5 Game-Changing 1990s Shooters No One Talks About

The 1990s were all about the rise of shooters in the video game space. Games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D took the genre to new heights, while fan-favorites like GoldenEye 007 ensured that players of every stripe could see what all the fuss was about. Shooters continue to be one of the most popular genres on the market, so the ’90s craze definitely proved to have staying power. However, a few relatively important shooters have largely gone forgotten over time. Here are five shooters that probably deserve a little more credit for their contributions.

5) Carnivores 2

During the early days of shooters, one of the more popular subgenres was hunting games. Heading out into the wilderness to hunt deer or wild pigs was a relatively easy way to introduce players to the genre. However, developers slowly started to push the hunting subgenre forward. One of the more notable games in the genre was Carnivores, which launched in 1998 and let you hunt dinosaurs.

In the original game, the dinosaurs didn’t really fight back. Instead, it was all about stalking your prey before making that final kill. Carnivores 2 let the dinosaurs attack you, adding another element to the hunting genre. Now, the dinosaur AI wasn’t exactly intimidating. You still weren’t going to die much, but it helped move the genre in that direction. There’s not a direct connection, but it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that games like Carnivores 2 eventually led us to Monster Hunter, which took the idea of the animals you’re hunting fighting back to the next level.

4) Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six

In 1998, Red Storm Entertainment introduced the world to Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. The series has come a long way since that original game. Arguably, games like Siege barely share any DNA with the original game, which is a shame. This first game was an in-depth, tactical take on the shooter genre. You weren’t just bursting into a building and shooting up terrorists. Instead, you spent almost as much time looking at maps and planning your route as you did in the field.

Unfortunately, much of that tactical combat has gone by the wayside in more popular shooters. However, we do still see influence from the original Rainbow Six in tactical games like Door Kickers and modern shooters like Ready or Not. None of those games quite captures the feeling of setting AI pathing during a planning stage and pulling off a perfect extraction, but you can absolutely see the developers pulling from the 1998 classic.

3) The Wheel of Time

Even if you’re a diehard fan of Robert Jordan’s classic fantasy series, you might not know about this one. The Wheel of Time is heavily based on the original Unreal and is just as strange as it sounds. Somehow, the developers were able to mix the hardcore, fast-paced shooting of Unreal with Jordan’s captivating source material. It doesn’t all work, but the fact that it even exists is pretty remarkable.

The reason I have it on this list is the list of spells you can use in multiplayer matches. The Wheel of Time features over 40 magical artifacts, each of which comes with its own devastating spell. You can strategically combine those artifacts to unleash destruction on your enemies, and use various defensive spells to keep your own health bar topped up. Sure, many of these spells could just be guns in a normal shooter, but Legend Entertainment effectively used the genre to create something new. Unfortunately, almost nobody played it because of the weird mishmash of genre and IP.

2) Outlaws

Outlaws was made by LucasArts and uses an updated version of the Jedi game engine created for Star Wars: Dark Forces. Because of that, it’s likely better known than many other games on this list. It also got a high-definition remaster from Nightdive Studios in 2025, so this one is just barely hanging onto the “no one talks about” side of this list.

However, it was an absolute game-changer for the shooter genre. See, Outlaws was a game of firsts. It is largely seen as the first game to add a sniper zoom function. Can you imagine modern shooters without the ability to zoom in on a target? You have Outlaws to thank for that invention. It doesn’t stop there, though. LucasArts also developed the INSANE animation engine for Outlaws, which was used to render realistic gun reloading. That’s not as important as the zoom, but it’s fair to say that Outlaws is a pioneering shooter that you barely hear about these days.

1) Rise of the Triad: Dark War

Apogee Software’s Rise of the Triad: Dark War started development as a follow-up to Wolfenstein 3D. In fact, its two working titles were Wolfenstein II and Wolfenstein 3D: Rise of the Triad. However, it eventually dropped the Nazis and became its own thing. Still, the fast-paced shooter mostly lived up to the developers’ reputation, putting players into the shoes of one of five heroes to fight off a deadly cult that’s taken over an island.

Rise of the Triad makes this list because of those five characters. Before kicking off your campaign, you can pick between the quintet, each of which has their own stats. It might be relatively rudimentary, but having different character classes has become very important in the genre. Rise of the Triad also had a few inventive gameplay mechanics. For example, some enemies would actually fake their own death before popping up to take you out. It was a total revolution for Doom-style shooters, but it deserves more recognition than it gets.

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