It's happened a few times when an Apple/Mac enthusiast acquires a PC but doesn't know what to do with it, what games are good for it? What sound card should you get?

Here's my take on it, having used a:

386 SX25 in 1992-1996**
Pentium 1 166 in 1996-2000*
Athlon 600 MHz in 2000-2004
etc, to this day, daily driving a PC.

** this is the period in my life when I had the most free time to play computer games
* this one too, but significantly less

ISA sound card recommendation, in descending order:

-Sound Blaster 16 should be found in ISA form and relatively cheap and cover most needs
-PicoGUS project where you self assemble that manufactured ISA card and paste a Pico on it and get access to the world of the Gravis UltraSound, gives you better music in some games that relied on tracker music and used 32 bit sound samples
-Sound Blaster Pro / Adlib are ok choices but might be rarer / pricier

If you have a cable connected to your sound card's joystick port, you can use pin 12 (and some others related to gnd and 5V) to get some MIDI out to a midi device like a Roland MT-32, or a Sound Canvas Sc-55, SC-88 or others. No need for a MPU401 interface like you needed back in the day, you can use SOFTMPU (a recent program that emulates it) but you can only run it with expanded memory configured in config.sys.

MS-DOS Games that I HEAVILY recommend, this entire list plays fine (mostly) on a 486, doesn't require a Pentium, doesn't require 3d acceleration which is tricky to get for the 97-2000 era.

Fast 486 or Pentium
Slow 486
386
286

Turn-based strategy games:
Civlization 1
Master of Orion
Master of Magic
X-COM: UFO Defense (known as X-COM: Enemy Unknown in Europe)

Story based epic adventure with exploration:
Dune (from Cryo/Virgin)
Star Control II

Flight Sims:
X-Wing
TIE Fighter
Wing Commander II

Combat games:
OMF 2097 (One Must Fall)

Adventure Games:
King's Quest V and VI
Space Quest III, IV and V
Manhunter: New York
Gold Rush!
Quest for Glory 1
Secret of Monkey Island

RPGs:
Ultima VII
Might and Might III
Eye of the Beholder 1


FPS:
Wolfenstein 3D
DOOM
Hexen

If you can only try out just 3 games out of this big list, then here they are:

Dune, Master of Magic, Star Control II

If you're strapped for time and can only spare quick bursts:

OMF 2097 (One Must Fall), TIE Fighter, DOOM

Best heard with soundblaster with fm synth despite other choices: Dune
Best heard with GUS despite other choices: Star Control II, OMF 2097
Best heard with MIDI output despite other choices: X-Wing, TIE Fighter
Best heard with MT-32 despite other choices: Ultima VII, Wing Commander II, Secret of Monkey Island


known people who I've seen expressed a need for this thread in the past:
@jdmcs @Adam
@eric

I'd add in Quest for Glory III and IV (need a CDROM for the last one)
RPG: Wizardy: Crusaders of the Dark Savant
Action Shooter: Inner Space (this one gets progressively more interesting because it uses the "folders" in your machine as levels

Good list. OMF 2097, Jazz Jackrabbit and Epic Pinball all use a similar audio driver that cripples sample rate on many Soundblaster cards, regardless of the quality setting in the setup. Some folks at Vogons figured it out:


Once the driver is patched and ultra high quality music is selected in the setup, the SB versions sound every bit as good as GUS in my opinion. All three games use some neat stereo phase effects at the higher quality levels.

What about Inca and Inca II by Sierra? :)

Here are some of my favorites, color coded by the recommended machine class:
Fast 486 or Pentium
Slow 486
386
286

Real-time strategy:

• KKND
• Command & Conquer
• Red Alert
• Cannon Fodder

FPS:

• Rise of the Triad
• Descent

Platform/Side-scroller:

• Jazz Jackrabbit
• Realms of Chaos
• Hocus Pocus
• Zool 2
• Duke Nukem 2
• Commander Keen Series
• Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure

Flight sim:

• EF2000

Racing:

• Wacky Wheels
• Slipstream 5000

Pinball:

• Epic Pinball

Puzzle:

• God of Thunder
• Acid Tetris
• Xixit

Adventure:

• Little Big Adventure
• The Gene Machine
• Lost in Time

Shooter/Action:

• Raptor: Call of the Shadows
• Operation Carnage
• Zone 66
• Night Raid
• Crusader: No Remorse / No Regret

>> YMK said:

Here are some of my favorites, color coded by the recommended machine class: Fast 486 or Pentium Slow 486 386 286 .... Click to expand...

Raisin' the bar HUH?

FINE I'll edit my post too.

I like the gold box series of AD&D games.

gold box

a few came out for the Mac but most i think came out for MS-DOS.

(I played Pool of Radiance the most via the family's Mac SE)