Games released in 1990 sorted by popularity

Hard Drivin' is what happens when someone looks at arcade racing and decides that what it really needs is existential dread and a physics engine that actively judges your driving s...

It’s 1990, and you’re sitting at your DOS PC playing Accordion, a game that somehow turns solitaire into something slower and more passive-aggressive. It’s not fl...

Hugo’s House of Horrors is a classic example of early adventure gaming, complete with pixelated graphics and puzzles that require a mix of logic and guesswork. Released in 1990, ...

Environmental doom simulator? Check. Grim statistics? Double check. Balance of the Planet lets you tinker with carbon emissions, wildlife extinction, and deforestation until you ei...

Altered Beast is a classic side-scrolling beat 'em up arcade game developed and published by Sega. It was originally released in arcades in 1988 and later ported to various home co...

Midwinter creates a remarkable open-world survival adventure set across a vast frozen island, combining exploration, combat, strategy, and resource management. Players must recruit...

The 1990 adaptation of Tim Burton’s Batman hit DOS screens with a moody mix of driving, platforming, and side-scrolling bat-beatdowns. Batman: The Movie swings between genres...

In Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail, you don’t just play King Arthur—you earn your role as the guy in charge of finding a cup with magical healing powers ...

Sirwood throws you into a fantasy kingdom where the trees are friendlier than some of the locals. Half strategy, half adventure, it's the kind of game that expects you to think, pl...

Atomix is a tile-based puzzle game released in 1990 by Thalion Software for platforms like Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64. The objective of Atomix is to assemble mo...

BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge is a turn-based strategy game developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom in 1990. It is the sequel to "Crescent Hawk's I...

Before Command & Conquer, there was Command HQ (1990, DOS/Mac)—an early RTS that said “what if we made World War III playable?” It’s global domination m...

If Sorcerer Lord was about controlling armies, Sorcerian (1990, DOS) zooms in to the party level — a side-scrolling RPG that’s as odd as it is ambitious. You build a te...

Before Worms made artillery games cute, Bang! Bang! let you and a friend lob cartoonish shells at each other using nothing but angles, wind speed, and pure spite. It's a math lesso...

DuckTales: The Quest for Gold takes everyone’s favorite miserly duck, Scrooge McDuck, and sends him globetrotting for treasure. It’s part platformer, part management si...

The Cardinal of the Kremlin is an abandoned simulation game involving espionage, politics and govern management set in the cold war years. It was designed by Kenneth Rothschil...

Before Indiana Jones had a whip, Chagunitzu had block puzzles. Released in 1990 by Softdisk (and developed by a young John Romero), this game is a precursor to God of Thunder and p...

Horror Zombies from the Crypt sounds like it should be terrifying, but in practice it leans more toward quirky than genuinely scary. Released in 1990, it mixes action and adventure...

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...

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...

ARJ is a file compression utility and file format created by Robert K. Jung. The name "ARJ" stands for "Archived by Robert Jung." It was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s a...

In the 25th century, bureaucracy is still awful—but now you also have laser guns. Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday is a surprisingly solid sci-fi RPG that blends space oper...

SimEarth is one of Maxis's most ambitious simulations, allowing players to experiment with the development of an entire planet rather than merely a city. Released in 1990, it model...

Commander Keen 1: Marooned on Mars is a platform video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software in 1990 as shareware for MS-DOS. The game follows the adv...

Mario Bros VGA brings Nintendo's famous plumbers to DOS with colorful VGA graphics and an experience that faithfully recreates the frantic arcade original. The objective remains wo...

If gravity had a sense of humor, it would look like Bounce Zone. This 1990 DOS oddball is part platformer, part physics experiment, and part unintentional comedy. You bounce. A lot...

Taito’s Puzznic (1990) takes the idea of matching tiles and injects a surprising amount of strategy. You slide blocks to align pairs, but each move requires forethought&mdash...