PC Gamer: 50 Most Important PC Games of All Time

[LESS T_T]

http://www.pcgamer.com/most-important-pc-games/

List of 50 games:

Spoiler

Spacewar!
The Oregon Trail
Colossal Cave Adventure
Rogue
Zork
Wizardry
Pinball Construction Set
King's Quest
Ultima IV
SimCity
Commander Keen
The Secret of Monkey Island
Civilization
Dune II
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Wolfenstein 3D
Myst
Frontier: Elite 2
Doom
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
UFO: Enemy Unknown (X-COM: UFO Defense)
Quake
Tomb Raider
Diablo
Ultima Online
Half-Life
StarCraft: Brood War
Starsiege: Tribes
Thief: The Dark Project
Baldur's Gate
Everquest
Counter-Strike
System Shock 2
Quake III: Arena
The Sims
Deus Ex
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Battlefield 1942
DotA
EVE Online
Second Life
Half-Life 2
World of Warcraft
Dwarf Fortress
Team Fortress 2
Spelunky (and Spelunky HD)
Minecraft
League of Legends
Broken Age (for its groundbreaking Kickstarter campaign)

Honorable mentions:
Microsoft Flight Simulator
M.U.L.E.
Wasteland
Prince of Persia
Another World
Outcast
America's Army
Unreal Tournament 2004
Crysis
Mass Effect
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Dark Souls
Kerbal Space Program

I expected a yet another banal listicle or ranking post, but this comes with interesting commentaries from famous desingers.

For examples:

Wizardry - commented by Paul Neurath

Spoiler

Wizardry was one of those rare games that captured my imagination utterly. Even though the black-and-white line rendering of the dungeons was oh so primitive compared to today’s 3D games, it nevertheless managed to fully immerse me in its fantasy world. For several long days and late evenings I plunged the depths of the dungeons of the Mad Overlord, the real world around on pause.

How was Wizardry able to pull this off? For one, the world was laid out before you as if it were a place that had its own life and internal logic, to an extent astonishing for that early era of gaming. It felt real, far beyond the surface graphics. Wizardry was also a truly challenging game. It could be unforgiving if you played carelessly: your party of adventures could be wiped out with no ready save point to catch you. But the challenge was fair and rewarded smart play. Something too uncommon with modern games. Finally, the game elements were lovingly crafted and balanced to make a wonderfully cohesive experience.

Wizardry, along with the early Ultimas, had the biggest influence on me as a game designer during that era. They were the shoulders of giants that I and other designers were able to stand on. — Paul Neurath

Ultima IV - commented by Warren Spector

Spoiler

I first played Dungeons & Dragons in 1978.

The experience was literally life-changing. The experience of telling stories with my friends, instead of being told a story by a storyteller was mind-blowing, unlike anything I’d ever experienced. After that, my life was all about two things: movies and gaming. I’d play just about anything—RPGs, boardgames, you name it. And then came console and computer games. It started with TRS-80s and Atari 800s, Atari 2600s and Colecovisions and then, along came IBM PCs and clones.

On all of those, my favorite games were what passed back then for roleplaying games. And “passed for” is the only way to describe them. It seemed like every game featured some variation of D&D’s characteristics—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, increased by earning experience points. They all seemed to feature the traditional character classes—Fighter, Mage, Paladin and so on—with the possibilities and limitations established in tabletop RPGs. There were various character alignments and gameplay driven by dierolls, just like D&D. And the stories? Well, most of them were sort of like Monty Haul dungeon crawls (my least favorite thing to do in RPGs). You move down a corridor (avoid the traps!), open a door, enter a room, kill the monster inside, steal the treasure it was guarding. Wash, rinse, repeat. End of “story.”

In other words, those early computer roleplaying games weren’t so much about 'roleplaying' as much as they were about 'rollplaying.' I played them but, in retrospect, I’m not sure why. There wasn’t much originality or creativity in them. And the stories were pretty lame. (Here I’m being generous.)

Then, around 1985, Ultima IV appeared, not exactly out of nowhere, but certainly like a bolt from the blue that changed everything for me. This was no dungeon crawl—this was a philosophical journey, a quest not for glory and riches or a quest to defeat the Evil Bad Guy threatening the world with… well… something bad, but a parable on the strengths made possible and the limitations imposed by ethical behavior.

