1996, Game of the Year

[Bofferbrauer2]

Again going with Other

Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares (or MO2BA for short) is a masterpiece. Still know all my standard picks for race creation: Dic/Cre/Sub/Ric/Lar/Spy-/GrC-/ShD-.
Being Creative more than makes up for all the malus easily by the midgame, especially since subterrean already cancels out the ground combat malus at home. Subterrean also doubles the population limit, which means by the endgame my planets can out outproduce even UniTol races by al large amount.

Second spot goes to Civ II. I really missed the advisors in the subsequent civ games.

Third goes to the original Diablo. How is this one not even a suggestion??? Btw, there's a mod that restores all the cut content (of which there's a lot!), brings the graphics to HD level and makes it play much more like Diablo II (enemies respawn when loading the game and you always start at the town after loading).

Number 4 goes to Strike Force Centauri. In the past I thought it was linked to the BattleTech universe since the backstory is pretty much a carbon copy of those in the Mechwarrior series, but apparently there's no connection.

And finally on the 5th spot, we'll have Chaos Overlords, a quirky little turn-based stategy game where you hire gangs to take control of a city. Those gangs can be all kinds of things: Achitect guilds, Road Repair crews, Mutants, Killer Clowns, Martial Arts experts, and so on

A honorable mention to Commend & Conquer: Red alert at the end: While the game doesn't make it into my top 5 list, the soundtrack definitely does, especially the Hell March:

And it actually works as a marching song, unlike the Imperial March from Star Wars. Let's combine that with, say, Pokemon, shall we?

And you get the new Schock Troopers for the Japanese Blitzkrieg

Edit: Just found out that Diablo officially only released on January 3rd, though some apparently got their copy on New year's eve 1996.

Last edited by Bofferbrauer2 - on 11 October 2023