NHL 98 on PC is what happens when an annual sports series stops pretending that bigger numbers on the box are enough and actually tightens the screws. It is not a revolution, and thank heaven for that, because revolutions in late-90s PC sports games usually meant somebody had discovered a new way to make the […]

If you want a polite hockey game, this is not your stop. NHL Open Ice: 2 On 2 Challenge is what happens when Midway looks at the sport and decides that nuance, structure, and restraint are all somebody else’s problem. The version I care about most here is the PC release tied to the 1996-1997

Panzer General II is the kind of wargame that looks, from a safe distance, like it should be cold, clinical, and a little smug about its own seriousness. Instead, it turns out to be a game about appetite, momentum, and the terrible pleasure of nudging a line of tanks, infantry, and artillery into just the

Postal, the original 1997 Windows and Mac OS release from Running with Scissors and Ripcord Games, is one of those games that arrived with a stink on it, then spent the next few years insisting that the stink was the point. And sure, in a narrow historical sense, it was. This was a top-down, isometric

Quake II is the kind of sequel that arrives wearing a hard face and pretending not to care what anyone thought of the first one. The 1997 Windows 95 original, from id Software and published by Activision, is less a simple follow-up than a statement of technical intent: no MS-DOS, native OpenGL support, client/server multiplayer,