You knew something was different from the moment the game started. There were no dierolls to determine your character’s nature and capabilities. There was a gypsy who posed questions for which there were no right or wrong answers, only each player’s views on right and wrong behavior. Character creation wasn’t about fantasy fulfillment, but about creating an idealized version of yourself. It wasn’t Frodo or Conan in the world of Britannia—it was you.

And the quest itself? No villainous badguy or meaningless dungeon crawl here (well, at least until the end), but a journey through the land of Britannia whose purpose was to master the foundations of Truth, Love and Courage, as expressed through the eight virtues—Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality and Humility.

Notice that none of these would do you any good in a dungeon or on a battlefield. You were on a quest to perfect yourself, to become a paragon of virtue—in other words, the Avatar. And in so doing, two things would happen. First, you would be an inspiration to the people of Britannia. Second, you—the player—would learn something about yourself and about the world. The real world.

Consider mind blown.

I could recount the details of the story—well, actually, I couldn’t since I don’t remember it all that well—but Ultima IV’s story, while better than any other non-Infocom game I’d played to that point… the story was so not the point.

The feeling the game gave me. That’s the point. It came as close as any game had to the point to making me feel like I was in a real roleplaying experience. The kind I’d had with my friends back in 1978. That was enough in and of itself, but it was also the first thing that lit a fire under my butt to move from tabletop games to computer game development. And that fire had a purpose—to give people the experience of telling stories with their friends (well, with me, anyway). Together. Sharing authorship as well as adventure and derring do.

That’s all I’ve wanted to do for the last 32 years. Recreate D&D. And it all started with Ultima IV. Thanks Lord British, for everything. — Warren Spector

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss - commented by Chris Avellone

Spoiler

This title screamed in out of nowhere, and did something amazing—it created a 3D fantasy FPS that few games have ever been able to match since. In fact, the deafening silence of any significant contender for years after its release made it stand out even more. The significance of Ultima Underworld is not only its visual fidelity (for its time, UU was great), but the combat, the level design, the exploration, and the narrative challenges the game presented to the player—including significant and memorable dialogues that tested you beyond simple skill checks.

The story was a bit hacky (go rescue the Baron's daughter before she's sacrificed to a demon, the Slasher of Veils), but the design elements along the way outshine the main story and still shine to this day. On narrative alone, Ultima Underworld taught me how to speak a lizardman's language, I bantered with talking doors, and after fighting all the way to the one spirit in the game who could help me with the final boss, the spirit (Garamon) simply replied "I don't know. What do you think we should do?" And I sat and stared at the screen. The game was asking me how to solve it. Initially flummoxed by this twist, I proceeded to question and volunteer ways to defeat the big baddie, and I was floored. Ultima Underworld is one of the best examples (another being Fallout 1) of how innovation can make a game excel, and I consider Ultima Underworld to be one of the best RPGs and best games of all time. And hey, if you put corn to your torch, it made popcorn. How cool is that? — Chris Avellone

Myst - commented by Richard Garriott

Spoiler

The first game I ever played to completion, that I did not work on myself, was Myst. I remember well the first time I loaded up Myst and was transported to a marvelous world, envisioned and expressed in a powerful and unique way I had never conceived of previously. The full screen renders of their beautiful world combined with visual puzzles solved at your own pace, made an experience which captivated me from the first screen to the last.

Myst taught me just how much story telling could be done purely through visuals, and the importance of mood, style and UI. This was before the days of the internet, and I spent tons of time on the phone and comparing notes with fellow staffers as we all powered through to the end. — Richard Garriott

Doom - commented by Cliff Bleszinski

Spoiler

Doom was magic.

Doom wasn’t the first first-person shooter. It’s seldom the first of anything that really nails it, hell, anyone remember the Diamond Rio, or the Virtual Boy? Now we have iPhones and the Oculus. Funny how that works.

Doom was the Texas Southern Rockabilly love-letter to All Things American. From American military arm flexing to fighting off Satan Himself in God’s Name with a shotgun. Doom was Freedom.

The monster designs were on point, the guns were crunchy and powerful, the level design perfect, and above all, the music and audio were CHARACTERS in that game. The doors opening sounded like a demon screaming, the moaning of the creatures and the zombies in the distance, even the pickup sounds popped.

