To my great surprise, Kotaku actually managed to put together a reasonably competent, reasonably agreeable list of The 24 Best Classic PC Games. One doesn’t usually expect great things from the ostensibly gaming-focused Gawker vertical, but on this occasion…a good thing resulted.

Given the PC’s years of rich history, we’ve doubled our usual cap of 12 games and cut things off at 24. Even that number isn’t high enough—we had to make some excruciating cuts to get this done. As you head into the comments to creatively ream us for leaving off whatever seminal game, rest assured of a few things: 1) The current list has been reached after vigorous debate among our staff and 2) We had to stop somewhere—had we extended the list to 30, or 40 games, it still wouldn’t have been enough. There were more than 300 entries on our reader-curated list, yet people regularly complain about games that were left off. And for that matter, 3) we reserve the right to return to this list at any time and swap games in and out, should we change our minds as to which games deserve the honor of appearing here.

The following 24 games represent the best of classic PC gaming. These games were important in their time and remain fun to play even today. Here they are, in alphabetical order.

Ultima 4 through Ultima 8 are all listed on the above-mentioned reader-curated list, but for the purposes of the 24 Best list, Kotaku went with Ultima 7:

While other RPGs were doing the Infinity engine thing, Origin’s Ultima games forged their own path. They created simulated worlds more in line with early Elder Scrolls games than their more rigid Dungeons & Dragons competitors, and they introduced us to the world of Brittania, Lord British, and the Avatar. Ultima VII: The Black Gate and its sorta-sequel Serpent Isle still stand as the pinnacle of the series, worth revisiting if only to spend more time with Iolo, Shamino, and Dupre.

Of course, Kotaku being Kotaku, they had to mess up somewhere. Ultima 7 was, as we all know, released in 1992, three years before BioWare was even founded, and six years before the first Infinity Engine game was released. Which is to say: Ultima 7 happened well before anybody started doing “the Infinity engine thing”; the only Ultima released during that engine’s time in the spotlight was Ultima 9.

Still, it’s a good list overall, and includes such games as TIE Fighter, Syndicate, System Shock 2, Fallout, the first Quest for Glory, SimCity 2000…and a bunch of other truly excellent games from yesterdecade and before.