History of 1990s Computer Games | Computer Game Reviews | Amiga Game Reviews

1991 PC Games

This is a curated list of PC games that came out in 1991. The PC games are listed in alphabetical order. Both MS-DOS and Amiga games are included. I will expand on this list in the future.

1991 is the best individual year I have so far treated because some of the greatest computer games of all-time came out in 1991. Consider especially the bold-faced entries:

Another World by Delphine was one of the most stunning games of the early 90s
Catacomb 3-D by id Software was the first realtime texture-mapped game to be released
Cybercon 3 by The Assembly Line was the first FPS to feature up/down looks
Exile by Audiogenic was the best arcade adventure game of the early 90s
Elite by Hybrid Technology was the best version of what is arguably the GOAT game
Falcon 3.0 by Sphere Inc. was the most advanced flight sim by far
Formula One Grand Prix by Microprose was the most realistic racing sim by far
Gods by The Bitmap Bros. is arguably the best platform game ever made
Hunter by Activision was the first fully-3D third-person sandbox game
Lemmings by DMA Design is one of the best games ever made
Lotus 2 by Magnetic Fields is one of the best sprite-scaling racers of all-time
Sid Meier's Civilization by MPS Labs is arguably the best game ever made
Turrican 2 by Factor 5 has been widely regarded as the best arcade-action game on the Amiga for 34 years -- and by heyday Amigans such as myself

Oh yes, I like this year. I like it a lot. But since the above is just a quick overview readers will have to scroll down in order to see the breadth of innovation coupled with mastery of the tried-and-true. 1991 saw some big leaps forward in terms of physics, mechanics, polygonal detail, ambient sound, presentation and interfaces. And most of that was attributable to grandmaster coders, graphicians and composers of 1991, not so much hardware engineering advancements of 1991.

In 1991 the PC dominated adventure games, strategy games, cRPGs and simulators whereas the Amiga dominated arcade-action games such as shoot 'em ups, but that had generally been the case since 1988.

Even though the PC got great ports of ST/Amiga Gods and Speedball 2 one would be hard-pressed to find a single arcade-action game released for PC in 1991 that Amigans would be jealous of or even interested in looking twice at, whereas the ST/Amiga got Formula One Grand Prix before the PC as well as Hunter and Fate, neither of which the PC would ever get.

However, Civilization was much better on PC, the PC got Civ long before the ST/Amiga and the ST/Amiga never got Falcon 3.0. Along with Formula One Grand Prix, Lemmings and Hunter -- all three of which are Amiga-originals -- I have just named five of the best games of the decade.

Thus, as it pertains to PC versus Amiga in 1991, I am inclined to call this one a draw -- if, that is, one enjoys games of action and non-action genre, not just one or the other.

In 1991 the Atari ST was falling behind the Amiga and PC. For example, Eye of the Beholder was not ported to the ST even though ST owners did actually deserve a port of EotB because EotB's origin is FTL's Dungeon Master of 1987, which was an ST-first.

However, the ST was justly ignored in regard to several Amiga games that pushed its Alienware, such as Alien Breed, which displayed in 32-color full PAL overscan mode, but the ST did get more than its fair share of good games; indeed, most of the great games of 1991 were well-ported to ST, albeit somewhat cut-down from the original PC/Amiga versions. I often criticize the ST's tech-specs and ST-to-Amiga ports, but I don't often criticize Amiga-to-ST ports because many of them are impressive (for the ST).

There is no doubt that the King computer game of 1991 was Sid Meier's Civilization by MPS Labs on IBM PC MS-DOS. As I said above, Civilization is arguably the greatest game ever made. In 2024 I replayed the MS-DOS version of Civilization for two months without playing anything else. Think of how many games have been released in the past 33 years and yet there I was in 2024 playing Civ over and over again and enjoying every minute of it. What a great, great game.

In 1991 no game was hungrier for RAM and raw processing power than Falcon 3.0. 1-meg STs and Amigas clocked at 7-8 MHz could not run Falcon 3.0's FPU-based flight model in their wildest dreams, much less lowly consoles of the early 90s. Thus, Falcon 3.0 was the PC owner's biggest flex and would remain so for the next few years, via three extremely high-quality expansions.

On the other hand the Amiga hosted stylish and highly-playable 2D games for which the PC and the average PC owner of 1991 had zero pedigree. To be sure, PC owners were enjoying lush VGA playfields in adventure games but most adventure games scrolled the screen and shifted sprites about as well as STs did in 1987. No Amigan was impressed by choppy VGA screen updates because some Amiga games featured silky-smooth parallax scrolling playfields that gave the impression of 100s of on-screen colors, two years before. In fact, I'd rather see monochrome playfields that scroll smoothy over VGA ones that don't.

Of course, the average 1991 cRPG on PC ran like my Aunt May after she's had too much sherry to drink: EGA displays with pathetic 88x88 active drawspaces that evoke 8-bit games of 1981 in 1991 -- even the ST did better back in 1987, which also marks the point of VGA's inception.

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Each entry below links to either technical overviews, reviews or deep delves on the game. You can click an image and mouse-wheel up and down through the images.