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PC Games 1996

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

1996 PC Games



This is a curated list of PC games that came out in 1996. The PC games are listed in alphabetical order. Both MS-DOS and Windows PC games are included. I will expand on this list in the future.

This is the final part of a series of articles that covers the strongest years of the decade of 1990-99:


Hardware and Software Technologies that Gained Ground in 1996


  • Pentium and Pentium Pro CPUs (100-200 MHz)
  • 256-512K level 2 cache
  • XMS memory (32-64 megs of EDO DRAM)
  • 2-4 megs of EDO DRAM (vRAM cost-reduction)
  • Rational Systems DOS/4GW Protected mode run-time
  • 2-4 gig EIDE hard disk drives
  • 6-speed to 12-speed CD-ROM drives
  • Stacked CD-ROM drives
  • Windows 95 and DirectX v2.0-3.0
  • Direct3D and OpenGL 3D APIs
  • VESA Local Bus / PCI Local Bus
  • Square-pixel SVGA 640x480 (up to 1600x1200 in some games)
  • Very smooth hardware mouse cursors (SVGA)
  • 3D texture-mapping and Gouraud-shading
  • Bi-linear interpolation, MIP-mapping, Z-buffering, perspective-correction
  • In-game toggleable/configurable Anti-aliasing
  • 16-bit hi-color (65,536 colors): only in hi-res
  • FMV cinematization via CD-ROM
  • TV-quality MPEG playback
  • 16-bit digital sound effects/speech, CD-quality music
  • Dolby Pro Logic Surround Sound
  • IPX & TCP/IP networking as a standard feature in several genre
  • 28.8-33.6 baud modems / 16550 UART
  • On-line manuals (HTML hyperlinked manuals that run in browsers)
  • In-game manuals with hyperlinks
  • Marquee selection
  • Joysticks: Thustmaster FCS MK II, MS Sidewinder 3D
  • 8-button Gravis GrIP-Pad & Gravis GrIP MultiPort PC-Game Controller Interface

In 1996 many PC gamers had Pentium 100 MHz CPUs, 16 megs of RAM and 8 megs of vRAM. Serious gamers had 17" Trinitron or Diamondtron CRTs or greater. By year's end many PC gamers had 200 MHz CPUs and 64 megs of RAM.

MS-DOS 6.22 of 1994 was still extremely strong as a computer-game OS in 1996. In fact, so was MS-DOS 5.0 of 1991. Only two games in this list are Windows-exclusive. As a gaming OS Windows 95 of 1995 had not yet hit its mark; it had more overhead than MS-DOS and its APIs were not yet robust enough.

On the other hand, hardware mouse cursors, icon-driven GUIs, on-install benchmarking, auto-detection procedures and interface library middleware made DOS games much easier to install than in the past.

In case the reader is lost already, examples of middleware include the Miles Design and HMI audio setup utilities.

Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0 in 1996 (a great OS; much better than 3.xx and 95), but Diablo is the only game in this list that officially supports NT. Microsoft also released Direct3D in 1996, which was based on RenderMorphics' Reality Lab middleware of 1992.

In computer games software-rendered 3D was still common in 1996 but various chipset manufacturers released video cards in 1996 for 3D acceleration purposes, which were needed for running texture-mapped SVGA games at decent framerates (30 FPS in SVGA was considered good in 1996).

  • ATI released ATI 3D Rage (2D/3D acceleration)
  • S3 Inc. released S3 ViRGE (2D/3D acceleration)
  • 3Dfx released 3Dfx Voodoo (3D acceleration, Glide API)
  • Matrox released Matrox Mystique (2D/3D acceleration)
  • Rendition Inc. released Rendition Vérité 1000 (3D acceleration, Speedy3D API)
  • VideoLogic released PowerVR (3D acceleration)

3Dfx Interactive's Voodoo chips were integrated into Orchid Technology's Righteous 3D and Diamond Multimedia Systems' Monster 3D cards whereas VideoLogic's PowerVR PCX1 chip was integrated into VL's own Apocalypse 3D card.

