Few years in PC gaming contain a contrast as sharp as 1993. In the same twelve months, the platform produced its most kinetic, adrenaline-driven hit and its most contemplative, atmosphere-driven one — and both became defining successes.
Doom Sets the Standard for Speed and Networking
id Software's Doom refined the first-person formula Wolfenstein 3D had introduced the year before, adding varied lighting, verticality-adjacent level tricks, and — critically — built-in support for multiplayer deathmatch over a local network. It turned office and university networks into impromptu arenas and gave the emerging first-person shooter genre its most influential early icon.
Myst and the CD-ROM as a Storytelling Tool
Cyan's Myst went in the opposite direction entirely: no combat, no time pressure, just a beautifully rendered island full of puzzles and an ambient, unsettling sense of a story that had already happened before the player arrived. It could not have existed on floppy disks — its pre-rendered imagery needed the storage capacity CD-ROM drives had only just made mainstream, and it became one of the best-selling PC games of the entire decade specifically because of that format shift.
Multimedia Becomes a Selling Point, Not a Novelty
Between these two releases, "multimedia PC" — CD-ROM drive, sound card, enough horsepower for both fast 3D-ish action and slow-rendered adventure scenes — went from an enthusiast setup to something ordinary retailers marketed directly to families. 1993 is arguably the year that transition became undeniable.
1993's Dual Legacy
It's rare for one year to hand two completely different audiences their favorite kind of game. Browse the full 1993 catalogue by year, and see the retro game platforms guide for more on the CD-ROM format shift Myst rode so effectively.
