7 – Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines has a very special place in my heart for a very specific reason: I was one of the first games I have ever seen anyone playing. You read that right, I was seeing a friend of mine playing it. It takes me back to those days when being a backseat gamer was something fun, because one had no phone or social media readily available to distract you, so to keep ourselves entertained, playing in doubles used to be something really fun. A couple of years later, I bought the game, and the two of us ended up going through it together one more time.
6 – Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds
This one has to be the funniest entry on this list, because I didn’t actually own the full game until much later on, and the only thing I was able to play was the demo. Not because I didn’t want to buy it, but because it came out during a time when digital media wasn’t a thing, and if it didn’t come to a store near me, I had no way of getting it. Given those limitations, I played the first mission of the demo dozens of times across several years. Even back then, I knew that Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds was just a reskinned Age of Empires, but that didn’t matter. What are some of my favorite things ever? Age of Empires and Star Wars.
5 – Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings
I don’t think there’s any other game I have spent so much time playing as Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings, with The Conquerors expansion. Maybe it was because of the fact that its demo was the first strategy game I had ever encountered in my life, or maybe because the game is just that good.l Now, with nearly 30 years between, I think it comes down to a bit of both. I went on to play 3 decades of all sorts of games, and Age of Empires 2 went on to become even more popular than it was in the 90s. Playing this at a time when there was no easily available internet connection, my Saturday and Sunday afternoons were spent on endless skirmish matches, mostly looking for ways to turtle and make the games last as long as possible. Those were the days. Fortunately, in 2026 we can enjoy Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, one of the best RTS to play in 2026.
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