Games released in 1996 sorted by popularity

Road Rash is an abandoned motorcycle racing game developed by Papyrus Design Group and released by Electronic Arts in 1996. Road Rash runs on Windows XP/98/95 but was also publishe...

Civilization II is a turn-based strategy game developed by MicroProse and released in 1996. It's the second installment in the "Civilization" series, created by Sid Meier. The game...

The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall is an old school first-person 3D RPG developed by Bethesda Softworks and released in 1996 for DOS. Daggerfall is the second chapter in popular The E...

Released in 1996 for DOS, this beast is not a new game so much as an ultra-hard remix of Doom II, crafted by level designers who apparently thought “too much ammo” was ...

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...

Building upon an already outstanding foundation, Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares adds richer empire management, customizable races, improved diplomacy, and deeper tactical com...

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 &...

Super Street Fighter II is an enhanced version of the iconic arcade fighting game Street Fighter II, developed and published by Capcom. It was released in 1993 as an upgrade to Str...

Before Remedy Entertainment was known for moody shooters and mind-bending narratives, they gave us Death Rally in 1996—a top-down racer with a mean streak. Imagine Mario Kart...

Here’s where Duke goes full legend. Duke Nukem 3D isn’t just a shooter; it’s a cultural moment. The game exploded onto DOS with outrageous humor, interactive envi...

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...

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...

With FIFA Soccer 97, EA decided indoor soccer was exactly what the world had been waiting for, and honestly, they weren’t entirely wrong. The pace is frantic, the rebounds ar...

Quake is a 1996 first-person shooter that helped redefine what players expected from PC action games. Its dark, industrial environments, grotesque enemies, powerful weapons, and fu...

Normality is a first-person adventure video game developed by Gremlin Interactive and released in 1996. The game is set in a dystopian future where a totalitarian regime known as t...

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...

In 1996, Diablo descended onto PCs and basically defined the “click until everything dies” genre. The gothic town of Tristram sits atop a dungeon stuffed with demons, l...

The Smurfs is a bright and cheerful platformer that brings the tiny blue heroes to life in a world full of mushrooms, forests, and cartoon danger. You run, jump, and bounce your wa...

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 ...

Monster Truck Madness (1996) is proof that “subtlety” and “monster trucks” don’t belong in the same sentence. With Microsoft at the wheel, you’r...

Released in 1996, Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail sends Larry aboard a luxurious cruise where romance, mystery, and comedy collide with spectacular enthusiasm. The hand-drawn a...

When in Gaul, punch like the Gauls do. In Asterix and Obelix (1996), you control the iconic French duo on a globetrotting beat-‘em-up adventure that mostly involves sending R...

NeoPaint 3.2 is a raster-based graphics editing software designed for DOS. It is a lightweight yet powerful alternative to more complex image editing programs like Photoshop. NeoPa...

Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures is a charmingly odd experiment that shrinks globe-trotting archaeology into bite-sized missions designed for quick play sessions. Viewed fr...

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...