Spore

I also just want to say that this game was actually very popular.

And I loved it! I was recently thinking of getting it to work on Linux to play again. It's a monumental classic.

The obvious answer would be Black & White and its sequel, which for many is the definitive god game. You're an untouchable god interacting with your world and physically manipulating it with your hand, but you also have a giant animal familiar that you raise to also interact with the people. You create miracles and either help or terrorize the population into following you. Not much combat if that's what you're looking for, but it's a unique game that unfortunately has not seen a worthy successor in 20+ years.

I played this. A great game. That era and Bullfrog in particular were incredible. Dungeon Keeper is one of the best games I played. Theme Hospital and Theme Park were great. It was the golden age of strategy games. Age of Empires 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Red Alert games. Railroad Tycoon. I have no idea why this type of game became unpopular.

I strongly recommend Dungeon Keeper 1 (ideally gold with Deeper Dungeons add on) and Theme Hospital. Can get them on Gog.

If someone is interested in playing this, you can get it for 2 bucks on GOG, it's their mission to keep old games from getting lost media after all. I haven't had much success with the scaling on linux through lutris though.

One of my favorite games of all time. Always been sad that the god game genre really petered out. There's definitely a few modern examples but nothing thats really captured the feeling that pop3 had.

Definitely check out the black & white games, From Dust, WorldBox (which is more sandbox but still fun), RuinArch, and Reus(1 & 2)

Ah, I thought populous was more popular than that. I guess it was just popular in my friend group at the time. Would have been populous 1 and 2 we were playing, I didn't even know a third one came out. I guess the most recent god game would be Godus, developed by peter molyneux's current company. Essentially a modern sequel to populous 1 and 2. I haven't actually tried it yet, last I looked it was still in beta or early access or something. And it looks like that makes sense as it apparently has been in early access for over 10 years... it seems decently high rated, but that is kind of concerning none the less.

Black and White was really fun for me as well for a time - it's basically a god simulation combined with a zoo game as you have to grow your avatar basically.

Loved populous back then, if I recall correctly I even liked two more than one!

More like 1988, not 98. It might be when the version you are playing came out, but Populous was from the late 80s.

As far as I can tell it was never popular.

:(

It came out in 1989 and was ported to every game system and microcomputer that was released in america and Japan for like the next 3 generations of hardware. It sold over 4 million copies. Its the game that gave peter molyneux a blank check to make whatever game he wanted for like three decades.

All these games will be lost in time... Like tears in rain...

i somehow had both populous and black n white when i was a child too young figure out how to play.

Magic Carpet (1994) was a really interesting take on the genre, also by Bullfrog. Imagine the god-sim mechanics of Populous combined with a 3D flight-sim/shooter and you get Magic Carpet.

I vaguely remember playing it a little back in the day

I got it used for SNES when I was little but it didn’t come with instructions and I never figured it out

I've been playing some hidden gem indie games from that era, too. Ever heard of "Super Mario World"? I've never seen anything like it.