Games released in 1996 sorted by rating

Forget Peter Jackson’s version. CHAMP Kong brings the big ape back to his pixelated roots, where ladders were death traps and barrels were pure evil. This charming homage to ...

Iron Blood (1996, DOS) is the kind of fighting game that makes you wonder if robots really need martial arts lessons. The story is wafer-thin—something about futuristic warri...

Shadows Over Riva caps the trilogy with a confident stride. The graphics receive a welcome upgrade, the atmosphere takes a darker turn, and the narrative leans heavily into detecti...

Star General is a turn-based strategy game developed by Catware and published by SSI (Strategic Simulations, Inc.). It was released in 1996 for MS-DOS and later for Windows. The ga...

Holiday Island is essentially a theme park management game that invites you to unleash your inner entrepreneur—or your inner chaos agent. Released in 1996, it lets you build, man...

Emperor of the Fading Suns is a grand strategy game that looks at you and assumes you’ve cleared your schedule. Politics, religion, warfare, economics—it’s all he...

Released in 1996 for DOS, The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo brings you back to foggy Victorian London, where murders, morphine, and moustaches abound. ...

This 1996 point-and-click western is what you’d get if Lucky Luke and Monkey Island had an awkward but lovable baby. 3 Skulls of the Toltecs throws you into a spaghetti weste...

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...

X-Tetris takes the familiar block-stacking formula and decides it is not quite stressful enough, adding twists that keep even seasoned players on their toes. It introduces new mech...

Known as Exhumed in some regions, Powerslave is a first-person shooter with a heavy dose of Egyptian flavor. Think mummies, scarabs, and plenty of mystical traps, all wrapped up in...

Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive is a delightful blend of detective noir, sci-fi weirdness, and FMV acting that swings between charming and unintentionally hilarious. You step int...

By 1996, Legend of the Silver Talisman delivered a more traditional RPG adventure, though with a decidedly old-school feel. It’s a game that doesn’t bother holding your...

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...

Lords of the Realm II is a medieval-themed real-time strategy (RTS) and turn-based strategy game developed by Impressions Games and published by Sierra On-Line. Released in 1996, i...

The Settlers II: Veni, Vidi, Vici takes everything that worked in the original and polishes it until it shines like a freshly forged sword. The graphics are warmer, the maps are bi...

Despite the baffling title (Book I – Chapter 2, yes, really), this is a charmingly earnest old-school RPG. Think “Ultima clone with extra oatmeal” and you're clos...

If Krazy Ivan (1996, Windows XP) had a motto, it’d be “Blow it up first, ask later.” You pilot a massive mech across post-apocalyptic battlefields, obliterating a...

Xenophage: Alien BloodSport is a fighting game that leans heavily into its bizarre premise, featuring grotesque alien combatants battling it out in brutal arenas. It is unapologeti...

ADOM is what happens when a rogue, a wizard, and a hungry troll walk into a dungeon and never come out. Released in 1996, this roguelike classic is brutal, brilliant, and unapologe...