The two year period of 1996 and 1997 was a huge era for the PC gaming. It seemed as if there were a number of things that came together at the right time for PC game developers to take advantage of. One was the success of Windows 95 which quickly became the de facto development platform for titles (good bye MS-DOS). Another was the farewell to 3.5 inch floppy disks for game distribution. It had already started by 1996 but by the end of 1997 nearly all PC games used the CD-ROM format allowing for more content to be crammed into games.

But there were even more developments that occurred, such as the surging popularity of this new-fangled Internet dealie that made online multiplayer much easier to get into. The Internet itself spurred consumers to buy PCs like never before. More powerful processors allowed games to have higher resolutions and perform faster. Finally the 3D acceleration movement popularized by companies like 3dfx allowed games that supported such hardware to look more realistic than ever.

It goes without saying that the 1996-1997 period had some pretty remarkable games come out, and we look back at just 15 of them in our latest feature installment.

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