PC Gamer Issue 89

Cover Story:

• The 50 Best Games of All Time: It's been two years since PC Gamer pissed off every reader by compiling a list like this. Therefore, it's time to do it again. Did your game make the list? Here's how it all broke down in 2001, highest to lowest:
  1. Half-Life
  2. Civilization II
  3. X-Com: UFO Defense
  4. Fallout / Fallout 2
  5. Dark Forces series
  6. StarCraft
  7. Diablo series
  8. Mechwarrior 2
  9. Rainbow Six series
  10. Deus Ex
  11. The Sims
  12. Duke Nukem 3D
  13. Baldur's Gate series
  14. Command & Conquer: Red Alert series
  15. Doom / Doom 2
  16. X-Wing series
  17. Quake series
  18. Black & White
  19. Wing Commander series
  20. Everquest
  21. Ultima - Ultima VII
  22. WarCraft series
  23. System Shock series
  24. Age of Empires II
  25. SimCity series
  26. Tomb Raider
  27. NHL 2001
  28. Panzer General
  29. Heroes of Might and Magic series
  30. Ultima Underworld series
  31. Master of Orion
  32. Gabriel Knight series
  33. Need for Speed series
  34. Star Control 2
  35. 1942: Pacific Air War
  36. Monkey Island series
  37. Unreal series
  38. Lords of the Realm II
  39. Total Annihilation
  40. Roller Coaster Tycoon
  41. Populous
  42. Bard's Tale
  43. High Heat Baseball series
  44. No One Lives Forever
  45. Worms series
  46. Homeworld
  47. Sam & Max Hit the Road
  48. Beavis and Butt-head in Virtual Stupidity
  49. Tribes, Tribes 2
  50. Combat Mission

Departments:

• The CD: 649 Serious Megabytes, including numerous patches, EarthLink ISP software, and demos for:
  • MechCommander
  • Aliens vs. Predator 2
  • Throne of Darkness
  • The Corporate Machine
  • Anachronox
  • Half-Life Day of Defeat 1.3
• Letters: You write them, we read them, sometimes there are answers, sometimes we just roll our eyes.
• Eyewitness (News/Behind-the-Scenes reports): The Pentium III chip is being integrated into a US Army project called 'Land Warrior', you can win a copy of Max Payne in this month's contest, two new MMOs are on the way (Shadowbane and Dark Age of Camelot), Quake IV is coming, a PVP comic strip, and more tidbits than you can shake a monitor at!
• Extended Play (Add-ons, scenario discs, upgrades, patches, mods, and conversions): Daniel Morris looks at the Poseidon add-on for Zeus, and the Sudden Strike Forever add-on for Sudden Strike.
• The Point After (All your sporting opinions): Rob Smolka interviews Shaun Sullivan, the lone wolf developer of PureSim Baseball.
• Killing Box (3D action games, mods, deathmatching, clans, trends, etc...): Colin Williamson says sayonara to his regular opinion column, because the FPS genre has gotten boring.
• Sim Column (Driving, flying, building, military sims, community news): Andy Mahood got to drive a real race car, now he knows how racing games should feel, and he's taking publishers to task for skimping on the details.
• Alternate Lives (Adventure and roleplaying games, online RPGs, news, etc...): Michael Wolf is likewise bidding farewell to his beloved column after seven years.
• Desktop General (Wargames, history military simulations, tactical combat): William Trotter had to turn a fake contest about re-naming grognards into a real one after two months' worth of email convinced him that readers didn't get the joke.
• Backspace (The last word of the issue): Things you really should know before creating your own online clan.