The game even taunted you with difficulty settings that trolled the user, rooms where the lights went out and a gaggle of imps swarmed you, Cacodaemons, aka Hell’s Beholders, came down on you too. Plus, secret passages, demonic runes... the entire game was pure fucking rock and roll and id Software in their prime were truly the Beatles of videogame design. — Cliff Bleszinski

UFO: Enemy Unknown - commented by none other than Jake Solomon

Spoiler

X-Com: UFO Defense is hard to think of as a “game.” Even to this day it seems more real, more authentic, than most other games you could play. It’s probably better to consider X-Com a simulation rather than a game. It was a fear simulator, for me anyway, as I hunched in front of my monitor late at night, night after night, 20 years ago.

X-Com: UFO Defense was important because it didn’t care about the player. It was as cold and uncaring as the void of space that spawned its horrific aliens. As a player in X-Com, you felt very small. In X-Com’s combat, the darkness was ever present, it was cloying, it was always closing in. There was no real music to telegraph how you should be feeling, instead there was a heavy, dark ambient soundscape that felt like a transmission straight out of deep space. There was no reassuring UI that told you how well you were doing, or gave you a sense that these aliens could actually be killed. Combat was unpredictable, so you never felt comfortable. Every shot could be the one that saved you, or doomed you. Your soldiers, veterans of multiple missions, companions for tens of hours of your life, could fall as easily as leaves in an autumn breeze. The tension was horrific.

But for all of its unpredictability, X-Com was not cruel. It did not delight in your failures. It simply did not care. It did not care if you slowly clawed your way to victory or if you fell, and the entire Earth fell with you. X-Com did not take the time to congratulate you or admonish you with silly snips of music, or gaudy showers of UI, or bombastic cinematics. X-Com just kept the dark wheels of its simulation turning, inexorably turning.

X-Com wasn’t a game, it was a fully contained world that existed behind your monitor, as subject to its own rules as you were. My experiences in X-Com, my memories there, are as authentic to me as any others I have from that time in my life. It was a forerunner of simulations today that trade in authenticity, like Day Z, and Dwarf Fortress. X-Com was, and still is, one of the most important games of all time. — Jake Solomon

StarCraft: Brood War - commented by Sid Meier

Spoiler

I really enjoyed StarCraft: Brood War. I probably played the most in Skirmish Mode, but really the entire game is a great example of individual parts all coming together to make something great.

StarCraft as a whole has fantastic progression, introducing a series of problems and having the player overcome them before moving onto the next problem. Where are the resources? Where am I going to build my base? What’s out there in the map? Where’s the enemy? How am I going to win? All these stages flow easily and naturally from one to the next. It also has excellent asymmetry in its forces, with each side having its distinct feel and tactics, but carefully balanced next to each other. The game wraps all this in a great art style and clever audio design that clearly supports the key gameplay ideas.

Brood War builds on the solid base of StarCraft, preserving all the best parts of the first game and giving you something deeper to think about. — Sid Meier

Thief: The Dark Project - commented by Steve Gaynor (of Gone Home)

Spoiler

How does one judge the "importance" of a game? Probably most often it's considered some intangible mix of how well-remembered it is, how forward-looking it was, and how much influence it exerted on the games that would follow it. But maybe one much more concrete metric is how often, and how long after its release, a game receives reboots, remakes, rereleases—in other words, commercial attempts to acknowledge that there's still value in that original title, that there's still goodwill kicking around in the public's mind. That people still care.

A reboot says as much about what made the original game great—or at least, what the reboot's creators think made it great—as it does about what's changed in the games industry in the intervening years. And much had changed between the release of Thief: The Dark Project by Looking Glass in 1998, and the release of Thief by Eidos Montreal in 2014. PC gaming, and PC game development, were totally different frontiers in those earlier days, and Looking Glass was forging its own, very unique path in the PC space. The Dark Project, in many ways, cemented all the things that Looking Glass was 'about,' drawing together a number of threads into one, singular experience.

