Great question !

Most people have thier heads up thier asses when it comes to this.

So, for those, unfortuneatly, many dummies, I'll ID it.

Everyone pretty much acknowledges the 16-bit era to be The Golden Age of computergames.
Why?
BORN > The world's first 16-bit computer is the Apple Macintosh > January 1984.
DIED > When EVERY F***ING GAME became a FPS after "DOOM" > 1994.
So The Golden Age Of [Macintosh] computergames is from 1984-1993.
The games are too numerous to list here -- just flip through a copy of "Computer Gaming World".

NOT to say any game before 1984 is crap.
NOT to say any game after 1993 is crap.
I AM saying THE GOLDEN AGE of computergaming is from 1984-1993.

Thank you.

IMO the very late 80's to mid-late 90's. I thought there are so many great classics on the Mac in the mid and late 90s such as WarCraft, Diablo, Myth, SimCity, Escape Velocity and countless other stuff. Games that in my opinion defined their respective genre (or in Myth's case, created a new genre that is still probably the only game of its kind).

And of course there are insanely definitive classics like Myst and Riven which are just unsurpassed.

Then again that's also what I grew up with, so of course I'm biased..

Not sure i agree with the 16bit era dyeing after DOOM in so much that my favourite three 16bit games (Earthbound, Yoshi's Island & Super Bomberman 4) were released after that. I would say it's peak didn't really start subsiding until halfway into '96.

I think the best time were the middle of the 90s, because beside the shooters there were many great Simulations and Adventures released. The Sims, Sim City 2000, Alpha Centauri, Warcraft, Starcraft... just to mention a few... great times.

It's very difficult to nail down a particular era, there's been more than one and they come and go. So many factors can cause a golden age in themselves:
The original Mac Plus - brought a selection of fantastic games, Dark Castle being one of the most notable.
System 6 and the Mac II's - brought colour and the multifinder, original SimCity was maybe a defining game at this time.
Mac OS 7 and the later Mac II's - better and faster processors, better audio, better colour, large amounts of RAM and disk and most importantly, the CD revolution. Biggest game of the era, Myst.
OS8.1-8.6 and the sub-£1000 iMac with the G3 processor, and of course, the internet. Suddenly a mass market for Macs. The iMac was responsible for a deluge of great games, Myth, Myth II, Diablo, Diablo II, Age of Empires, etc, etc.
The G4 processor, which gave us the power for full-motion video, games spanning multiple CDs, the iMac G4 carried on the deluge of games into 2002 and later. Aspyr are the dominant game producer for the Mac.

There may be other eras since then, but games are becoming bigger and bigger and take longer and longer to develop. Broadband and the success of WoW's charging per month means the gaming world may move totally online in the future. Or it may die off altogether, iPhone and consoles, and maybe iPad may be the future. How long before there ae more iPhone users around the world than there are Mac users ?

Edit: Replaced 'xxx7' with 'Mac OS 7' - IIGS User

Allow me to illustrate ....

I have open in front of me a PDF of the December 1991 issue of "Computer Gaming World".
Here is a list of games either released or about to be released within a few months ....

1] Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary
2] Red Baron
3] Their Finest Hour
4] Chuck Yeager's Air Combat
5] The Secret Of Monkey Island
6] Links
7] Strike Commander
8] Spirit Of Excalibur
9] Front Page Sports: FootBall
10] Secret Weapons Of The Luftwaffe

I defy anyone to ID another time with the same "Hall Of Fame Concentration" as that.

But then mid-2003 I remember a deluge of great game software (OK some were not so great):

Warrior Kings
Baldurs Gate II: Throne of Bhaal
Master of Orion III
Civilization III
Max Payne
Dungeon Siege
BloodRayne
SpyHunter
EverQuest
SimCity 4
Tropico Mucho Macho
Zoo Tycoon
Another War
Unreal Tournament 2003
NeverWinter Nights
No One Lives Forever 2

And back in the start of 2001, around Majesty release there was too much choice of great games. Maybe same again in 2002, around the release of Ghost Recon.

Of the 16 games you list, there are 4 that *maybe* come close
to the level of legend status of the games I mention.

In my very bias way I am going to go with the early to late 90's because that was when I was in full swing with my mac gaming and those were the years that all of the great games I played came out. Most notably was the Marathon trilogy, I was glued to that. Also this era did spark the beginning of a mass exodus of 2D gaming and 3D gaming did become most popular.

I am a fan of great games no matter how many dimensions they come in, but there were so many great 3D games to come out of the wood work at this time... Marathon, Marathon Durandal, Marathon Infinity, Pathways Into Darkness, Diablo, Starcraft, Quake, Damage Incorporated, Duke Nukem 3D, Carmageddon, Carmageddon 2, Quake 2, Quake 3, Doom, No One Lives Forever, Super Wing Commander, Wing Commander 3, Shockwave Assault, System Shock... just to name a (fair) few.

Having said this, I believe that most people who read this post might be bias like me, really we enjoyed the games that we "grew up" with the most. Good luck nailing this one down though, it will be a tough one.

One special mention that was not listed is Diamonds, oh how I loved that game, it rocked!!

I3loodTeeth

Going to perform a little necromancy on this this thread.

First of all, I started gaming on the Mac in 1986. That gives me useful chronological perspective. So there.

Secondly, in basically every era, there have been tons more titles available on other platforms, and some of them really good.

So, thirdly, IMO a game has to have been developed on the Mac for it to really count towards "the great era of Mac gaming." If the highlights of your Mac gaming experience were some of the paltry few titles ported to Mac, you probably would have been happier gaming on a PC anyways. Titles like Warcraft, or Civ, or Alpha Centauri, or Deus Ex, or anything by LucasArts were all PC titles first. If you had a PC you could play them, and often you got to play them before the Mac users did. This was especially the case in the late late 90s and early 2000s. Please Westlake, when will the port of Halo be donnneeee?

Here are three really great Mac-platform titles—the titles that made PC users go, "Dang. I wish I could play that" and made Mac users really proud to be Mac users. Some of them were so popular they actually were ported to other platforms.

Maelstrom (1992)
Myst (1993)
Marathon (1994)

Using this as perspective, I'd have to say the early 90s were the best days of Mac gaming. Mac gaming was finally a full-color experience for most people, and while a lot of the old stuff could still be played, there was some really fantastic new stuff coming out. Titles that were better than what the other platforms were offering. Play Wolfenstein3D (1992) or Doom (1993), and then play Marathon. There's simply no comparison. Marathon's graphics are better, and the plot is well, light-years better. Myst was unlike anything else out there. It was mind-blowing. Maelstrom was Mac SHAREWARE! Booyah! Suck on that, you over-pampered PC-using drones!

Also, 1995 was not a good year for the Mac. The MacOS was really starting to show its age, and Window95 came out. If it hadn't been for the return of Steve Jobs, we'd be remembering 1995 as the beginning of the end.

So, even though the PowerPC came out in 1994, I'd say the last golden year of Mac gaming was 1994.
Or to put it another way, the Mac's best era was its first decade, the 68k era, and it saved the best for last.

The late 1980s really was when Mac gaming really took off, and I would say that although the "Golden Age" really hit the stride around the mid 1990s, I would say the era officially ended in circa 2000. By that time, even PC games were starting to struggle, Mac OS X was on the horizon, and from there on out, we would get bad ports of Windows titles almost exclusively. Even today, although more new games are available, nearly everything is run through a CIDER wrapper that ensures Mac compatibility but takes a major performance hit.