Scoops (aka Previews):

• Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
• Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge
• The Thing
• Project Eden
• Command & Conquer: Renegade
• Zoo Tycoon

Reviews:

• MechCommander 2 (80%)
• Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates (78%)
• Anarchy Online (72%)
• Max Payne (90%; Editors' Choice)
• Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (65%)
• Atari Anniversary Edition (83%)
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (90%; Editors' Choice)
• Road Wars (57%)
• The Sting (64%)
• Sega GT (20%)
• Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (75%)
• Desperados (81%)
• 911 Fire Rescue (52%)
• Arthur's Knights (15%)

The Hard Stuff (hardware reviews, plus tech Q&A):

• GMachine Omega gaming PC (84%)
• Massworks ID-75 touch-screen controller (75%)
• Hercules Fortissimo II sound card (95%)
• Belkin Nostromo n45 game pad (80%)

Strategy:

• MechCommander 2 strategy guide
• Dominion Wars strategy guide
• Max Payne strategy guide
• Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare cheats
• Anachronox cheats
• Desperados cheats
• Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal cheats
• Max Payne cheats

Ads (in order of appearence):

• Conquest: Frontier Wars
• Far Gate
• Sid Meier's Civilization III
• Real War
• World War III: Black Gold
• Aquanox
• Game Commander 2
• i-Cybie proto-robo dog
• Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis
• Tom Clancy's Rainbox Six: Rogue Spear - Black Thorn
• F/A-18: Precision Strike Fighter
• Stronghold
• Project Eden
• Klipsch Promedia 5.1 surround system
• Command & Conquer Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge
• Red Faction
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
• EarthLink DSL Internet Service Provider
• EBGames.com
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
• Redmoon
• Battle Realms
• S.W.I.N.E.
• Ultimate Ride
• Voodoo brand PCs
• Commandos 2: Men of Courage
• Ballistics
• Dark Age of Camelot
• Mech Commander 2
• ATI Radeon 8500 graphics card
• PC Gamer subscription cards
• Myth III: The Wolf Age
• Wolop.com gaming systems
• XDream Machines PC hardware
• Command & Conquer: Renegade
• Magic & Mayhem: The Art of Magic
• Official Xbox Magazine special advertising section
• Car Tycoon
• Zax: The Alien Hunter
• Rails Across America
• Conflict Zone
• SmartDisk MVP
• Thrustmaster joysticks and controllers
• Hercules audio and video cards
• Alienware gaming PCs
• Patrician II: Quest For Power
• The Mystery of the Druids
• Sudden Strike Forever
• Disciples II: Dark Prophecy
• Dell laptops and desktop computers

Notable Stuff:

• The price for the Solo Version of this issue (no demo disc) is $4.99 US / $6.99 CAN.
• The Letters column this issue features a letter from a 50-hour-a-week Everquest gamer who cut the cord and got his life back on track. Good for him!
• Troma, the ultra-low-budget film studio, worked with development house Nekrosoft to create Toxic Mayhem: The Troma Project, a real-time strategy game based in the Troma universe, which came out in 2003. What's more, the same studio released a new version of the game, simply entitled The Troma Project, in 2015. What?!
• The Red Faction ad featured in this issue is a small, four-page tear-out booket designed like an information brochure.
• At the time this magazine went to the printers, the top five best-selling PC titles were Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, The Sims, The Sims: House Party, Diablo II, and RollerCoaster Tycoon. Five years earlier, the five best-selling PC titles were Duke Nukem 3D, WarCraft II, Civilization II, Return of Arcade, and Final Doom. What a difference five years makes, eh?
• The ATI Radeon 8500 ad borrows a little too heavily from the ad for Um Jammer Lammy in my opinion.
• Nominating multiple games, or an entire series, as single entries on your "Top 50" countdown doesn't seem quite fair. Man up and pick one!
• The only adventure game to make the Top 50 list is Beavis and Butt-head in Virtual Stupidity. No Myst, no Riven, nothing from Infocom.
• The Xbox Magazine ad section is sixteen pages. That seems like an awful lot of real-estate to devote to a console in a PC gaming magazine.
• Brian Dull won first place in William Trotter's contest to rename 'grognard' to 'COBS', an acronym for "Cranky Old Bastards". But I have to say I'm more a fan of Geoff's entry, which acronym-ized 'grognard' to 'GROGNARD', short for "Guy, Really Overweight, Goes Nuts About Rolling Dice".