Rent a restaurant location, furnish and decorate it, hire staff, create your own pizzas (but better make some of the standard recipes too, or you'll never get customers!) and of course start smuggling for the mafia. Bribe police officers to look the other way, hey why not bribe politicians as well? This game has it all. I don't know how many hours I've spent playing it in my formative teens. Whenever I hear the intro music a big grin splits my face wide open.

or "UFO: Enemy Unknown" as it was called in Europe. Extraterrestrials are invading earth and I'm put in charge of an organisation that's to deal with them. Combining tactical turnbased battles in cities, in the countryside or even in my own bases with researching alien technology to get myself up to speed, this is a game everybody should try at least once.

I did eventually finish it, and it srather difficult sequel "Terror from the Deep" - but not back in the 90's.

And yes, the 2012 "remake" XCOM: Enemy Unknown is really good as well, but that's a matter for another list.

This is one of the (if not THE) first fully 3d first person roleplaying games, though I didn't know it when I first got it in 1996. All I knew was that I hadn't seen anything like it before and I couldn't stop playing. It felt so real. There's long dialogues with the NPC's - you can even barter with them. You can decide which skills to master and play the game your way.

Looking back at it now, I think it's still very playable. The resolution is low and the graphics blocky, but it still evokes a feeling of being a full world where you can do anything.

The storyline? You, the Avatar, are being framed for kidnapping a baron's daughter and are locked inside a horrible dungeon to find and rescue her. The dungeon itself was once a noble attempt by a scholar of this world to unite the various fantasy races inhabiting it in a utopia where everybody would cooperate. Needless to say it didn't work, but maybe the Avatar can set things straight here as well.

I spent hours just watching the small people carry stuff around; I'd make small corrections in the road layout to improve the flow of trade. I loved how I could create random worlds to play on. This game would last me forever, I thought. The later Settlers titles aren't at all the same, and it makes me sad I can't find this one on GOG or anywhere else.

I never got into Railroad Tycoon. Transport Tycoon was another thing entirely. I loved setting up the railways, building stations and planning bus routes. It didn't hurt that the game looked good, either!

Heroes 3 is probably my favorite of them all, but this is the one that got me started - and the only when I had back in the 90's. The graphics kind of make me cringe now, and the gameplay was definitely improved by the later titles. Still, there's something mesmerizing to be found even in this title. Navigating your heroes around the map, picking up treasures and armies, leveling up all the while.

I tried playing this with my then boyfriend, and I was so pissed off when he decided to invade my village before I was ready that I decided I should only play co-op games with people I care about from then on. That was probably a good move.

I should really go back and finish this one.

Design my own roller coaster, build mazes, see what all my visistors are thinking. Hire people to take care of the inevitable puddles of vomit after my visitors test out my g-force defying rides. Then there's a unch of missions to complete where I need to fix up crappy old parks. And some more missions in an "Added attractions pack". Yeaaaaah it's no wonder I couldn't stop playing this gem. Never did finish it, though, much like most..well,actually almost ALL the games on this list.