Naturally, it would take some time before coders of PC games availed of Direct3D and the chipsets listed above. For starters, Direct3D did not even come out until June of 1996 (via DirectX 2.0 SDK) and GLQuake did not come out until January of 1997 -- and not for Direct3D but for SGI's OpenGL of 1991 (in case the GL prefix did not make that clear).

So yes, 1996 was by and large an MS-DOS year; the last year of the mainstream command-line gamer.

Does anyone else miss the good ol' MS-DOS days, back when the command-line was King and the normies were watching sitcoms or twiddling their thumbs on console controllers, minding their own business instead of lobbying for the casualization of our hobby? You know, back before GoG and Steam let the riff-raff into our arena of gaming with their auto-installers for old games? You can read more about such odiousness in Reddit RPG Games.

The 1990s was such a great decade to be a computer-gamer. Everyone has fond memories of computer-gaming in 1990-1999, but no one with good taste looks back fondly on The Terrible 2000s that followed.


Needless to say, the King Computer Game of 1996 was Quake. However, it depends on what genre you prefer: WinG Civ2 was great, RTS was booming via expansions and the Jane's flight sims were utterly brilliant.

Almost every game listed below is 3D. And most 2D games of 1996 were pre-rendered in 3D due to the sheer size and scope of their art assets -- but also due to laziness and selling out. You'd be hard-pressed to find sprites hand-drawn by graphicians in games of 1996 -- the ignorant market had basically declared "3D new and good, 2D old and bad".

Especially hand-drawn 2D: "Pre-rendered sprites new and good, hand-drawn sprites old and bad". And yet nothing could have been further from the truth. And that goes for CGI versus cel animation and painted backdrops in full-length animated feature films as well (Pixar versus Disney's Golden Age).

And yes, in home computer-gaming 3D is almost as old as 2D, anyway. But we're talking about a ridiculous fad, here. The normies of 1996 thought 3D was revolutionary; they had absolutely zero computer-game pedigree. For them, everything began with their generation of gaming but the sad truth is that nothing good did.

The gushing over 3D by computer game journalists was cringe-worthy in 1996 -- too many of them wrote about 3D graphics as if it was invented in the mid 90s. Again, zero pedigree.

Speaking of ridiculous fads, note also how many mid-90s games have low-fidelity pre-rendered FMV-based titlescreens -- complete with generic lens flare effect! -- instead of immortal 2D artwork for their titlescreens. I'd say that FMV has aged poorly if it wasn't for that fact that it never looked good in the first place.


Remember when big PC games were commonly distributed on 8x disks from 1993-95? Well, by 1996 CD-ROM games were catching up thanks to the FMV fad: 6x CD-ROMs for Wing Commander 4. It must be a great game, right? -- I mean, 6x CD-ROMs!!! -- media that can get scratched, snapped or mistaken for frisbees or coffee-table coasters.

But at least the magnetic media games could be installed to the hard disk drive in their entirety -- no disk-swapping, no waiting for optical drives to spin up and seek -- unlike CD-based cinematic slop that was filled to the brim with footage of washed-up Hollywood actors "directed by" non-directors whose cinematic skills amounted to a complete and utter laughing stock when set against those of even third-rate Silver-screen directors.

PC versus PlayStation


Another negative influence on mid-to-late 90s PC games were the stinking CD-based 3D consoles; primarily Sony's PlayStation of September of 1995 (U.S. release date). PlayStation 2 U.S. release date was October of 2000. Thus, PlayStation hardware specs were locked-in for five years.


 IBM PC (1996) Sony PlayStation (U.S. 1995)
CPU 64-bit Pentium clocked at 100-200 MHz 32-bit R3000 34 MHz
MIPS 190 MIPS (Pentium 100 MHz) 30 MIPS (GTE 66 MIPS)
Cache 16K Level 1, 256-512K Level 2 4K instruction, 1K data
RAM 16-64 megs of EDO DRAM 2 megs of EDO DRAM
Video RAM 2-4 megs of VRAM 1 meg of VRAM
Fidelity VGA 320x200/240, SVGA 640x480 to 1600x1200 320x240, 512x240
Color depth 1-bit, 4-bit, 8-bit, 16-bit hi-color, 24-bit true-color Hi- & True-color
Audio 16-bit, 32-voice Roland, 11-voice Sound Blaster etc. 16-bit, 24 voices
Audio RAM 512K to 4 megs 512K
Controllers Kb/m, analog joystick, gamepad Controller
CD-ROM 6-speed to 12-speed CD-ROM drive Double-speed
Storage 2-4 gig EIDE hard disk drive (HDD) 128K SRAM cards
Media 5.25" floppy disk, 3.5" diskette, CD-ROM CD-ROM
Game Catalogue Stretches back to 1980; all genre represented Limited genre representation
Networking Serial, modem, LAN, IPX, TCP/IP: 16-player Deathmatch Link cable & multi-player adapter
Display High-bandwidth/scan-rate SVGA monitor Low-bandwidth TV/mon.

