'90s virtual reality, Battlefield 2142, and Total War: This month in PC Gamer 10, 20, and 30 years ago
April showers bring May flowers, or so the saying goes; more relevant, around these parts, is that magazines written in April come out in May, the date plastered on all three of the issues featured below. It’s a fine vintage no matter the year ending in 6, it turns out.
Here's a look back at what was going on in PC gaming—and in particular, in the pages of PC Gamer magazine—one, two, and three decades ago. Did you own any of these issues? How do our review scores hold up? What seemed trivial at the time that's now enshrined in PC gaming history?
What was on the cover?
May 1996: The Future of Gaming (US, issue #24)
Cover story: The Future of Gaming - "Playing It On the Line" by Steve Poole and "Virtually Real" by T. Liam McDonald
Putting "the future of..." just about anything is the kindest gift a magazine editor can give to their eventual successors, because odds are about 100% that they'll be able to look back and make fun of you for it. In this case, the PC Gamer of 30 years ago was kinda right? But also very wrong! Always in motion, is the future. Virtual reality made waves in the '90s, disappeared, finally came roaring back with the technology necessary to become reality in 2016, and now is pretty much passé.
Online gaming, though? Yeah, I think they were onto something with that one.
This is one of the magazine's most memorable covers ever, at least in my mind (those grid lines!). And it just so happened that exactly 20 years later I was in charge of covering the launch of the Oculus Rift.
Cover hits:
- Prey previewed
- Wing Commander 4 review
- On CD: "Doom-killer" Duke Nukem 3D's full shareware version
May 2006: Battlefield 2142 (US, issue #148)
Cover story: Battlefield 2142: "It's 136 years in the future. Do you know where your unstoppable 20-foot mech is?" by Dan Stapleton
After the megaton that was Battlefield 1942, expectations were certainly high for this sequel. "Could BF 2142 be our 2006 Game of the Year in the making? It wouldn't surprise anyone here, and, like the team at DICE, we're not so bad at predicting the future," we wrote at the time. The game would end ups coring a respectable 86% in the US magazine, but it didn't have quite the impact of its predecessor despite the giant mechs.
Cover hits:
- Exclusive The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion review
- Half-Life 2 Episode 1 preview
May 2016: Total War: Warhammer (UK, issue #291)
Cover story: Total War: Warhammer: "War has changed" by Jake Tucker
VR sure took a long time, considering we had it on the cover back in 1996. The future, it seemed, was finally arriving. Here in 2026, of course, we know that's not really how it played out. VR remains a novelty and the Oculus brand has been subsumed entirely into Meta, a corporate rebrand that seems particularly quaint now that Mark Zuckerberg has lost interest in "the metaverse" and is all-in on AI.
While I'm proud of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive reviews I wrote for the arrival of VR, this magazine launch feature for the Rift isn't one I'm particularly proud of today. So much of it is about seemingly-just-quirky-at-the-time Palmer Luckey, who I didn't know would soon be a very vocal Trump supporter, start up a defense company with the pitch of "protecting" the border, and say a lot of stuff I consider reprehensible.
But hey, that cover story on Total War: Warhammer? Pretty sweet! Years after writing our first deep look at Total War: Warhammer as a freelancer, Jake Tucker would become the editorial director of the PC Gaming Show. I'd ask him to share some memories of that cover story trip, but he's currently way too busy, uh, making the PC Gaming Show.
Cover hits:
- Oculus Rift launch
- Xbox on PC
- Planet Coaster preview
- Stardew Valley, The Division, and Hitman reviews
- Top 50 free PC games
In the news
May 1996
- 3D marches on: "Hardly a week goes by without another major announcement in the 3D graphics arena." Microsoft has just launched Direct3D for Windows 95.
- A game adaptation of Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash is in development. It was never released.
- Activision makes a deal for the rights to Zork movie and TV adaptations, though they will never be produced.
- Rocket Science Games tries to offer arcade games playable in a browser, via Shockwave and Java, for 25 cents per play.
