First person 3D viewpoint games

This one’s a flight sim for people who think Top Gun didn’t have enough fuel gauges. 1942: The Pacific Air War puts you in the cockpit of World War II fighter planes, complete with dials, switches, and enough acronyms ...

Released in 1987, this is less of a simulator and more of a fever dream where you pilot a flying box over a grid pretending to be terrain. 3-D Helicopter Simulator was ambitious for its time, with wireframe graphics that suggest a...

3-Demon from 1983 is basically Pac-Man with a taste for LSD. You’re in a first-person maze, munching dots while glowing ghosts try to ruin your day. It’s surprisingly creepy, probably because everything is neon and mov...

If Doom and Laser Tag had a baby raised by dial-up modems, it would be 3D Cyber Blaster. Released in 1992, this shooter has you blasting neon enemies in a world that looks like a Tron-themed laser maze. The sound effects are glori...

It’s cyber. It’s puck. It’s… basically cyberpunk air hockey with attitude. 3D Cyberpuck is a futuristic sport simulation from 1992 that nobody asked for, yet somehow needed. Imagine a gritty dystopia where...

Ah, 3D-Maze. If you used Windows 3.x, you probably saw this lurking in the corner of your screen savers like a digital minotaur. Released in 1991, it’s not quite a game, but everyone played it anyway. You walk endlessly thro...

Before Virtua Tennis, there was this: 4D Sports Tennis, where physics and pixels politely shake hands and then forget why they were introduced. Released in 1990 for DOS, this game lets you relive the glory of tennis with character...

Explosions? Check. Missiles? Check. Graphics that look like someone spilled gray soup on your monitor? Double check. A-10 Tank Killer lets you pilot a flying war machine and rain chaos upon tiny pixel tanks that may or may not be ...

Released in 1993 for DOS, A320 Airbus is less “Top Gun” and more “Intro to Aeronautical Bureaucracy.” It’s a flight simulator so realistic, even real pilots needed a manual. You’ll experience th...

Get ready to drive a tank very slowly while also being very stressed. Abrams Battle Tank (1989, DOS) puts you in the commander’s seat of America’s steel behemoth, and somehow turns desert combat into a tactical crawl. ...

Ace of Aces (1987, DOS) is a game where you pilot a WWII plane via a series of still-image panels that suggest action more than deliver it. It’s like a flipbook with ambitions. You’ll toggle views, dodge bullets (sort ...

This 1986 DOS classic sounds way cooler than it is — ACE: Air Combat Emulator promises combat, but delivers what feels like flying a lawnmower through molasses. Still, for its time, it gave players the thrill of joystick jos...

Aces of the Pacific (1992, DOS) takes to the skies over WWII’s Pacific Theater, where you can dogfight in legendary aircraft and prove your piloting prowess — or spin into the sea with style. The graphics are dated, bu...

Strap into your Spitfire, because Aces Over Europe (1993, DOS) is here to show you that flying over 1940s Europe was as dangerous as it was polygonal. As a follow-up to Aces of the Pacific, this one tightens the mechanics, adds gr...

Welcome aboard, Captain! Advanced Destroyer Simulator throws you into the high seas with all the firepower and radar beeps a '90s DOS machine can handle. Manage torpedoes, dodge depth charges, and try not to crash into an island w...

Strap in and squint at the horizon—Advanced Tactical Fighter 2 wants you to dogfight like it’s the Cold War and your joystick is a weapon of mass confusion. Released in the golden era of chunky graphics and keyboard gy...

Imagine Doom got abducted by aliens, experimented on, and sent back to Earth with a case of amnesia. That’s Alien Cabal (1997). It’s a weird mix of FPS action and X-Files paranoia, with pixelated bad guys who look like...

Alien Trilogy is a first-person shooter video game released in 1996 for various platforms, including the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS. Developed by Probe Entertainment and published by Acclaim Entertainment, the game is ba...

Alternate Reality: The City is a role-playing video game developed by Paradise Programming for various platforms including Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, and Commodore 64. It was released in 1985. In Alternate Reality: The City, play...

Amerzone is like stepping into a dream where logic is optional and atmosphere is everything. You play a journalist unraveling the mystery of a dying explorer’s last journey, which involves a lost civilization, mystical eggs,...

Imagine Doom and Ultima Underworld had a low-budget child who was homeschooled in a basement filled with Mountain Dew cans. That’s Amulets & Armor. A mix of first-person dungeon crawling and RPG elements, it’s got ...

Battlespire is the weird, dark cousin of the Elder Scrolls family - the one who shows up late to the reunion with a sword and no pants. This first-person RPG strips out all the comfy open-world stuff and throws you into a linear, ...

In Ancients 1: Deathwatch, you gather your pixelated party and set off to cleanse a city of evil, or at least try not to get mugged by slimes. It's a dungeon crawler in classic DOS fashion — grid movement, turn-based battles...

A direct sequel to Deathwatch, Ancients 2: Approaching Evil is like returning to your childhood neighborhood, except everyone’s still trying to kill you. Released in 1994, it builds on the first game’s formula by addin...

Anvil of Dawn is what happens when 1995 tries to reinvent the fantasy RPG and ends up creating something strangely beautiful. It’s first-person, it’s real-time, and it’s dripping with atmosphere — from mood...

Step into the cockpit of the Apache Longbow, a 1995 combat flight simulator where you’ll experience the thrilling sensation of trying to figure out keyboard controls before getting shot down by invisible enemies. It's a seri...

Ah, Apache Strike (1989), the game where you're the lone helicopter pilot flying through blocky cities that look like they were made of leftover Lego bricks. Your mission? Blow up bad guys in a first-person view that resembles a s...

Dive into Aquanox (2001), where post-apocalyptic submarines battle it out beneath the ocean in a world that’s half Waterworld, half neon rave. With moody lighting and dialogue that screams “we’re trying to be dee...

For those who think snooker is too posh and billiards too French, there's Archer Maclean's Pool, the most ‘90s way to simulate the timeless art of arguing over whether that shot was really legal. It’s pool in DOS &mdas...

In Archimedean Dynasty, humanity did the logical thing after wrecking the surface world: moved underwater and started shooting each other in submarines. It's part tactical sim, part gritty sci-fi novella, and entirely German in it...