Garrett's movement through the world had the physicality that the studio had pioneered with Ultima Underworld. The City had the foreboding and oppressive atmosphere of Citadel Station, in a Victorian Gothic instead of far-future Cyberpunk setting. The game's mechanics pulled the focus even further away from direct combat than they ever had, and in fact gave the player a ton of systemic tools that encouraged them to succeed at their missions—to inhabit the role of the titular Thief—without spilling any blood at all. And on top of all this was the wry, individualist character of Garrett himself, the voice of the weary outsider to all the City's faction struggles, the lens through which the player discovered this strange and twisted world.

Thief (2014) is so important inasmuch as it demonstrates how very different The Dark Project was from everything that came before it, and, despite its undisputed importance and influence, everything that came after, its own reboot included. The Dark Project was a game that above all trusted its player to find their own way, devise their own successes, to improvise. Enormous, sprawling, contiguous levels, packed with side rooms and back hallways, peppered with valuables and documents, all without any sort of minimap to guide you; instead, just a hand-drawn paper map, provided by your informant, or Garrett's reconnaissance, or merely by rumors in the streets of how this grand manor or that pagan lair might be laid out.

One of the most memorable moments in the game happens when, completely lost and disoriented, you check your map, only to find it updated with the phrase "WHERE AM I?" in Garrett's panicked hand, the character just as lost as you are, desperate for a way out. The Dark Project never held your hand—but it did give you the tools, and the trust, to find your own way.

And so 2014's Thief, with its small, constrained levels, myriad fake doors, minimap and mission markers, is so important in that it shows us just why 1998's original stood out, and continues to stand out, as a game unlike other games. Mass market video game technology and design best practices have in many cases trended more toward simplified playable spaces and feature-forward user-friendliness, but it is just The Dark Project's opposition to these principles, its openness and impartiality, that defined it. To attempt to apply today's standards to Garrett and the City is, demonstrably, an exercise at odds with itself—an important lesson to remember. The world of a thief is by no means a friendly or welcoming one; the joy, in the end, is making it through that world on your own. — Steve Gaynor

System Shock 2 - commented by Chris Avellone

Spoiler

We still quote System Shock 2 in development meetings and have for many years—the pacing of the tutorial, the character creation sequence, and of course, SHODAN, one of the best female adversaries ever, who radiated menace by voice alone. Every time she spoke, it felt like she was stabbing electrified needles into your ears and pinning you down like a twitching insect. Which to her, you were—and made defeating her all the more satisfying.

This game was amazing, and was almost—almost—an amazing RPG as well. It had great character class development trees including psionics (!), a cool set of abilities that made you feel their advantages (and the lack of them if the ability was weak), it created urgency and tension while exploring with time-based implants (trying to run back to recharge an implant that you desperately needed reminded you the clock was always ticking), and the sheer quality of the voice acting (the creepy midwives, the cheerful explosive protocol robots, and the crewmen that begged you to kill them as they launched themselves at you), all culminating in a final confrontation that takes you all the way back to the very look and feel of System Shock 1.

It was an amazing, unforgettable experience, and one that few FPSs to date have captured.

On a parting note, it had cyrokinetic monkeys. Cyrokinetic. Monkeys. And they were terrifying. Do you know how hard it is to sell an idea like that, let alone pull it off? Kudos to Irrational and Looking Glass.— Chris Avellone

 

[tormund]

I'm surprised by Gone Home guy's comments about Thief 2014... Looks like it really did bomb to a point where it is excluded from that "never criticize other company's AAA titles" rule.

 

[octavius]

Good list, but where is Dungeon Master? It created it's own subgenre of CRPGs.
And Frontier instead of Elite?

 

[Daedalos]

Where is PS:T, Where is fallout,

 

[taxalot]

Where is PS:T, Where is fallout,

PS:T was not important. It was a great game, yes, it's possibly one of the best RPGs ever, but the impact it had on gaming is near to zero. That's the whole point of this list. For once, I feel it is a fairly good one. I wish Ultima VII was in there for really giving flesh to the whole open world, but heh.

Also, Fallout was merely one of the greatest exemple of an already known and tried concept. Setting the bar high is one thing, innovating is another.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

A surprisingly competent list, despite the glaring omission of Dungeon Master and to a lesser extent Pool of Radiance. In general, there's a bit of a '90s bias, but I suppose that's better than usual presentist bias towards recent games.