May 2006
- Gabe Newell talks Half-Life 2 Episode 1: "Newell confirmed to PC Gamer that Episodes 1 through 4 are currently slated... So, will there be a Half-Life 3? Newell says it depends on how well Episode 1 and its follow-ups sell. Preferring to continue the story of Half-Life episodically, he foresees using the format to branch out into other genres and take chances that Valve otherwise wouldn't take. (High on his wishlist? A third-person tactical game set in the Half-Life universe.)
- Comic artist Jim Lee joins DC Online as executive creative director.
- Halo 2 is belatedly coming to PC, but as a Windows Vista exclusive.
May 2016
- Epic CEO Tim Sweeney sees the Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform as the company "moving against the entire PC industry," warning that it could "make it harder for developers and publishers to escape from Microsoft's new UWP commerce monopoly." The initiative was largely a failure for Microsoft.
- Microsoft closes Fable developer Lionhead and cancels Fable: Legends
- Stardew Valley has already sold more than 500,000 copies
- Mass Effect Andromeda delayed to 2017
The hottest hardware
May 1996
Dan Bennett upgrades from his 66MHz Intel 486 to "just about the fastest PC possible," spending $1,700 on a motherboard, processor, and memory. A 166MHz Intel Pentium, 16MB of memory, and Intel Endeavor motherboard—because Intel still made its own mobos back then. He also tried to plug in a 4MB Matrox Impression video card that "had been sitting around the PC Gamer offices for months," but "learned the hard way that the fastest Windows accelerator isn't always the best choice for gaming."
May 2006
Enjoying this trip down memory lane? You can still subscribe to PC Gamer to get new issues of the magazine (in print!) every month.
Logan Decker explains why even "top-of-the-line videocards currently available from Nvidia and ATI" can't play HD videos in Windows Vista, thanks to the new HDCP (high bandwidth digital content protection) copy protection. He mentions there's no surefire next-gen DVD standard yet, though "Blu-ray is being given the odds over HD-DVD."
A Widow PC Sting 517m laptop scores a 90% review for its "exceptional components at areasonable price," including a Pentium M 2.2GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM, GeForce 7800 GTX graphics card, and 7200 RPM hard drive. It weighs 8.3 pounds.
May 2016
Dave James scores Intel's Core i5-6600K and i7-6700K processors a 91% and 86%, while AMD's latest FX processors earn lower scores. "Zen cannot arrive soon enough for AMD. Until the company's new chips arrive the ageing FX series is its only answer to Intel... and in all honestly it really isn't much of a competition." Things sure would change shortly thereafter!
Our highest and lowest review scores
May 1996
- Wing Commander 4 - 90% - "Wing Commander 4 is a great science fiction movie that also happens to be fun to play."
- Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri - 90% - "Deep, rewarding, and countless hours of fun, Terra Nova blends strategy, adventure, and action in one explosive package."
- NFL Quarterback Club '96 - 90% - "This game takes to the gridiron in style with tons of options and challenging action."
- Foxhunt - 57% - "The comedy stylings of The Naked Gun and Ace Ventura come together in this spy thriller, but it doesn't make up for the thin gameplay."
- Darkseed 2 - 45% - "It's not nearly as troubled as the original Darkseed, but it's certainly not a good way to spend your gaming dollar."
May 2006
- The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion - 95% - "Years from now, gamers will look back on Oblivion and say it was a classic."
- Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth 2 - 90% - "A full-featured, challenging strategy game that will please all Lord of the Rings fans."
- Lula 3D - 38% - "Burdened by poor (though amusing) translations and just plan silly puzzles..."
- Rainbow Six: Lockdown - 45% - "We took 'Tom Clancy's' out of the headline 'cause the devs took all the Tom Clancy out of the game."
May 2016
- Stardew Valley - 80% - "A breath of fresh air. Stardew Valley's blend of pixel charm and gentle pacing makes for an excellent little escape."
- Cities: Skylines Snowfall - 85% - "Snowfall adds new challenges and complexity—as well as more pronounced effects than the first expansion."
- Disgaea - 61% - "A solid and unusual strategy game frustratingly buried under a terrible and lazily thought-out port."