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1995 PC Games

This is a curated list of PC games that came out in 1995. 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.

In late 1995 Westwood released Command & Conquer and Blizzard released WarCraft 2, thereby setting off the RTS Boom that would go on for half a decade and culminate in Blizzard's StarCraft of 1998, which remained popular into the 2000s.

Some big-name 3D sports games were released on PC in 1995 as well, satisfying PC gamers on both sides of the Atlantic. You see, the lowly consoles had snatched EA's FIFA franchise and the NBA Live precursors right from under the nose of the PC from 1992 to 1994, yet PCs could have run such games at four times the fidelity and with many more features, such as networking. If EA were so interested in making the best team-sports sims possible, why would they choose the weakest platforms as lead? Note how flight sims and golf sims were much more advanced due to their PC-exclusivity.

And not only were console specs much weaker than PC specs, consider the following:

At this point let us remind ourselves of the limitations of video-game machines, aka consoles. As a rule, you can't code on consoles; you can't draw graphics, write stories or compose music on consoles; you can't debug or mod console games; you can't make games on consoles; consoles do not have operating systems.
Consoles stifled creativity because console gamers could only play video games, but computer gamers could make their own games -- games that could compete with Sega and Nintendo games.
Console gamers had toys, computer gamers had tools. -- Computer Game History.

Also, console games are video games. Imagine calling LINKS or Apache video games when they are in actual fact computer games. Indeed, they are simulators. It is only jingling jesters that would be so ignorant or impudent as to refer to computer games as VIDYA.

Several exceptions set aside, I have very little affection for 1995. Indeed, I would say that 1995 was the weakest year of the first half of the decade; certainly, 1995 cuts a poor figure when set against 1990 to 1994, with the cRPG genre once again being the biggest laughing stock of all. One would need an excavator to sift through the massive pile of stinking trash clogging up the 1995 games catalogue, though the games I have listed here are generally good-to-great.

After taking a prolonged pummeling from the PC in 1994 the Amiga of 1995 nevertheless hosted Worms, the best Galaga clone ever, six Amiga-exclusive Doom clones and an A500 port of X-COM, which amounts to a miracle when one considers that the Amiga was on the ropes, bloodied and battered, and about to get knocked out for good!

Yes, you read that right: the good ol' A500 of 1987 got a port of X-COM in 1995 -- one of the greatest games of all-time.

The Standouts of 1995

Allow me to make a case for 1995 greatness by alphabetically enumerating its highlights:

Gremlin Interactive's Actua Soccer was the first 32-bit English football game as well as the first fully-3D team-sports game.
Digital Integration's Apache rendered Gouraud-shaded 3D in SVGA 640x480. Apache was the first 32-bit Gunship sim.
Westwood Studio's Command & Conquer allowed players to bandbox up to 63 mammoth tanks and send them rampaging across smoothly-scrolling, height-mapped battlefields. In 1995 that was amazing.
Edgar M. Vigdal's Deluxe Galaga on Amiga is the best Galaga clone ever coded. Deluxe Galaga even features 2-player simultaneous play.
Interplay's Descent employed six degrees of freedom in texture-mapped 3D subterranean environments.
Argonaut Software's FX Fighter allowed players to switch between flat-shaded, Gouraud-shaded and texture-mapped 3D.
Sir Tech's Jagged Alliance was the first full-featured and professionally-programmed 32-bit tactics game: a masterpiece.
LucasArts' Star Wars: Dark Forces occupies the FPS evolution middleground between 2.5D Doom-likes and Quake.
Gary Grigsby's Steel Panthers is the best tactics-level wargame ever made.
Eagle Dynamics' Su-27 Flanker on Windows 95 included a scenario editor and was the most complex flight sim yet seen (grognard-level).

Microsoft Windows 95

In late-1995 Microsoft released the DirectX API and the first good Windows OS for gaming, Windows 95. And while Microsoft Windows would not be referred to as Microshaft Windoze as often as it had been in its feeble 3.xx past, many computer gamers did not have pressing reasons to switch from MS-DOS to Windows in 1995, but MS-DOS games could be run on Windows 95 systems via DOS mode and dual-boot, anyway.

Windows 95 required an i80386DX 33 MHz CPU and 4 megs of RAM, but a 486DX2 66 MHz CPU and 8 megs of RAM was recommended. Many MS-DOS games exceeded such system requirements stemming back to 1991, but Windows 95 caused a ton of gamers to upgrade their PCs or purchase new ones, regardless. And needless to say, the Windows 95 launch was huge in that even non-computerists had heard of that new thingamajig from Bill Gates.

In theory Windows 95 would make PC game development easier because programmers only needed to interface with "DirectX" rather than deal with hundreds of different system configurations and chipset specifications. For example, instead of coding for one audiovisual chipset-type the programmer codes to the API, which (in theory) would encompass the gamut of chipsets, but under API rules. The downside to this is of course lack of diversity and lack of extremes: the DOS world is the Wild West whereas the world of Windows 95 is agrarian and standardized.

In addition, Windows 95's Plug and Play made hardware installation easier and its Autoplay made game installation easier for normies and newbies, many of whom would shriek and recoil in horror if they caught sight of Norton Commander, let alone the MS-DOS command prompt.

From Early 1990s IBM PC Games:

At this point, one should take a moment to reflect on the computer-literacy of the PC user of the early to mid 1990s. Consider the command line along with config.sys, autoexec.bat, IRQ levels, DMA channels, memory managers, TSRs, disk-caching and disk-compression. And now contrast that with your average Steam and GoG fanboy of 2025.

The DOS-era gamer was on a whole other level.

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The King computer game of 1995 was Westwood's Command & Conquer on MS-DOS.

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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.

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PC Games 1995

1995 PC Games

The Standouts of 1995

Microsoft Windows 95

List of 1995 PC Games

Best 1995 Computer Games: Awards

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