Most real-time strategy (RTS) games are modelled around sci-fi or fantasy themes but Ensemble Studios’ 1999 PC gaming classic, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, used an authentic historical backdrop and featured 13 different civilisations for players to control.

By the early 1990s the Ultima series had risen to the pinnacle of the PC role-playing genre. Ultima VII: The Black Gate and its successor The Serpent Isle were astonishingly ambitious, masterfully executed games.

When it came out back in the late 1990s Kingpin heralded a new era where PC gaming aggressively sought to become part of mainstream culture. Its copious use of swearing and gratuitous violence was a sort of anguished plea directed at the masses – “It’s really not nerdy to play PC games any more, look at me I’m cool…”

Released back in 1994 the original System Shock was an excellent first-person sci-fi RPG, perhaps let down only by frequent and often frustrating sojourns into the game’s wire-frame depictions of ‘cyberspace.’

Bullfrog’s original Dungeon Keeper (released in 1997) was an incredibly fresh and entertaining real-time strategy game let down by a couple of gameplay and AI-related flaws.