I don’t know for sure if it was my money or just my choice, but I went with Strife (1996). I chose it in the store after a long deliberation, my uncle was trying to get me to go with Half Life but I was drawn in by something on the back of the box. PC games used to come in big empty boxes with a lot of art and info on them.

It was unforgettable. Basically if you made an RPG in the old Doom engine with the sensibilities of the nineties and an overly ambitious art department. It was surprisingly well written, and I’ve been chasing that sense of an expansive, dark yet cartoonish, novelistic RPG ever since.