I’ve scanned in one last PC Gamer Top 100 article to see off the millennium. Some real classics enter the list with the big new entries from my point of view being Half-Life, Thief, Final Fantasy 7 and Baldur’s Gate. There is also the usual crop of relatively forgettable new titles (at least to me) to go along with them. Grand Prix Legends still has it’s followers to this day but ultra-realistic racing games are definitely not my thing. Descent Freespace also makes an entry as high as #20. It deserves a place but I would have it behind Wing Commander Prophecy which never made it on any of these lists. 1999 looks like it was a good year at any rate with a stack of titles I’ve got fond memories of as well as the usual crop that I still need to play one of these days.

It was another bad year for Origin with Ultima 8, Ultima Online and Longbow all dropping out of the list. The only games left were developed by Looking Glass in the shape of Ultima Underworld and System Shock. Underworld is notable for being the oldest game on the list at this point and quite the relic even back then. Alpha Centauri enters at 21 which was tested at Origin as I understand which must make it the last game they were involved with to hit the top 100.

By “popular” request, here is a scan of PC Gamer’s top 100 games article from July 1997, exactly 20 years ago. This time period just about marks the end of the non 3D accelerated era as evidenced by some of the new entries on the list such as Tomb Raider, MDK and Carmageddon which were initially released without 3dfx support and patched shortly after.

I haven’t checked but expect that Origin’s contribution to the list are much the same as the year before with System Shock at 16, Ultima Underword 1/2 at 28, Ultima 8 at 60, Crusader No Regret at 74 and Shadow Caster at 95. Wing Commander however gets emitted entirely with a nod only in the special award for perseverance! UK PC mags really didn’t like Wing Commander in this era.

There are at least some genuine favourites of mine among the new entries, especially Dungeon Keeper and Toonstruck. Some choices look very odd in hindsight and it goes without saying that my list would be entirely different but that’s always the case with these things. I do find picking Ultima 8 out of the whole series indefensible but it’s nice that someone likes it I suppose.

It’s the games on here that I haven’t tried that interest me the most so I’m coming away from reading through this list thinking I really should get that copy of D/Generation off the shelf and actually play the thing.