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90's PC Gaming Appreciation Thread: From Boot Disks to 3dfx Voodoo cards
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blast processed
Member
I purchase the shareware version in EB games and after the first episode I called to unlock the entire game. Weird but cool at the sometime.
sixteen-bit
Member
Anyone had that 3DO module that let u play 3DO games on ur PC?
PumpkinSpice
Banned
Same, although I have a more storied 3dfx past.
Was real obsessed with the ultra premium Obsidian 3dfx cards, but turned off by their extra FCC requirements (???).
Canopus was taking too long to put out the Pure3D, so I initially jumped on a Guillemont 3dfx in a local EB... However, the box didn't come with the pack-ins it was supposed to. (POD was supposed to be included, but was missing)
Returned it after a week+ of use for full cash return, ended up waiting an extra week or so for Pure3D internet order.
The channel DOSNOSTALGIA covers dos gaming from the beginning to 1995
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73-S9qCBH4Q
That is a good start. Then Youtube has plenty of that kind of games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73-S9qCBH4Q
That is a good start. Then Youtube has plenty of that kind of games.
JustSomeone
Member
If I look at my top 10 games of all time, most of them are pc games created during 90s.
This was no doubt the best period for gaming, and the best platform. So many amazing games.
This was no doubt the best period for gaming, and the best platform. So many amazing games.
Yep, those cards physically turned on with a switch. Can't remember the name of the switch. For me it was GLQuake that blew my mind. Doubled my framerate and I went from 320x to 640x with bilinear filtering and all dat!
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
You know what I miss the most from that era? Those giant shareware CDs you could find at most big box stores:
I could spend a week on there and discover dozens upon dozens of great games that I otherwise would have never known about.
Plus that Game Empire CD gave us the great Maabus Trailer.
I could spend a week on there and discover dozens upon dozens of great games that I otherwise would have never known about.
Plus that Game Empire CD gave us the great Maabus Trailer.
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
Does anyone remember the "Aureal A3D" tech?
.png/150px-Aureal_A3D_(logo).png)
That shit was amazing. It made Jedi Knight an even better game than it already was.
That shit was amazing. It made Jedi Knight an even better game than it already was.
Vincent Grayson
Member
I don't trust anyone to touch my PC if they never wrote an autoexec.bat just to get Doom running properly.
You know what I miss the most from that era? Those giant shareware CDs you could find at most big box stores:
I could spend a week on there and discover dozens upon dozens of great games that I otherwise would have never known about.
Plus that Game Empire CD gave us the great Maabus Trailer.
I remember the MS SHAREWARE GAMES CD's. When I got my first own PC that was a HUUUGE WORLD of Games that opened up. Can't have this feeling today anymore. I played Fury 3 for instance day in and out. It was magnificient.
There are also shameful memories:
one of my classmater burned me a GAMES&TOOLS CD and I was excited since he said it was rare and he didn't want to give me the original. The thing is that was a huge CD full of FULL GAMES...and I played a lot of them until I realized that no such CD exists on the market
blast processed
Member
Auto_aim1
MeisaMcCaffrey
From 32MB to 6GB GDDR5, we've come a long way. I kinda feel like testing that Quake 3 benchmark again on my 980Ti.
Omegasquash
Member
I still have some of those games on my shelf 
Subscribing. I'm looking forward to seeing stuff I never thought I'd see again, because I forgot that I wanted to see it.
Subscribing. I'm looking forward to seeing stuff I never thought I'd see again, because I forgot that I wanted to see it.
TechnicMOC
Member
Loop back cables and relay switched.. That 1st 3Dfx was such a uplift even it it cost £200 in I guess 1996.
A one point a few years later I was running a pair of VoodooII (several loop back vga cables) and was always crazy I had more graphics ram 12Mbx2 + 2mb 2D card vs about 20mb of Ram in a Celeron P150 (o/t to 500Mhz!) (fuzzy)
Cheeseman Battitude
Member
Back when GetRight was an absolute necessity!
Subscribed!
I've been thinking of picking up an old DOS PC. I still have a lot of my old pc games.
