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[Omegasquash]

The Castle of Dr. Brain - First game on my IBM PS/2

Warcraft - I pretty much skipped an entire class in high school playing this

Doom II - Because I missed the original, and this was around when I got my shiny Packard Bell with 16 MB of RAM, a CD-ROM and the internets.

Diablo - First game I played online, and I lost sleep playing it. I still hear the music sometimes when I'm being a night owl.

System Shock 2 - Hadn't felt like a game had "innovated" for awhile, then I gave in and played this. Silence the dischord, and all that.

 

[Snkfanatic]

Anyone else play the Warlords games? My Dad and I played it so much when we were living in Germany.

 

[Snuggles]

I'm pretty sure this was the only game we owned for our PC, but man it was a fantastic one.

This image alone conjures some heavy nostalgia chills for me.

It looks super basic now but the mech designs are as memorable as ever.

 

[BloodMoney]

I'm pretty sure this was the only game we owned for our PC, but man it was a fantastic one.

This image alone conjures some heavy nostalgia chills for me.

It looks super basic now but the mech designs are as memorable as ever.

YES!!!! MECHWARRIOR. The Shadow Hawk was the best!

 

[Snuggles]

Only the Maxis simulation series of the 90's edges out Mechwarrior for me.

Sim Tower

Sim City 2000

Sim Ant

Sim Farm

I miss these games so much, they were so creative and ambitious. The perfect balance of depth and accessibility with that trademark Maxis humor. The sim genre is far from dead, but I don't think it will ever reach the heights of the mid 90's again.

Maybe it's time to send GOG some more harassing emails about this...

 

[BloodMoney]

I agree the sim genre died. Hopefully Star Citizen heralds the return of space sim.

 

[Snuggles]

This goes way back, but does anyone remember Bouncing Babies?

 

[TheContact]

This goes way back, but does anyone remember Bouncing Babies?

Too old for me I think but I remember this:

Same thing but Earthworm Jim and Puppies

 

[djtiesto]

ZZT from Tim Sweeney.

People are still making ZZT games to this day! I had one of the biggest ZZT game sites on the internet back in the day, Epic even linked to it. It's still so funny how far they came, from making a game creator with text-mode graphics to being the premiere engine developers of our day.

 

[antitrop]

Have you managed to figure this one out?
I'm not sure I actually played the game in question, but your description made me curious. Is it by any chance on this list?
http://wwiaircombat.com/articles/history-of-wwi-flight-sims-game-list

It's not a flight sim, though. It's a 2D cartoony arcade action game, so unfortunately not on the list you provided.

The good news is that I came up with the name of the game myself. It was 'Manfred von Krashenburn's Flying Circus'.

DOS game from '94: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33K22THIgoo

 

[antitrop]

This :

DOS Games Archive does not allow hotlinking, all your pictures are broken.

 

[BomberMouse]

This thread. THIS THREAD. All of my picks have already been mentioned.

Monkey Island 2
Theme Hospital
Alone in the Dark
Doom
Sim Tower
Settlers 2
Sherlock Holmes
Tomb Raider
The Incredible Machine


Fuck, now I'm in the mood for some serious retrogaming

 

[Nostremitus]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Island_of_Dr._Quandary

I dunno, in hindsight the game was probably crap. I loved it though...

 

[antitrop]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Island_of_Dr._Quandary

I dunno, in hindsight the game was probably crap. I loved it though...

It was made by MECC, so it probably didn't suck.

 

[Nostremitus]

True, I just get a nostalgic sense of eerie wonder whenever I'm reminded of the game.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megarace

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_25th_Anniversary_(computer_game)

These two were great fun as well.

 

[antitrop]

Dungeon Keeper:

 

[aett]

I grew up with Macintosh computers (A Macintosh SE and then a Mac Performa) so I didn't play most of the PC games unless a friend happened to have one. I did get the Mac version of the LucasArts collection which included Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle, and Sam & Max Hit the Road, which were all amazing.

One of my uncles was a Mac user as well, and would give me a ton of freeware and shareware games. (He also gave me a few pirated games like King's Quest V, but I didn't know that they were pirated at the time. It was a few years later when I realized that the photocopied manual he gave me so I could enter the password to load my save file was a form of copy protection.) Anyway, I had a ton of fun playing these free/shareware games, but I have no idea what most of them were called. Not like I could play them again now, anyway.

