The best modem games

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 like Toy Story if Buzz Lightyear carried an M-16. The controls are clunky, the pathfinding a war crime, and the camera makes sure you never quite know what&r...

With Battle Isle 2200 (1994), the series goes full 3D cinematic—with cutscenes so dramatic you’d think they were auditioning for a soap opera in space. The gameplay is classic hex strategy, but now with upgraded visuals and FMV actors who clearly missed their calling in daytime TV. It’s grand, slow-burning, and surprisingly tense....

Syndicate Wars is the sequel to the much acclaimed Syndicate developed by Bullfrog in its golden years. Like its predecessor, Syndicate Wars is a real-time tactics strategy game set in a cyberpunk dystopian world involving excessive violence, mega-corporations, bleak urban environment. Syndicate Wars also supports a multi-player co-op mode via LAN.

FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 (also known as FIFA 98) is a football sports game developed by Electronic Arts and released in 1997 for multiple platforms including Windows, Genesis, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, SEGA Saturn, SNES. FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 is the fifth game in the FIFA Soccer series.

In Grand Theft Auto the player takes the role of a criminal who can freely roam around the city (Liberty City) completing tasks for the local mobs: stealing cars, killing pedestrians, all of it while avoiding the police and the army. The freedom of gameplay and the "I'm the bad guy" appeal of the game made the Grand Theft Auto series very popular.

Mageslayer is an action game developed by Raven Software and published by GT Interactive in 1997 for MS-DOS. It stands out as a top-down, hack-and-slash dungeon crawler inspired by games like Gauntlet, but with an original fantasy setting and a darker, more intense tone. The game uses the same engine as Take No Prisoners, another Raven Software tit...

Ground Control is a strategy game developed by Massive Entertainment and released by Sierra On-Line in 2000. More precisely Ground Control is a real time tactical game with a sci-fi setting.

If Baldur’s Gate was a sprawling epic, Shadows of Amn is the Shakespearean sequel with better everything: graphics, writing, drama. Your soul is stolen (again), your allies are weirder, and your enemies wear more eyeliner. This is peak BioWare before BioWare forgot how to write dialogue. It’s emotionally scarring in the best way, and ye...

Big Red Racing is what happens when you combine arcade mayhem with zero regard for realism and lots of British sarcasm. Drive everything from dump trucks to hovercrafts, insult your friends, and laugh your way to the finish line. It’s loud, chaotic, and gloriously dumb — and that’s exactly why it’s amazing. Expect physics to...

Need for Speed II is a racing video game developed and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in 1997 as the second installment in the popular Need for Speed series. NFS2:SE focused on high-speed racing with exotic cars. It featured a variety of modes, including single-player races, multiplayer, and a tournament mode where players could...

Sid Meier took one look at Earth and said, “Let’s leave this dump.” Thus, Alpha Centauri (1999, Windows XP) was born - a 4X strategy game that takes Civilization to space, then adds philosophy, moral dilemmas, and terrifying sentient fungi. It’s like if Civ II read too much Nietzsche and went off its meds. The factions are a...

Command HQ was developed by Microplay Software. It was one of the early real-time strategy (RTS) games and focused on global warfare, allowing players to control armies, fleets, and economies in various historical and futuristic scenarios.

Empire Deluxe is a classic turn-based strategy game that was originally released in the early 1990s. Developed by Mark Baldwin and Bob Rakowsky of White Wolf Productions and published by New World Computing, it is a successor to the game Empire, which was created by Walter Bright in the late 1970s. The game is set on a world map, where pl...

Lexi-Cross is an abandoned science fiction tv show-styled puzzle game. Lexi-Cross was developed by Platinumware and released for DOS by Interplay Productions in 1991. The gameplay is a turn-based mix between Scrabble and Wheel of fortune with elements of Battleship.

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, it is the second game in the "Lords of the Realm" series. Players manage their kingdom by balancing resources such as food, weapons, and gold, engaging in diplomacy w...

Praetorians is a real-time strategy (RTS) game originally released in 2003 by Pyro Studios. Set in the Roman Empire during its peak, the game offers a blend of strategy and tactics, focusing on large-scale battles rather than resource management or base building. The game is set during the Roman Empire and features three distinct factions: Rom...