1995 in retro gaming: from Command & Conquer to The Need for Speed
Thirty years ago, in 1995, monitors were bulky, the word “multimedia” was plastered onto anything that moved, and CD-ROMs promised “realistic” gaming experiences that often looked like low-budget school plays filmed on a camcorder. Windows 95 had just arrived with its legendary startup chime, and PC gaming was entering its rebellious teenage years: creative, messy, and delightfully overconfident.
Despite all the chaos, 1995 delivered a lineup of unforgettable titles — some because they were genuinely great, others because they were spectacularly weird:
- Command & Conquer set the gold standard for real-time strategy: fast, aggressive, and packed with enough FMV scenes to crash a small planet.
- Warcraft II fired back with orcs, elves, and enough “zug zug” to drive any human insane.
- Full Throttle proved that LucasArts could make a gang of dysfunctional bikers look irresistibly cool.
- Phantasmagoria shocked the world with live-action gore and a Hollywood-sized budget that wasn’t always visible on screen.
- Discworld tossed Rincewind into an adventure so absurd that solving its puzzles required psychic powers — or pure desperation.
- Hexen continued the proud tradition of “fantasy, but let’s blow everything up anyway.”
- And The Need for Speed taught us what driving is like when you do everything the DMV tells you not to.
- Descent, a mind-bending 3D shooter that made everyone dizzy while redefining what “six degrees of freedom” meant in gaming.
1995 was also the year of “almost masterpieces” — ambitious ideas occasionally strangled by a poor 486 CPU begging for mercy.
Meanwhile, in cinemas, Hollywood was doing what Hollywood does best: chaos, explosions, and accidental brilliance. We got Braveheart, Heat, Se7en, GoldenEye, Apollo 13, Toy Story (the first fully CGI movie!), and Jumanji. And then… Waterworld, which is remembered for reasons we still haven’t forgiven.
Musically, 1995 was a delightful roller coaster of genres colliding at high speed. The Billboard Top 10 looked like a mixtape curated by someone hitting random buttons:
- "Gangsta’s Paradise" — Coolio featuring L.V.
- "Waterfalls" — TLC
- "Creep" — TLC
- "Kiss from a Rose" — Seal
- "On Bended Knee" — Boyz II Men
- "Another Night" — Real McCoy
- "Fantasy" — Mariah Carey
- "Take a Bow" — Madonna
- "Don’t Take It Personal (Just One of Dem Days)" — Monica
- "This Is How We Do It" — Montell Jordan
Reading it now feels like tuning into a radio station that switches genres every 30 seconds just to confuse the passengers.
Want more games from 1995? Abandonware DOS has a solid stash ready to download — no need to reinstall Windows 95 (unless you’re into retro masochism).