Does anyone have recommendations for hardware? Old Windows 95 era machines are still relatively easy enough to find but I'm wondering if there is an "optimum" build for compatibility? Is there a sweet spot for 5 1/4" 3.5" and early CD titles without running into hardware acceleration issues? Maybe a 3/486 and a P3 machine?
fake edit:
A quick google search found these:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/quest-for-retro-gaming-1,28918.html
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/172519/the-vintage-pc-thread-because-ms-dos-gaming-still-rules
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/Gaming-Its-1999-Building-Legacy-Windows-Gaming-PC
https://www.reddit.com/r/dosgaming/comments/3l2yaz/its_been_a_while_since_ive_done_this_so_its_time/
I've been thinking of picking up an old DOS PC. I still have a lot of my old pc games.
Does anyone have recommendations for hardware? Old Windows 95 era machines are still relatively easy enough to find but I'm wondering if there is an "optimum" build for compatibility? Is there a sweet spot for 5 1/4" 3.5" and early CD titles without running into hardware acceleration issues? Maybe a 3/486 and a P3 machine?
fake edit:
A quick google search found these:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/quest-for-retro-gaming-1,28918.html
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/172519/the-vintage-pc-thread-because-ms-dos-gaming-still-rules
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/Gaming-Its-1999-Building-Legacy-Windows-Gaming-PC
https://www.reddit.com/r/dosgaming/comments/3l2yaz/its_been_a_while_since_ive_done_this_so_its_time/
Also worth noting that while many old Windows games have issues running on modern PCs, compatibility wrappers like DGVoodoo2 and nGlide allows troublesome software to run flawlessly most of the time in my experience. And if you're stuck with a 16bit installer (which won't work in 64bit OS) you can use software like this to install it.
VOGONS is also a great resource.
VOGONS is also a great resource.
I might as well chip in with MIDI sound modules.
A Roland SC-55 turned Doom for Windows and Castlevania on X68000 into this:
https://youtu.be/tykAn_7aRP4?t=14
https://youtu.be/aRIwSihVTr0?t=297
The X68000 was badass, by the way. There were a few games you could hook MT-32s and SC-55s into, and Castlevania was one of them.
A Roland MT-32 turned Monkey Island 2 and Space Quest 3 into this:
https://youtu.be/m6r5iWfbjlI?list=FL8iRVqW8XSaFGwR2-RBwaEA&t=139
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxEP05TtOfE
An MT-32:
Very recently Roland actually released the Sound Canvas VA, which is a VSTi that hooks into a DAW like Cubase or Reaper that emulates the sound of the SC-55, SC-88, SC-88Pro and SC-8820. It's the most accurate with the 88s, but yeah. It's dragging MIDI files right into the program and playing them back with the FX - it's really convenient.
http://www.roland.com/products/sound_canvas_va/
A lot of ZUN's music for Touhou was meant to be heard through an SC-88pro specifically. Quite a few game soundtracks were made for it, actually: Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, Ys I&II Eternal, et cetera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbPYrdB3ncY
An SC-88pro owned by one of our members, luka:
I made a thread specifically about this a while back.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1187450
A Roland SC-55 turned Doom for Windows and Castlevania on X68000 into this:
https://youtu.be/tykAn_7aRP4?t=14
https://youtu.be/aRIwSihVTr0?t=297
The X68000 was badass, by the way. There were a few games you could hook MT-32s and SC-55s into, and Castlevania was one of them.
An X68000.
An SC-55.
A Roland MT-32 turned Monkey Island 2 and Space Quest 3 into this:
https://youtu.be/m6r5iWfbjlI?list=FL8iRVqW8XSaFGwR2-RBwaEA&t=139
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxEP05TtOfE
An MT-32:
Very recently Roland actually released the Sound Canvas VA, which is a VSTi that hooks into a DAW like Cubase or Reaper that emulates the sound of the SC-55, SC-88, SC-88Pro and SC-8820. It's the most accurate with the 88s, but yeah. It's dragging MIDI files right into the program and playing them back with the FX - it's really convenient.
http://www.roland.com/products/sound_canvas_va/
A lot of ZUN's music for Touhou was meant to be heard through an SC-88pro specifically. Quite a few game soundtracks were made for it, actually: Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, Ys I&II Eternal, et cetera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbPYrdB3ncY
An SC-88pro owned by one of our members, luka:
I made a thread specifically about this a while back.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1187450
johancruijff
Banned
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
This is a good idea for a thread.
I've got kind of a love-hate relationship with old-school PC gaming. Some games were great, and I think things got a lot more interesting after 3D accelerators were introduced. But stuff from earlier in the '90s tended to have atrocious art-styles and were often obtuse beyond belief. I cannot play RPGs from back then.
Other games were awesome. Sierra was on point with just about everything they made, and games like Rollercoaster Tycoon are still among my favorites. Oh, and the FPS genre was actually good. Like... more often than not.
