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[O.DOGG]

The first Dune game by Cryo Interactive. It was an odd mixture between an adventure and a strategy game. I spent countless hours playing it back in 94. It had one of the best videogame soundtracks, which I still listen to to this day.

There was also Star Control 2

And Dune 2... Which you can play in a browser nowadays.

 

[Moss]

 

[Prophane33]

Growing up I never really knew anyone with their own computer so I never had my own until I was about...13-14-ish. However, in school we had Apple II's and I played a lot of word/number munchers, Oregon Trail, Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego (and variants), and an obscure game called Odell Lake.

The first "real" computer game I remember playing was when I happened to come upon the Computer Club in Middle School, they were playing a networked game of Descent (no idea if it was 1 or 2 even after owning both of them). When I got my first computer it was a woefully outdated hand-me-down that was only good for learning how to type, thus outside of that stupid monkey BASIC game (reminds me of worms) . It wasn't until my first personal (as in all mine) computer that I got to experience the game that would shape me as a PC gamer.

When I was 16 I befriended a REAL PC gamer (e.g. someone who would build their own systems and always had tons of parts around and never even TOUCHED a console), using some of his spare parts we put together a 486 running at 66mhz then I was able to play the game that consumed my life: Civilization. That was pretty much all I needed to play, it wasn't until my next computer during my twilight years of high school that I was able to get a modern system (500mhz P3) with my first real video card etc. The games that I have the fondest memories of from 14 years ago are Sim City 2000, Unreal Tournament, and Civilization II. I was still mainly a Console game despite being obsessed with the stray PC game or two (usually a Civ game). It wasn't until 2011 (after finally upgrading from my Civ III+IV box) that I became mainly a PC gamer (though thanks to GOG the transformation was already taking place beforehand).

So in summation I don't have a lot of the same PC memories that most of you have but I've managed to experience a lot of them in the last 4 years (e.g. I had never played Alpha Centauri until it was released on GOG despite my Civ addiction).

 

[Stallion Free]

Oh yeah Oregon Trail on school computers was totally sweet. We used to attempt speedruns during our lunch period.

 

[DerpButter]

Kyrandia, Myst, 7th Guest, Dark Forces, The Dig (which doubled as a book report when I found the novel in the library).

Going to a private school up until fourth grade, and coming home to the very isolated boondocks with my nearest set of friends maybe a 4-5 mile drive away; I feel like the antics in Willy Beamish were about the closest I ever got to average 'suburban kid' mischief.

Oh yeah, also... Chip's MFN' Challenge!

 

[Muku]

Growing up I never really knew anyone with their own computer so I never had my own until I was about...13-14-ish. However, in school we had Apple II's and I played a lot of word/number munchers, Oregon Trail, Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego (and variants), and an obscure game called Odell Lake.

It's funny you mention that. After I posted I thought about Odell Lake. Though the one that I really enjoyed wasn't the one we played on Apple II's, but the next version Odell Down Under. That was fun. Especially running around as a shark.

 

[Burgess_101]

Also a hell of a lot of my Dad playing Red Alert. He played it every other Wednesday evening as my Mother went to my Nans. Watched him play every single mission and complete the thing. Sadly I lack the RTS skills he possesses.

 

[LonelyVagrant]

I never had a great computer back when I was growing up. But I remember my first computer (Packard Bell running Windows 3.1) and I remember playing a whole lot of those two games, SkiFree and Fuji Golf. Another one that pops into my mind is this game:

It's a game I have never finished...and it haunts me to this day.

 

[Muku]

I forgot about that game. Damn you abominable snow creature thing!

 

[Forkball]

I'll also like to say that I'm not ashamed to admit that years later when we got a Pentium system with a CD-ROM, I also played many games in these two series:

I thought I'd never see that game again in my life. I loved that game as a kid. I liked how you could paint the car.

My PC gaming days as a kid were pretty random. I gamed on floppy disks (there was one that had a collection of games, where you drop people from helicopters into a haystack and some creepy first person adventure called Zoo or something), got my friends into Warcraft II, would lose myself in Monkey Island and Sim City at my cousin's house etc.

 

[Duxxy3]

My first windows PC memory was seeing one of my friends play Eye of the Beholder. I think that was the seed that eventually got me to be a PC gamer.

 

[Fjordson]

I remember Fallout and Fallout 2 blowing my mind when I first played them. The depth of the universe with all of its lore and the atmosphere still astounds me to this day.