Some console owners may bleat like a lamb, "But PCs were more expensive!" Uh, yeah. But PCs had been standard home appliances since 1980; most middle-class families owned a powerful PC in the 90s. Also, what serious PC gamer would not have a powerful PC? And on top of that, the PlayStation was only a toy, it was not a tool that could be used for more than just playing games. PC gamers had been making their own games since 1980.

Many PC games came in big custom boxes with 200-page manuals and other stuff whereas PlayStation games came in CD-like jewel cases with little booklets.

Imagine elite 2D Amiga developers churning out 3D games for the piddling PlayStation... welcome to 1996. What a downgrade! And of course, their 2D Amiga games have stood the test of time much better than their poly-slop on PC and PlayStation.

Indeed, it is laughable to look back on most games of 1996: the FMVs, the pre-rendering, the polygon-pushing and the console-pandering -- it was shameless in its soullessness and selling out. Many big-budget 1996 games have been summarily scrap-heaped by history (and rightly so), but things only got much worse year after year, hand over fist.

By the mid 90s the texture-mapping fad had rendered spartan flat-shaded 3D redundant in the eyes of the slavering, salivating masses. An explanation for this factual statement can be found in the t-mapping article.

In addition, the market pushed for SVGA 640x480 games that commonly ran at 20-30 FPS over VGA 320x240 games that commonly ran at 50-60 FPS. You literally had chipset manufacturers boasting about 30 FPS in their ad-spam, echoed by clueless reviewers.

What that means is that 1996 PC gamers were often playing big-name, big-budget games at half the framerate of Atari 8-bit games dating back to 1980, most of which ran as smooth as silk.

And while I wouldn't go so far as to call 1996 PC gamers a bunch of brainwashed losers, imagine getting excited about 30 FPS poly-slop, low-res t-maps and blurry FMVs with generic lens flare effects that LightWave 3D on the Amiga was generating six years before.

If they deigned to acknowledge their existence at all ignorant computer game journalism of the mid 90s often looked down its collective snout at games that displayed in non-standard square-pixel VGA 320x240 even though the code of such low-res games often banged VGA chipsets much harder than the code of hi-res SVGA games, most of which only displayed in higher fidelity -- they did little else with the chipset. Of course, the hypocritical hacks of mid 90s VIDYA mags usually had nothing but praise for low-res console games.

With all that said, can we conclude that 1996 was a good year for PC games? Yes, we can. There were enough PC-first or PC-exclusive games that came out in 1996; games that the PlayStation could not hope to host in its wildest dreams yet the PC could have easily hosted any PlayStation-exclusive. 1996 was still a good year to be a PC gamer.

***
 
Many games in this list are famous but there are a few that not many people would have heard of.

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.

In this list I tried to represent PC games from various genre. I also went out of my way to represent a few traditional 2D games.

List of 1996 PC Games






Mega Typhoon Amiga Nordlicht 1996:




NBA Live 97 IBM PC MS-DOS Hitmen Productions 1996:








Syndicate Wars IBM PC MS-DOS Bullfrog Productions 1996:


Tomb Raider IBM PC MS-DOS Core Design 1996:





Best 1996 Computer Games: Awards



cf.

PC Games 1987 PC Games 1991 PC Games 1995
PC Games 1988 PC Games 1992PC Games 1996
PC Games 1989 PC Games 1993 Decade of 1990-99
PC Games 1990 PC Games 1994 PC Game Reviews

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