Machines is a 1999 strategy game published by Acclaim Entertainment for the PC. The date places it at the end of the decade, when real-time strategy was moving from flat maps to three-dimensional terrain and graphics acceleration was turning from a bonus into a requirement.

The record lists a top-down view and multiplayer support, which matches the standard shape of the genre: build a base, gather resources, produce units and press an attack. By this point the basic formula was fixed and familiar, so individual titles competed on details and on presentation.

1999 was also a crowded year for PC strategy. Established franchises held the shelf space, which forced smaller releases to lean on a distinctive premise, and here the name itself signals the theme, a war fought by machines rather than people.

Multiplayer in 1999 largely meant a local network. Internet play existed, but dial-up latency made real-time strategy awkward over a modem, so most competitive games happened at LAN parties or on small office and school networks.

1999 is also the year 3D accelerator cards became standard on the PC. A game could now assume hardware triangle rendering and higher-resolution textures, yet a share of buyers still ran machines without one. Developers therefore shipped two rendering paths at once, and the visual difference between them was obvious at a glance.

Assembled on this page are the release year, the publisher and screenshots from the strategy itself.