And I put the battle.net logo because I remember playing everything Blizzard put out at that time constantly online with friends. Starcraft, Brood War, Warcraft III, Diablo and Diablo II. Just amazing games, and probably the earliest memories of me getting heavily invested in online gaming.

 

[Mr. Perfect]

 

[LonelyVagrant]

Oh god, I remember this. It was an interactive storybook, right? You could click on certain items and they would do something...or am I remembering wrong?

 

[Agent Icebeezy]

Syndicate and Ultima 8. They came on a disc we got when my mom finally bought us a computer.

Wing Commander was on the disc as well, but I didn't like that.

 

[badgenome]

Figuring out how to have sex with the gypsies in Ultima VI.

 

[Sylver]

Amdstrad CPC.
1989 Mortadelo y Filemón

1989 Jabato (conversational adventure)

I was 6 y.o.

 

[Mr. Perfect]

Oh god, I remember this. It was an interactive storybook, right? You could click on certain items and they would do something...or am I remembering wrong?

You would be correct. Not sure if it really qualifies as a game though....oh well.

 

[LDawg NL]

 

[zruben]

hours of my life

 

[ToxicAdam]

First PC game I ever bought with my own money:

Questron II

Something about the cover art made me want this game so bad. The actual game itself was just okay.

 

[Crew96]

All of these were on my Commodore 64, which is still probably my favorite gaming machine of all time:

Microleague baseball: the fact that you could accumulate stats in a game, then use those stats to dictate future play was amazing.

Lance Haffner games: Sports text sims at their finest

The Seven Cities of Gold: as hard as I tried to avoid confilct I always ended up in a massive battle at nearly every island I visited. The king hated that. I would also get lost at sea occassionally.

Jumpman: I don't think I'd even have the dexterity required to get through that game any longer.

Infocom titles: I am rediscovering these on my Ipad right now. The boxes were always filled with such cool loot.

Agent USA: Hopping on trains and fighting a deadly virus coast to coast. I remember becoming infected and had to hope I would bounce into a train that was going someplace where the virus hadn't struck yet. Just a super fun experience.

 

[LonelyVagrant]

You would be correct. Not sure if it really qualifies as a game though....oh well.

I think it does. You do interact with it...and it's on a PC. And it's part of your childhood.

 

[badgenome]

hours of my life

http://gamerchild.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gorilla.gif

Looks like some kind of proto-Cho Aniki.

 

[fluffydelusions]

I never had a great computer back when I was growing up. But I remember my first computer (Packard Bell running Windows 3.1) and I remember playing a whole lot of those two games, SkiFree and Fuji Golf. Another one that pops into my mind is this game:

It's a game I have never finished...and it haunts me to this day.

OMG ski free....loved that

 

[The Lamonster]

Playing Rebel Assault II in my mom's basement, pretending I'm sitting in the cockpit of my own personal X-Wing.

 

[MDSLKTR]

 

[Mitsuho]

My brother and I would take turns playing this one.

 

[Beckx]

Childhood computer game memories? Can I expand the definition of childhood to include me at 13? Before that I had an Atari, and though I played computer games at school, no one needs yet another reference to Oregon Trail or Hunt the Wumpus, right? So after the Great Shake Out I got an Atari computer, followed shortly by a C64.

The two (of many) that stand out to me from that time are these:

Adventure Construction Set - make your own RPGs! Spent countless hours just with the random adventure generator, letting it generate a random world to explore.

Mail Order Monsters - choose a creature, kit it out with weapons, and then send it into the world to do battle against other creatures for fame and profit.

As a lot of people here probably know, Paul Reiche of Mail Order Monsters is one of the founders of Toys for Bob, which developed Skylanders. Pretty cool.

 

[zruben]

Looks like some kind of proto-Cho Aniki.

it's like the prehistoric cousin of worms.

 

[duckroll]

it's like the prehistoric cousin of worms.

Scorched Earth was better!

 

[ShaneB]

What an amazing thread, and a huge hit of nostalgia. I won't repeat what's been said, my childhood was full of pc gaming with those classic adventure games, or the early days of fps classics, or discovering how amazing it was to play RTS games on pc.

Here's a great game me and my friends had a blast playing when we were young... which is hilarious to think a bunch of preteens having a blast with a real life simualtor before the Sims came along.

Jones in the Fast Lane.

It's definitely not my fondest memory as those belong to a lot of games already been mentioned, but It hasn't been mentioned yet

 

[Heart of Black]

I walked into an Electronics Boutique when I was a kid in the Newport Mall in New Jersey. A PC in the corner was on with a map of some kind showing.

