I spent a lot of time editing that file, I tell you what. With the help of Falk, A German exchange student that was staying with us at the time, we engineered at least two levels of nested boot menus optimising the EMS and XMS for the various games on this list (cf. Stew’s list):

Best Games Ever (”ever” being PC games from the mid-90s. That I played.)

1. Wing Commander II (and SO1/2) Really immersive space combat and storyline. Origin’s slogan was “We Create Worlds.”
2. Wing Commander Privateer (and RF, 2) A brilliantly executed twist.
3. Command & Conquer (and Red Alert) This game, too, benefits from good storyline and good missions.
4. WarCraft II Zug zug! How awesome are Blizzard.
5. Syndicate (and when I downloaded the demo of the sequel 4 years ago it was corrupt) Like an RTS but with each unit an entire arsenal on their own. Man, those were some good weapons. Really good setting too. Vehicles, too. Nothing like a Persuadatron and 200 passengers in a futuristic mini. Until they start walking out and getting run over and I can’t stop. Dear God, the carnage. It was horrible. And yet so good.
6. Raptor: Call of the Shadows A scrolling shooter. An almost perfect game: I hope to one day complete my Java rip of this, and that it is even half as good.
7. Desert Strike (and Jungle Strike) Helicopter game. The little winch going down to pick up the crates of ammo never got old.
8. Rise of the Triad FPS of kings. Ludicrous gibs! Some great weapons, great music.
9. One Must Fall 2097 Fighting game with robots. The Jaguar’s roundhouse kick was incredibly satisfying.
10. Slipstream 5000 Racing little airplanes round a closed circuit. When you (wisely) purchased the Tech Tech 301 turbo it was knife edge stuff for 16 glorious seconds each lap. Actually going through a full Tech Tech boost without crashing was… well, incredibly satisfying.
11. Crusader: No Remorse All the attention to detail made it very, very cool. Those little spider mines! Other stuff I can’t remember!
12. SimCity 2000 Even girls liked it. Crazy, huh?

Honourable Mention (a more eclectic mix.)

• Goldeneye [N64] Pretty much defined multiplayer as far as I was concerned.
• The Great Giana Sisters [C64] Best Game Ever. (Best computer system ever, too.)
• CounterStrike [PC] Well, I could hardly not mention this.
• Battlefield 1942 [PC] While a lot of the time seemed to be taken up by walking and dying, when there was some sort of plan - and it was working - it was very enjoyable.
• Wipeout 2097 [PS] Racing done with the maximum of style. I always used to get a sore thumb on those controllers though.
• Time Crisis (and Virtua Cop) [PS] Mostly, I just like holding a gun and shooting people. I am society’s worst nightmare.
• Car & Driver [PC] 3D driving game from 1992 that had pretty nice graphics and let you go off road. I believe my favourite was going round the superspeedway in the Mercedes C11 IMSA, hitting 300. It wasn’t really a racing game though - most levels were something random like “Arkansas Route 66″, and you just drove along the road for 10 minutes, occasionally having head on collisions with trucks (on the clock, mind.) If thats not escapism, I don’t know what is.
• Word Rescue [PC] Like Math Blaster but a platformer, to teach you spelling I think. Surprisingly good gameplay.
• Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold [PC] I begin to wonder if ‘awesome weapons’ is pretty much my only criterion for a good game.

Don’t take this list too seriously. If I were to look at some of these games objectively I would struggle to rate them very highly. It seems with computer games that you just have to play long enough to get into it and then it’s great. And that’s why I loved these games (especially Wing Commander.) Because I was there. I can’t possibly explain how much I enjoyed them in any rational sense.

If I may make an observation, it is that FPS has risen from something of a niche/newcomer to the dominant genre. A second observation - what’s with 2097?

By the way. I stopped playing games in about 1998 because then I got a job and social life and there just wasn’t the time anymore. Also, I had played enough that they started to all seem a bit “done”, if you know what I mean. These days, I don’t really have a social life anymore. Or a job. Or time. Fucking internet.