The most popular military games

Board game night went digital in 1998 with Axis and Allies, a strategy title that lets you rewrite WWII—assuming you don’t forget where you left your infantry. Fans of ...

B-17 Flying Fortress (1992) is the kind of game where you don't just fly the plane—you are the plane. One moment you're the pilot, the next you're the nose gunner swatting Lu...

Command & Conquer: Red Alert is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Interactive in 1996. It is part of the Command &...

F29 Retaliator is what happens when a flight simulator decides it wants to be a blockbuster action movie. You’re piloting a fictional next-generation stealth fighter through ...

Army Men lets you live out your childhood fantasy of plastic soldier warfare without the hassle of crawling under the couch. You control Sarge, a green-tinted war machine with a st...

By 1989, SSI doubled down with Vol. 2, offering more battles, more maps, and the same demanding mechanics. If you enjoyed the first, you’ll feel right at home; if you didn&rs...

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 ...

Dive, dive! This 1989 DOS simulator puts you in control of a nuclear submarine, though most of the action involves pushing buttons and waiting very patiently. Think of it as the &l...

Dive Bomber (1989) is a game that delivers exactly what it promises: you dive, you bomb, and you try not to crash into the ground in the process. The graphics are about as simple a...

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...

Conflict is a turn-based war game where you get to play Commander-in-Chief and yell at your virtual generals when things go wrong (which they often do). It's part military sim, par...

If you ever wanted to simulate being a helicopter pilot without leaving your MS-DOS comfort zone, Bravo Romeo Delta has you covered. This 1993 sim throws acronyms, radar screens, a...

Strategy fans, sharpen your wits: The Perfect General (1991, DOS) marches onto the battlefield with hex-based tactics, satisfyingly crunchy mechanics, and a strict “no button...

This one's not for the faint of heart. Conflict in Vietnam tries to simulate the complexity and chaos of guerrilla warfare in a game where every click can cost lives. The graphics ...

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...

Forget Rambo. Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines is what happens when you drop six experts behind Nazi lines and tell them to behave tactically… or else. Every mission is a deadl...

You thought the first one was hard? Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty laughs at your pain and then asks you to infiltrate a Gestapo HQ with a knife and a prayer. This standalone e...

With Gary Grigsby’s War in Russia, the scale somehow gets even bigger, and the margin for error even smaller. This is strategy at its most unforgiving, where moving a unit on...

For flight simulation enthusiasts, EF 2000 was nothing short of a revelation. It offers a deep, realistic portrayal of modern air combat, complete with complex avionics and demandi...

F-22 Lightning II brings the flight sim genre into the late ’90s with faster action, flashier visuals, and a jet that feels like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. The F...