I pressed a bunch of buttons, the map went away and a Pinky Demon was right there in my face. I got scared and ran out of the store.

 

[MrKayle]

making/playing "use map settings" maps in starcraft: brood war

making/playing maps for wolfeinstein 3D

 

[Zomba13]

OH SHIT!
I remember that!

 

[El Odio]

The original Roller-coaster Tycoon and Red Alert were always in my computer as a kid.

 

[Brofield]

I wanted to be the one to drop the nostalgia bomb of Putt Putt, but since I can't do that...

And that TV show, too. I remember it would freak me out when there was some freak lightning storm every now and again and the contestants would suddenly become skeletons

 

[Dirtdog07]

Really enjoyed this back in the day.

 

[RoryDropkick]

Too many to mention, but here's some good memories :

SF2PC - not the officially released one, but the bizarre Korean-made fan version that went through all sorts of revisions, many with VERY strange results. Some had the Rainbow Edition style attacks even.

Apogee games.. my first one was Crystal Caves, did Commander Keen, Wolfenstein, the like.

One Must Fall was awesome for its time. The game store I work at has a video loop running that my manager chose to use the opening music for as the introduction, he gets props for that

Thexder, Firehawk, Zeliard, Sorcerian, Silpheed. Thank you Sierra for bringing out Game Arts' and Falcom games here. I hoped for more but it never happened

 

[Currygan]

and many more, but those are the first popping out my mind

 

[zruben]

Scorched Earth was better!

didn't play it... looking at screenshots, and definitely looks better

 

[Weltall Zero]

The first Dune game by Cryo Interactive. It was an odd mixture between an adventure and a strategy game. I spent countless hours playing it back in 94. It had one of the best videogame soundtracks, which I still listen to to this day.
There was also Star Control 2
And Dune 2... Which you can play in a browser nowadays.

You, sir, are a person of impeccable taste. Star Control 2 and the original Dune are among my favorite games of all time, and Dune 2 was amazing as well (first RTS game ever, right?). That Chani screenshot brings me back, wow. No wonder we both gravitated to FTL as well (BTW, I've made it a personal project to remake all SC2 ships in FTL when the ship editor becomes a bit more stable; I already started with the Ilwrath Avenger).

My first PC game was this:

My dad bought a PC when pretty much nobody in Spain had one, let alone one you could play games on. I was entirely obsessed with this game for many months before being even able to play, as I had read about it on a magazine and it seemed incredible to me. I mean, a God simulator? Insane! It was every bit as good as I imagined, and many hours were sunk in both it and its sequel.

There's also a lot of other stuff that'll stay with me forever, like LucasArts' adventures (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Fate of Atlantis, Monkey Island, Loom...), Eye of the Beholder, Lost Vikings, Lemmings... I could go on for pages.

 

[Kimaka]

I loved the Sims. I would stay up well past 2am playing this during the summer. While I like the sequels I sometimes want to go back and play this. I'm still upset that I lost the discs.

 

[Exile550]

Add to that countless hours of early counter-strike betas.

 

[Aggrotek]

 

[Amory]

I think King's Quest 7 came with the first computer my parents bought (a wonderfully terrible Compaq Presario). I played the shit out of that game, but I never got very far because I was pretty young and couldn't figure out a lot of the puzzles.

THIS MOTHERFUCKER THOUGH. So damn CREEPY.

But I always thought it was hilarious to give him a jug of salt water.

"You bring me water?" Drinks it. "Ughhhh! YOU BRING ME SALT WATER?"

 

[BriareosGAF]

Figuring out how to have sex with the gypsies in Ultima VI.

Avatar, we don't have time for that!

Such good memories.

 

[Jake Tower]

PC games? What about C=64 games?

 

[clem84]

i have to say starcraft, we had 4 computers between my house and my grandparents house connected on lan, my dad, uncles, and me had some pretty epic battles back then.

I guess that's what made me a "true pc gamer".

Came here to post this. I honestly can't even count the number of hours I spent playing this game as a child. 300? 500 hours? I don't know. Playing against 7 other people on those huge maps... ah the memories.

 

[Pooya]

Red Alert 1 intro

my childhood PC gaming was only about RTS and adventure games, I played racing games like NFS1/2 too, I generally didn't like FPS games in 90s, they made me feel ill and the young me didn't like the violence but I've played pretty much everything RTS there was in the 90s and early 2000s. I only really got into shooters much later with Call of Duty 1 when I was in high school.