Death Rally (1996): Remedy’s Debut, Long Before Max Payne
Before Max Payne, before Alan Wake, before Control, Remedy Entertainment made a top-down racing game where you shoot your opponents […]
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992): The Best Indy Game LucasArts Never Filmed
Most licensed movie tie-in games are disappointments, cranked out to hit a release date rather than to tell a good
Strife (1996): The Doom Engine’s Strangest, Best Detour
What do you get when you bolt a quest log and a reputation system onto Doom’s combat engine? Rogue Entertainment
Dark Forces (1995): The Star Wars Shooter That Out-Engineered Doom
Out-Building Doom, One Feature at a Time id Software’s Doom engine spawned countless imitators in the mid-90s, but Dark Forces
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996): Bethesda’s Impossibly Huge Gamble
Try to describe Daggerfall’s scale to someone who hasn’t played it and the numbers just sound made up: a procedurally
The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994): The Free RPG That Started It All
Before Morrowind, before Oblivion, before Skyrim, there was a game that almost wasn’t an open-world RPG at all. The Elder
Keen Dreams (1991): The Commander Keen Game id Almost Forgot
Commander Keen fans tend to know the original trilogy and the Goodbye Galaxy games well. Fewer know there’s a strange
Dark Ages (1991): Apogee’s Medieval Detour From Sci-Fi Platforming
Most of Apogee’s early shareware output leaned sci-fi or cartoonish. Dark Ages, released in 1991, went a different direction entirely
Monuments of Mars (1991): George Broussard’s Free Sci-Fi Platformer
George Broussard would go on to co-create Duke Nukem and spend the better part of a decade on Duke Nukem
Arctic Adventure (1991): George Broussard’s Shareware Platforming, One Sequel Later
By the time Apogee shipped Arctic Adventure in October 1991, George Broussard had already folded his own small studio into
Pharaoh’s Tomb (1990): The Free Apogee Platformer That Predates Duke Nukem
Before Duke Nukem, There Was Nevada Smith Long before the world knew Commander Keen or Duke Nukem, Apogee Software was
Duke Nukem II (1993): The Last Great 2D Duke Before Doom Changed Everything
December 1993 was a brutal month to release a 2D platformer — Doom was weeks away, and it would make