An accompaniment to History of 1990s Computer Games.

1996 PC Games

This is a 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. But for now, this tracks my progress of looking back on 1996.

Hardware and software technologies that gained ground in 1996:

Pentium and Pentium Pro CPUs (100-200 MHz)
256-512K level 2 cache
XMS RAM (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
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
Bilinear interpolation, MIP-mapping, Z-buffering, perspective-correction
In-game toggleable/configurable Anti-aliasing
16-bit high-color (65,536 colors) in high resolutions
FMV cinematization via CD-ROM
TV-quality MPEG playback
16-bit digital sound effects/speech, CD-quality music
Dolby Pro Logic Surround Sound
Networking as a standard feature in several genre
28.8-33.6 baud modems
Marquee selection
Joysticks: Thustmaster FCS MK II, MS Sidewinder 3D & Gravis GRiP

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 (up to 31"). 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. Only two games in this list are Windows-exclusive. 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.

Software-rendered 3D was still common in 1996, but ATI, S3, 3dfx, Matrox, Rendition and VideoLogic released video cards in 1996 for 3D acceleration purposes, which were needed for running 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 Graphics & Glide API (3D acceleration)
Matrox released Matrox Mystique (2D/3D acceleration)
Rendition Inc. released Rendition Vérité 1000 (3D acceleration)
VideoLogic released PowerVR Midas 3 (3D acceleration)

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 and GLQuake did not come out until January of 1997. 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 tv 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 in to our arena of gaming with their auto-installers? 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 in this list is 3D. And most 2D games of 1996 were pre-rendered in 3D. 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.