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss - commented by Chris Avellone
This title screamed in out of nowhere, and did something amazing—it created a 3D fantasy FPS

 

[taxalot]

Formula 1 GP should have been in there

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I wonder why Unreal Tournament 2004 was an honorable mention, but Unreal Tournament wasn't even mentioned. UT was pretty big.

 

[Superuser]

Excellent list. I like how they've included ones that are there for the wrong reasons (e.g. Myst, Broken Age), but are important nonetheless. Some more games I would have included:

Rainbow Six (1998): this really started the realistic shooter/tactical shooter thing in my opinion. The preplanning phase where you pick your equipment is now a staple of just about all tac-shooters. The preplanning phase later evolved into a more active planning phase (Hidden & Dangerous) and interaction with squadmates became a bigger deal in later tac-shooters.

Grand Theft Auto series for the open world. Though fair enough as the PC versions have always come out after the console versions, and I didn't see Halo and the like mentioned.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007): popularised not only regenerating health (after which point it became universal, whereas before Halo was the only main game to use it), but also the modern-military setting and a perk system in multiplayer for AAA FPS games.

Assassin's Creed (2007): contextual controls for most actions in the game! That is the main innovation/popularisation of the first AC, and it really changed character-action games forever. The ability to climb every building was mind blowing at the time, even though the rest of the game was terrible (though the writing was compelling in this one). That, and creating the basic structure for the non-GTA open world game.

 

[sawovsky]

This list needs WarCraft 3, that game brought a revolution to RTS genre, broke boundaries between RPG and RTS, and brought to the surface a lot of now popular genres, such as Tower Defence and MOBA.

 

[Sjukob]

No homeworld ?

 

[Jason Liang]

Alpha Centauri and Sid Meier's Pirates! should both be on this list... I think this is a list we would make in 2016 but there are a lot of PC games omitted from the late 80s early 90s that were influential in their time. GTA probably counts more as a console game than a PC game.

 

[bonescraper]

So, where's Operation Flashpoint? Populous? Dungeon Keeper? Ground Control? Alone in the Dark?

Instead they have Dark Souls and Skyrim in honorable mentions? LEL.

 

[Deflowerer]

Alpha Centauri and Sid Meier's Pirates! should both be on this list... I think this is a list we would make in 2016 but there are a lot of PC games omitted from the late 80s early 90s that were influential in their time. GTA probably counts more as a console game than a PC game.

Centauri might be great, but as the case with PS:T and Fallout, not sure why it's important.

 

[laclongquan]

Planescape Torment is important. For one thing, it's the poster case to prove that game can be art. game can be deep, philosophical, and thought provoking in a classical sense.
Also, it's the reason that drive the popularity of DnD computer games like Baldur's Gate at the time. I dont know anything about DnD there and I dont care to know more about the setting now, but thanks to PST at least I have some passing interest in PnP settings.

To be honest, even now, when talking about a philosophical game, I would pull out only PST. I cant think of another tittle of that requirement.

The fact that they fail to bring up PST just say all you need to know about their level of comprehension.

 

[mixer]

Great read, really liking guest commentary, learned a lot of things.

 

[Lord Azlan]

Good list, but where is Dungeon Master? It created it's own subgenre of CRPGs.
And Frontier instead of Elite?

Indeed and very good point. I can't remember anything like Dungeon Master beforehand. It led to a whole subgenre like the Eye of the Beholders and Lands of Lore.

It could be though that they decided the subgenre has not been very successful since Lands of Lore until the Legend of Grimrock. At the time though there was a golden age where we also had Captive and Bloodwych - both for which I would pay a small fortune to play again.

Since they include Colossal Cave Adventure, I would really like to know their reasons to choose Frontier above Elite on the list. Also vote Revs ahead of F1 GP.

A bit sad so many crappy shooters are on the list.

Finally - I wish I had anything like Frontier nowadays.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

A very good list. While I, like octavius first questioned Frontier being there instead of Elite, the answer is simple - Elite is first and foremost a BBC Micro game, an 8-bit title. There existed a PC version, but was it superior to the original? Was it the PC version of Elite that defined it and made it famous? No. But Frontier was only released on the surviving 16-bits of the early 90s, and it is the PC version of it that shone the brightest, so it makes sense that it is included on the list rather than Elite.

