Star Fox for what it accomplished on a technical level.

Was hard to choose between Secret of Mana and Link's Awakening.

Ended up voting for Link's Awakening due to how many times I played and enjoyed it more than Secret of Mana lol

The demo scene is still pretty active these days, mostly creating 64k demos now.

One of the most unbelievable of thse demos imo is Fermi paradox:

remember, that entire program is just 64k big, so less than your typical NES game and similar to a word document. And I haven't seen any more realistic water than in that demo yet.

Also, it's impossible to not talk about .kkrieger, a demoscene FPS which is only 96KB in size, so it would fit almost 15 times on a 3'5" floppy disc.

I wish some current games would learn from this, as they really start to get too big.

I think Myst does have lasting impact, giving that it is responsible for creating whole adventure subgenre, it's just that adventure genre as a whole went past its prime in second half of 90s and has been niche for quite some time (no matter Renaissance). And generally, most people get to know some genres only once they hit their mainstream peek, and that was late 80s to mid 90s for adventure games, and in most cases those games were on home/PC computers only, which were not that big in those days compared to consoles.

Doom it is for me. Still one of the greatest FPS games ever, with brilliant level design and amazing soundtrack.
Unfortunately never played Myst.
Link’s Awakening is imo far far better than the rather mediocre A Link to the Past.

Some mention Star Fox as impressive. It’s really only impressive for the hardware it released on and not for the year it released. Daytona USA also came out in 1993. That is far more impressive, could almost pass for an early DreamCast game

The Model 2 arcade board cost $15,000, it would be shameful if the games didn't look graphically ahead of a $200 console. The cost ratio is literally 75:1.

It was impressive for a home console game period, whether SNES or otherwise.

I realized I mixed up the years, Daytona USA was 1994, but Ridge Racer was 1993 and looked almost as good.
Star Fox was impressive for a SNES game or any game for a 1990 home console or computer, in 1993 the 3DO and Jaguar released and had games with more impressive 3D graphics from day one. But when I look at what pushed video game technology forward during that era (1972-1994) I would mainly look at the arcade.

Cultural Impact: Doom. Duh. We know this. The first-person shooter genre might just as well not have existed before Doom. Neither would the Entertainment Software Ratings board! It was also an outstanding game all-around. In its own time, it was my favorite game from this year too.

1993 was not a good year for me. My dad lost his job that year and things just kind of went downhill with his drinking and well let's just say that there were consequences for those of us living with him. Up to this point I think you could say that my parents just thought I was a rotten kid. After this point though, I think it's fair to say that I actually became one. I eventually found myself yelling back, sometimes hitting back even, and not just at home, and just generally stopped caring about my life. Certainly about my future. I remember having real aspirations for when I grew up before this point in life and just not so much afterward. Found I didn't really want to be anything when I grew up anymore and never really found my way back from that lack of motivation fully. I stopped caring much about school and church and just lost interest in most things in general for that matter.

It was in this context that I first heard about Doom from my cousin, who was hyped up about it when he visited us. My parents both overheard that conversation, having been in the same room. They apparently had heard about it too, or misheard about it. My mom warned me that it was a "Satanic" game about escaping hell and explicitly forbade me from ever playing it. I had to get it. Choosing means of acquisition that may or may not have been legal and a number of rotating hiding spots and strategic times late at night to play (fortunately, the computer was stupidly located less than ten feet from my room, providing lots of late-night gaming opportunities), I found playing Doom a nice outlet through which to vent. A healthy one? I wouldn't go that far, but I would say that I felt like I needed it. Think of it sort of like a painkiller to someone in chronic pain. It can help and it can also become addictive. My experience with Doom kind of straddled that line. More balanced people, most people, would've just found it fun. So mixed legacy for me, but definitely relevant. Doom was my first secret game.

Favorite Game: Day of the Tentacle. Doom today is a bit of an overly-familiar experience to me in comparison to the flat-out hilarity of Day of the Tentacle. I discovered it more than a decade later through a gaming records book of all things and it helped revive my waning interest in point-and-click adventures! It still feels fresh and funny to me even now.

In fact, 1993 just seemed like an exceptional year for computer gaming, looking back on it now. Day of the Tentacle. Myst. Doom. I struggle to think of contemporaneous console gaming experiences that were comparable in my mind and in fact I fail to. I think those were the best games released that year. I even found myself getting into Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego? at the time, although it doesn't hold up as well.

In terms of console gaming experiences, Secret of Mana was definitely my favorite of those from '93, followed by Mega Man X (which released in 1994 in the U.S. and still ranks in as my favorite Mega Man game) and Mortal Kombat II (which looked even better than the original, standardized the blood and gore in the console versions as a defining trait of the franchise, and offered female fighters to choose who actually seemed like super-cool ninjas more than, you know, a fitness instructor...although there could've been more design variety that way...), with such titles as Ecco the Dolphin, Sonic CD, and Sonic Spinball (yes!) ranking in well too. And of course no mention of 1993 feels complete without highlighting Star Fox. That was the cool game to own that holiday season thanks to its use of the Super FX chip. Link's Awakening was also kind of groundbreaking for the Legend of Zelda franchise narratively in breaking away from Hyrule and I kind of liked that about it.

Those would be the highlights that I've experienced.

This was the hardest so far, few ones that I could have voted, ended up voting for Secret of Mana. I would expect Doom to win this one.

Aladdin on Genesis/Mega Drive.