I also think that it was a much more interesting time in terms of hardware. There were the aforementioned 3D accelerators that completely changed things, but you had so many innovations beyond that. The clunkiness of PCs was largely gone by that point, so all the craziness was just fun.
I've got kind of a love-hate relationship with old-school PC gaming. Some games were great, and I think things got a lot more interesting after 3D accelerators were introduced. But stuff from earlier in the '90s tended to have atrocious art-styles and were often obtuse beyond belief. I cannot play RPGs from back then.
Other games were awesome. Sierra was on point with just about everything they made, and games like Rollercoaster Tycoon are still among my favorites. Oh, and the FPS genre was actually good. Like... more often than not.
I also think that it was a much more interesting time in terms of hardware. There were the aforementioned 3D accelerators that completely changed things, but you had so many innovations beyond that. The clunkiness of PCs was largely gone by that point, so all the craziness was just fun.
Technosteve
Banned
Shit i think at this point i dont even know what graohics card i had. All i remember was upgrading to a geforce 2 mx and that thing lasted me forever
Captain Zyrain
Member
Good lord.. the 90's were awesome.
I was big into BBS's (Trade Wars 2002 for LIFE!). I had a 2400 baud modem with my stupid old Mac LCIII or something. I couldn't even do ANSI graphics.
Eventually I got my first PC (Packard Bell Pentium 60! With Windows 3.11 and a certificate for Windows 95 when it came out), and everything changed. My eyes were opened.
I remember a neighbor had an external 2x CD-ROM drive and I'd go over to his house to watch him play Wing Commander 3 ON CD-ROM!! He had a 386DX40 so it barely ran.. but it was awesome nonetheless.
I was big into BBS's (Trade Wars 2002 for LIFE!). I had a 2400 baud modem with my stupid old Mac LCIII or something. I couldn't even do ANSI graphics.
Eventually I got my first PC (Packard Bell Pentium 60! With Windows 3.11 and a certificate for Windows 95 when it came out), and everything changed. My eyes were opened.
I remember a neighbor had an external 2x CD-ROM drive and I'd go over to his house to watch him play Wing Commander 3 ON CD-ROM!! He had a 386DX40 so it barely ran.. but it was awesome nonetheless.
Love the thread Jake, subbed (As if I didn't need more retro threads in there...)
I played a LOT of computer games growing up. Despite playing consoles frequently, up until the Playstation era for me computer games were always my number one. My dad was in the Navy in Computer and Radar tech, so computers were his hobby. We usually almost always had the latest and greatest, and he and his coworkers were always trading games back and forth.
I have many many excellent memories of gaming on Apple IIs, DOS and Windows machines. Here are some of my favourite memories:
Getting a copy of Quest for Glory IV on disk. You needed a 486 to play it, and we only had a 386 at the time as our 486 was coming for Christmas, but my brother and I installed all 9 disks anyway just to see if it worked (It didn't). Each disk had a couple of funny jokes it would tell while copying, which was a neat idea I thought. By the time we got to play it, there was also two disks of patches that had been downloaded from a local BBS (Remember those?).
One day I had an extremely bad headache, and my mom told me I couldn't play computer. But my dad and I were planning on playing Elder Scrolls Arena that afternoon. He ended up going through an entire dungeon narrating, while I kept a warm cloth on my forehead/over my eyes.
My dad used to bring laptops home from work, and we'd install Doom and Quake onto them, then link them to our computer to play co-op. My brother and I went through the entire Quake campaign on New Year's Eve once while my parents were out at a party.
I will always associate Prince of Persia with the song Wonderwall by Oasis, as I played through and finally beat the game while my brother was in the other room trying to learn how to play the song on guitar.
First game I bought with my own money: Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist by Sierra. Totally worth it, though it was a disk copy (Didn't get the talkie CD version until YEARS later).
Growing up, my favourite games were always the Sierra adventures, though I had significant gaps in what I owned and had played. For example, many years later I was blown away when I finally played Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers. That's in my top 5 games of all time now!
Eventually, when I was old enough, I got a computer in my room. Since we only had one PC, I got the old Apple IIGS, along with a box of games. I used to play all the old AGI Sierra adventures on that, despite the horrendous load times on the disks. Example: to save the game, you had to put in a separate disk just for saves. So switch disks (30 sec). Save (30 sec). Switch back (30 sec). Move one screen (1 min). Die instantly. Switch disks (30 sec). Load game (1 min). Switch disks (30 sec).
