Nine Old School PC Games Worth a Second Look

I've been looking for a new game for my PC, and I'm sorry to say that the hunting hasn't been great. For the most part, all I see are sequels to big-seller shoot-em-ups (boring and nasty) and sims that get far too compulsively into capturing a specific period (I'm not really into, say naval warfare in the Pacific in 1940s). Then there's the no-name adventures which I can tell , at a glance, just won't play well. After more than 30 years of gaming, all I have to do is scan the packaging and I know if I'll enjoy the show.

But there are still some great options out there. Even after 10 or 15 years in the dustbin of game history, the old games listed below still rock. And that's not even taking into account some classics that didn't make the date cutoff, such as Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," Sid Meier's "Alpha Centauri" and Electronic Arts' "SimCity 3000." (OK, "Grim Fandango" and "Starship Titantic" were published in 1998, but I had to give them some extra respect. Play them and you'll see why.)

Sure, some of these gems are a bit long in the tooth, and you may have played others of them to death already. What's more, the puzzles are often so arbitrary that it's more fun to play with a walkthrough. Still, each of these games offers something funny, whimsical or compelling that makes them worth exploring. Now, in no particular order, I offer you fifteen years of PC gaming history. Enjoy!

-Anne Zieger

1. Phantasmagoria I and Phantasmagoria II: A Puzzle of Flesh (1995/1996): Ordinarily, big-screen style terror doesn't translate well to the PC. But both Phantasmagorias managed to cram the nerve-wracking tensionof Alien into a 15-inch monitor. Built around what was then a ground-breaking technology, which allowed you to manipulate an image of the point of view character, these were both totally immersive games. Brace youself for some very nasty (and surprisingly high-impact) violence, but don't let that stop you from playing.