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Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep is a real-time dungeon crawler by FTL Games and the sequel to Dungeon Master, released first in Japan in December 1993 and in the West only in 1995 by Interplay. The soldier Torham Zed and 3 champions must find the 4 keys to the fortress of Skullkeep in the storm-swept province of Zalk and start up the Zo... 6

A science fiction point-and-click adventure about time travel, the 1989 game with which the Paris studio Delphine Software entered the genre. Paul Cuisset designed and programmed it, Eric Chahi, later the author of Another World, drew the graphics. An ordinary window cleaner stumbles into a war between mankind and the alien Crughons and travels from... 12

Wacky Funsters! The Geekwad's Guide to Gaming is a collection of 5 comic arcade mini-games released in 1992 by Tsunami Media, the company behind the adventure Ringworld. King Wacky sends a bespectacled hero, the Geekwad, through tennis against a robot, an Asteroids parody in which the ship is his own body, a shooting gallery in an enchanted forest,... 3

Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist is a comedy Wild West point-and-click adventure designed for Sierra On-Line in 1993 by Al Lowe, the creator of Leisure Suit Larry, and Josh Mandel. Former gunslinger Freddy, who lost an ear to Kenny the Kid, has opened a pharmacy in the little California town of Coarsegold and now has to save it from a string of... 16

The Black Cauldron is a graphic adventure based on the Walt Disney animated film and Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain books, designed by Al Lowe and Roberta Williams and released by Sierra On-Line in 1986 on its AGI engine. The player is Taran, a young Assistant Pig-Keeper at Caer Dallben, whose pig Hen Wen turns out to have magical powers... 5

Space Quest: The Lost Chapter is a fan-made text parser adventure created by Vaughn Gosine under the alias Vonster D Monster and released as freeware for PC DOS in 2001. It runs on Sierra's original AGI interpreter, so it looks and plays like the first two Space Quest games. The story fills the gap between Space Quest II and III: Roger Wilco's escape... 6

Duke Nukem II is a side-scrolling action platformer developed and published by Apogee Software for PC DOS in 1993. During a TV interview Duke is abducted by the alien Rigelatins, who want to drain his brain, and he fights his way out of their prison with a default gun, a laser, rockets and a flamethrower that lifts him up like a jetpack. The game runs... 10

Duke Nukem is a side-scrolling action platformer developed and published by Apogee Software for PC DOS in 1991. In the year 1997 the hero Duke Nukem fights the mad Dr. Proton and his army of Techbots, armed with a laser rifle and collecting firepower upgrades, boots for higher jumps and a grappling hook for swinging along the ceiling. The game came... 19

Bio Menace is a side-scrolling action platformer published by Apogee Software in 1993 for PC DOS. It was made almost single-handedly by Jim Norwood on a licensed id Software engine, the one behind the second Commander Keen trilogy. Across 3 episodes of 12 levels each, CIA agent Snake Logan clears Metro City of mutants, frees hostages, collects keycards... 15

Commander Keen: Keen Dreams is a side-scrolling platformer developed in 1991 by id Software and published by Softdisk Publishing for DOS as a game for Gamer's Edge subscribers. Billy Blaze refuses his vegetables and in a dream finds himself in the land of Tuberia, where King Boobus Tuber means to enslave him with the Dream Machine. Keen has no pogo... 13

Crystal Caves is an action platform game designed by Frank Maddin and released by Apogee Software for PC DOS in 1991. The player guides the hapless Mylo Steamwitz through the caves of the Altarian star system, collecting crystals, opening chests with keys and shooting monsters and robots. It was released as shareware in 3 episodes of 16 levels each:... 18

Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle is a side-scrolling platformer by id Software, published by Apogee Software for DOS in December 1991 as the first, freely distributed shareware episode of Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy! Eight-year-old Billy Blaze, as Commander Keen, flies to the planet Gnosticus IV to free the 8 abducted Keepers of the Oracle,... 27

Karting Grand Prix is a top-down arcade go-kart racer released in 1988 by the British publisher Anco Software for the Amiga, the Atari ST and PC DOS. Each of the 8 tracks fits on a single screen, and the player races 2 opponents, one of whom a second player can take over. Before each race the player picks practice or the Grand Prix competition, the... 18

Catacomb is a top-down action maze shooter programmed by John Carmack and published by Softdisk Publishing in 1990. The magician Petton Everhail explores the catacombs beneath the palace of the fallen Kieralon Empire, collecting keys and treasure, blasting goblins, ogres and dragons with fireballs and shooting through walls that hide secret passages.... 19

RoboCop 3D is a 3D action game based on the film RoboCop 3, developed by Digital Image Design and published by Ocean Software for the Amiga, Atari ST and PC in December 1991. Running on a modified F29 Retaliator engine, it alternates a police car chase, first-person shootouts, a jet pack flight and a duel with a robot ninja, all in filled polygons.... 36

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is the first real-time strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment, released for DOS late in 1994 and later for the Macintosh and the Japanese PC-98. Humans and the orcish Horde meet in the fantasy kingdom of Azeroth, and the war is told from both sides with 12 scenarios each. Players mine gold and chop lumber, raise a base and... 102

The Fellowship of the Ring is an illustrated text adventure based on the first volume of The Lord of the Rings, built in 1985 by the Australian studio Beam Software for the publisher Melbourne House. In Europe it was sold as Lord of the Rings: Game One, and it is the follow-up to the same studio's earlier The Hobbit. The player leads Frodo and his... 180

The Hobbit is an illustrated text adventure based on the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, written in 1982 by Veronika Megler and Philip Mitchell at the Australian studio Beam Software and published by Melbourne House. The player takes the role of Bilbo Baggins, travelling with Gandalf and Thorin across Middle-earth towards the Lonely Mountain, where the... 82

Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas is a 1988 sequel to ICOM Simulations' debut Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True!! and the final entry in the MacVenture series, which had grown to include Uninvited and Shadowgate along the way. The player again takes on private eye Ace Harding, who wakes up in Las Vegas with a splitting headache and finds himself accused... 99

Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games is a 1996 turn-based tactical game and a standalone follow-up to the first part, developed and published by Sir-Tech Software. It runs on the same engine, but instead of liberating a single island it offers a chain of self-contained missions handed out by an anonymous employer and capped by a number of turns. Mercenaries... 34