” where you fight in bathtubs and backyards...

It’s Bomberman (1992, DOS), the legendary bomb-dropping game where you play a suspiciously cute guy with an infinite bomb supply and questionable indoor safety habits. You mo...

It’s Colonel Mustard in the Study with the Lead Pipe—but on DOS. Clue Master Detective takes the classic board game and wraps it in moody music, pixelated crime scenes,...

Welcome to Z, the real-time strategy game where psychotic robots with British accents duke it out over territory in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Think Command & Conquer if the...

Ground Control throws you into real-time strategy without the safety net of base building, which is both refreshing and slightly terrifying. In Ground Control, every unit matters, ...

Hi-Octane is exactly what the title suggests, a fast-paced racing experience that prioritizes speed and chaos over realism. The vehicles feel more like futuristic experiments than ...

Ogre is a 1986 strategy game based on the classic science-fiction board game concept of a gigantic automated tank facing conventional military forces. The premise is wonderfully si...

Monopoly Deluxe gives the familiar property-trading classic a more polished computer presentation while preserving the essential combination of buying streets, collecting rent, and...

Unreal Gold is the polished, expanded version of a game that already made a significant impact. Released in 2000, it combines atmospheric exploration with intense action, creating ...