I want to give a shout out to a series of games made by a single guy using an adventure game creator called World Builder in the early/mid-90's. The series was called "Ray's Maze", and the best one of all was called "A Mess O'Trouble." I actually managed to play this again a few years ago using a friends' iMac and a pre-OSX Mac emulator. I even finally paid the creator the shareware cost and he mailed me a hint guide with a map, which made me feel like a kid again.

 

[Icefire1424]

Beggars Canyon can kiss my ass.

Rebel Assault

 

[antitrop]

There's a lot of Hotlinking fail in this thread.

Don't forget:

http://www.imgur.com

http://www.minus.com

 

[Calavera520]

MicroMan! Fuck yeah.

Amazing!

I had this in shareware on an old compendium cd: Way Cool Windows Games

wish i could find that disk!

 

[Snuggles]

There's a lot of Hotlinking fail in this thread.

don't forget:

http://www.imgur.com

http://www.minus.com

if you're on firefox or chrome, do yourself a favor and download the imgur extension/add-on

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imgur/ehoopddfhgaehhmphfcooacjdpmbjlao?hl=en

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/imgur-uploader/

simply right click and hit 'upload', it's almost too convenient

 

[Apoc87]

dat minesweeper

 

[Alaskanbullworm]

Can't remember if it was on a school computer or if we had one at home that many years ago.


But, I finally got into PC gaming with Halo, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Battlefield 1942. A trifecta of fun!

 

[jon bones]

This goes way back, but does anyone remember Bouncing Babies?

oh snap, yeah i do. although i remember it running much slower on my old 486 back in the day day

 

[spekkeh]

So epic. A few friends and I would talk about this game endlessly, about the missions we were on, and about Star Wars in general. This game probably helped to turn me more into a Star Wars fan than the movies at the time.

OP nails it. Up till that point all the PC games were awesome, but they were games first and foremost. Flying together with Darth Vader and finding out your secret envoy is Emperor Palpatine.... that was something else.

 

[hertog]

The dutch version of Dungeon Keeper actually said: "Je wezens kunnen niet bij hun hol komen!!".
In a deep booming voice.
Ow how young me couldn't stop laughing

Spoiler

still funny to me

 

[Jo-El]

Lots and lots of Scorched Earth. Good times.

 

[ArynCrinn]

Ultima Underworld 1+2

Fallout 1+2

Doom 1+2

StarCraft+Broodwar

Journeyman Project

System Shock 2

...the list goes on and on, but those are notables.

 

[Moff]

I havent seen ecstatica mentioned here and would like to add it
this game has haunted me for almost 20 years now, I still think about it from time to time

ecstatica was an incredibly atmospheric survival horror game in a medieval setting, it was released in '94, two years after alone in the dark

it had very unique graphics and was quite brutal for that time.

there was also a sequel, which was more action oriented and more accessible, typical for what we would call "casual dumbdown" today. but it wasnt bad either.

 

[Noogy]

So much goodness in this thread. Most of my favorites have already been mentioned, but I want to give special mention to Monster Bash, which at the time was a great 'console' feeling platformer. In retrospect it's actually quite gruesome considering you play a young boy in pajamas, but it's generally lighthearted fun. Great audio too.

 

[Instro]

 

[MajorPain]

as a child, star wars was the best thing ever for me, and I was absolutely thrilled by wolf3d, so its no surprise that the announcement of this was probably the most exciting game news of all time for me

and it did not disappoint. there is no other single player game I played more as a kid.

I built a new PC for this game and upgraded from 4 mb of ram to 8 which cost me $160.

 

[Zyrusticae]

So much goodness in this thread. Most of my favorites have already been mentioned, but I want to give special mention to Monster Bash, which at the time was a great 'console' feeling platformer. In retrospect it's actually quite gruesome considering you play a young boy in pajamas, but it's generally lighthearted fun. Great audio too.

THAT GAME.

I was trying so hard to remember what it was, but there it is!

This thread is like a treasure trove of PC gamer nostalgia, I swear. So many memories forgotten and recovered from here...

 

[J-Tier]

So much nostalgia...

anyone remember Typing Tutor? Rofl, not really a game, but there was a "mini-game" which I vaguely remember.

Played Ski Free when younger.

I was a little older when I played Freddy Fish and Math Blaster.

Also, someone posted Chex Quest, I remember getting that from a cereal box.