Same with Dungeon Master, it not only rose to fame on the Atari ST, it was a big factor in defining the ST as a viable computer platform for games. There's an in-depth "making of" article floating about for DM and has been linked here several times, read it. The PC version wasn't released until 1990 IIRC, four years after the game's original release.

Looking at the same thing in reverse, I question the presence of M.U.L.E and Prince of Persia on the list, even though they're only in the honorable mentions. PoP is one of the few titles that can't be nailed down to any specific platform - just about every conversion of it is highly-praised.

While some people may wonder at the inclusion of Wing Commander 3, the answer is this: It was the first game that showed that sinking millions of dollars into well-produced FMV-segments was a profitable venture. With hindsight one could argue that this is not a positive thing for the development of PC games, but it was an important step nonetheless - it raised the roof on investment options for all PC games that followed.

Another game that deserves to be on there (but only manages to make the honorable mention list) is Microsoft Flight Simulator. This game is the yardstick for the term "IBM PC & Compatibles" - that term is a positive response to the question "Can this computer run Microsoft Flight Simulator?" That's how important it is, and it's a term that was truly applicable at least through most of the 1980s, and could still be found tacked on to PC games as late as the early 2000s.

Finally, can someone post an archive link of the article? I have PC Gamer blocked on my computer, but this is the first article from them in ages I actually want to read further.

 

[sullynathan]

I never see a gothic game whenever these lists are made even though they technically came before Morrowind.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

No Warcraft II ,Heroes of Might and Magic II/III,Diablo II and the original as they had quite different impact(D2 mostly for the multiplayer part).

Mass Effect
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Dark Souls

 

[GloomFrost]

Not a single LucasArts quest? No Heroes? No Gothic?

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

No Warcraft II ,Heroes of Might and Magic II/III,Diablo II and the original as they had quite different impact(D2 mostly for the multiplayer part).

Not a single LucasArts quest? No Heroes? No Gothic?

Not even King's Bounty is up there.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I never see a gothic game whenever these lists are made even though they technically came before Morrowind.

Tell us, what did the Gothic games accomplish of note?

No Warcraft II ,Heroes of Might and Magic II/III,Diablo II and the original as they had quite different impact(D2 mostly for the multiplayer part).

No, I'm not seeing any of these games deserving to be on the list. Warcraft 2 is just a step between Dune 2 (the game that created the RTS genre) and Starcraft (the pinnacle of RTS games and became a very long-lived e-sport phenomenon).

HoMM is just an enhanced version of King's Bounty, which in turn is just a well-made strategy game. Diablo 2 achieved nothing with its multiplayer (or singleplayer) that hadn't been done before, it's just a good game.

Mass Effect
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Dark Souls

Well spotted. Dark Souls doesn't belong on that list AT ALL. It's a console title that was subsequently ported over to the PC.

Mass Effect's argument would probably be something about "romances being done right" or the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure angle of the game, but I don't think ME did neither aspect any better that had been done before.

Skyrim could be argued as being the culmination of a steady evolution of large-scale world-building...if the end result wasn't Skyrim, a game that comes close to equalling Ultima 7's large-scale built world, but ultimately doesn't. U7 deserves to be on that list before Skyrim...or any Elder Scrolls game, for that matter.

 

[Declinator]

Didn't Mass Effect make dialogue wheel mainstream? That might be its biggest "contribution".

Was Command & Conquer the first RTS with multi-unit/lasso choice? If so, might deserve a spot.

Some racing sims like iRacing also deserve an honorable mention at least.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Didn't Mass Effect make dialogue wheel mainstream? That might be its biggest "contribution".

Yes, in the same vein as shitting in the swimming pool counts.

Was Command & Conquer the first RTS with multi-unit/lasso choice? If so, might deserve a spot.

Warcraft allowed for 4 units to be selected at once, but you had to Shift+click each one. Besides that, C&C was just a more refined version of Dune 2, which is on the list.

Some racing sims like iRacing also deserve an honorable mention at least.

Good point, there's not a single racing game on the list. The problem with that is finding a PC-exclusive/PC-first title that actually did something worth a damn for the genre. And I don't think Carmageddon really counts...