 

[mantidor]

Wonder if anyone played Cyberia (not to be confused with syberia), I remember being blown away by the graphics and cinematics, I was so naive back then!

Also, Deadly Tide, even greater cinematics and absolutely amazing soundtrack, but these were basically rail shooter games, and not very good ones.

The thing that is really hitting home seeing all these cinematics is to finally be able to understand them! english wasn't my first language so I was basically guessing, it is a pretty weird experience to see this stuff now.

 

[ShaneB]

Just remembered this gem. Rescue Rover, played it at school on the Library computers. and dang, it was developed by id!

 

[IsntChrisL]

My first PC game:

It took like an hour to load off of the floppy on our Windows 3.1 computer.

After that I was all about the Rainbow Six games and Roller Coaster Tycoon for my PC gaming. Good times.

 

[Criminal Upper]

 

[Eaten By A Grue]

*sigh* What I would give to go back to the late 80's and early 90's when all of the games in this thread were in their heydays. I know this is rose tinted glasses and childhood nostalgia speaking, but browsing through this thread makes me depressed that I will never be so engrossed and immersed in games as I was during this era.

With that said I pretty much played all of the classic DOS games mentioned on the thread, but Myst changed my PC gaming experience for life. The realistic images that were only possible by the new fangled CD-ROM (my family's IBM PS1 could barely keep up with the scene transitions and video), the music, the atmosphere, the sense of being alone, the freedom of exploration, the puzzles. the lore...I was totally sucked in. I had the poster hanging on my wall of the island and the player's guide. As I am writing this I want to go back to that time in my life and experience this game for the first time again. In the words of Jack Shepard from Lost, "WE HAVE TO GO BACK KATE! WE HAVE TO GO BACK!".

My second favorite PC gaming memory/experience was King's Quest VI. Up until playing this game, I played through all the classics like Zork, Secret of Monkey Island, Loom, King's Quest V. However I was blown away by the writing, artwork, characters, and especially the voice acting in King's Quest VI. The majority of games today have not even come close in this area.

Roberta Williams we all miss you. Come back, come baaaaaaackkk.

 

[Ice 9]

Lego Island race sections at 10fps...

 

[out0v0rder]

huddled around the keyboard with 2 of my buddies furiously trying to screw each other in you dont know jack.

 

[Roto13]

Boning the chief's wife in Police Quest.

 

[Mitsuho]

I feel like I have so much to contribute. This game definitely sticks out for me, and is the first game I remember finishing. (Captain Comic)
I played this in 1989 on an IBM XT.

My sibling and I finished this one (and the sequel) playing in turns on our father's Leading Edge x86; later upgraded to a Zenith Data Systems 286. (With turbo button!)

First one I remember finishing is Castle Adventure.

 

[Toa TAK]

I played this constantly. I don't know how many times I went through it as a kid.

 

[antitrop]

I played this constantly. I don't know how many times I went through it as a kid.

Had to be better than Trespasser.

 

[Anticitizen One]

Too many to name. Here are a few though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziSGIxKcdg8

 

[N4Us]

might be the first game I remember playing, not 100% sure.

Oh man we had this on our Apple IIGS. Maybe just my young age but I remember the game being really huge, I felt like I'd find new areas all the time.

Loved Tass Times in Tonetown, though it had lots of that 'adventure game bullshit' going on, you could easily die in this game a *lot*

 

[soundtrack]

Lego Island race sections at 10fps...

Holy shit, yes.

It doesn't feel like it was that long ago, but sneaking downstairs to play Starcraft with my friends at like 3AM while my parents were sleeping. I don't even think my parents knew that I could operate a computer at age 9 lol.

 

[antitrop]

In the long gone days of the 90's, before all this new-fangled cable internet and Skype, I used to play Duke Nukem 3D direct modem-2-modem connection while simultaneously using the second phone line of the house to talk to my friend while we deathmatched.

Shit, sure glad it isn't that complicated anymore.

 

[jambo]

Some more classics

Fury3. It came in some sort of Microsoft bundle and we had a Joystick for it so it was amazing fun. I played it for hours and hours on end.

Stunts. Probably the first racer I ever played, it was amazing to be able to make your own tracks and then race on them, especially with some of the crazy shit you could build.

Descent I/II. I really wish another Descent would come out, awesome fps gameplay with a twist. Also spawned the equally amazing Descent FreeSpace series.