I'll post more memories as they come to me, but what are some of everyone else's favourite computer game memories?
I played a LOT of computer games growing up. Despite playing consoles frequently, up until the Playstation era for me computer games were always my number one. My dad was in the Navy in Computer and Radar tech, so computers were his hobby. We usually almost always had the latest and greatest, and he and his coworkers were always trading games back and forth.
I used to have a trunk full of photocopied manuals due to copy protection!
I have many many excellent memories of gaming on Apple IIs, DOS and Windows machines. Here are some of my favourite memories:
Getting a copy of Quest for Glory IV on disk. You needed a 486 to play it, and we only had a 386 at the time as our 486 was coming for Christmas, but my brother and I installed all 9 disks anyway just to see if it worked (It didn't). Each disk had a couple of funny jokes it would tell while copying, which was a neat idea I thought. By the time we got to play it, there was also two disks of patches that had been downloaded from a local BBS (Remember those?).
One day I had an extremely bad headache, and my mom told me I couldn't play computer. But my dad and I were planning on playing Elder Scrolls Arena that afternoon. He ended up going through an entire dungeon narrating, while I kept a warm cloth on my forehead/over my eyes.
My dad used to bring laptops home from work, and we'd install Doom and Quake onto them, then link them to our computer to play co-op. My brother and I went through the entire Quake campaign on New Year's Eve once while my parents were out at a party.
I will always associate Prince of Persia with the song Wonderwall by Oasis, as I played through and finally beat the game while my brother was in the other room trying to learn how to play the song on guitar.
First game I bought with my own money: Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist by Sierra. Totally worth it, though it was a disk copy (Didn't get the talkie CD version until YEARS later).
Growing up, my favourite games were always the Sierra adventures, though I had significant gaps in what I owned and had played. For example, many years later I was blown away when I finally played Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers. That's in my top 5 games of all time now!
Eventually, when I was old enough, I got a computer in my room. Since we only had one PC, I got the old Apple IIGS, along with a box of games. I used to play all the old AGI Sierra adventures on that, despite the horrendous load times on the disks. Example: to save the game, you had to put in a separate disk just for saves. So switch disks (30 sec). Save (30 sec). Switch back (30 sec). Move one screen (1 min). Die instantly. Switch disks (30 sec). Load game (1 min). Switch disks (30 sec).
I'll post more memories as they come to me, but what are some of everyone else's favourite computer game memories?
I remember Aureal so hard that the OP should have a trigger warning for posting a Creative Labs product. Thief with Aureal was fantastic.Does anyone remember the "Aureal A3D" tech?
That shit was amazing. It made Jedi Knight an even better game than it already was.
I am Error
Member
I love to play these games simply for nostalgia reasons.
My friend found a copy of Diablo 1 for PC while searching for other games just the other day. It was just the loose CD. I thought it wouldn't run on Windows 10 and even if you could boot it up you wouldn't be able to install it because we didn't have a key for the game. We tried installing it just for fun and were actually able to install and play it without any key or compatibility mode - simply amazing in my opinion.
My friend found a copy of Diablo 1 for PC while searching for other games just the other day. It was just the loose CD. I thought it wouldn't run on Windows 10 and even if you could boot it up you wouldn't be able to install it because we didn't have a key for the game. We tried installing it just for fun and were actually able to install and play it without any key or compatibility mode - simply amazing in my opinion.
davidwhangchoi
Member
i remember radioshack tandy and dexter =P
Confusion Illusion
Banned
What about Edutainment games? I grew up playing those too like Trasure Mountain and Midnight Rescue.
I wish EA would release the first 5 Need For Speed games on GOG or something. I would still play them.
I wish EA would release the first 5 Need For Speed games on GOG or something. I would still play them.
Vincent Grayson
Member
Mathblasters for life.
And the amazing Mario Teaches Typing. That shit upped my typing game.
petran79
Banned
In the early 90s there was some overlap with Amiga and AtariST games, hence why some had amazing music. PC sound cards were not as advanced at that time.
But MOD support, even if you did not have a sound card, was out of this world
Games like Fire and Forget and Pinball Fantasies had amazing intros through that tiny PC speaker...Unless you had Covox Speech Thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFtFju1Gf4w
But MOD support, even if you did not have a sound card, was out of this world
Games like Fire and Forget and Pinball Fantasies had amazing intros through that tiny PC speaker...Unless you had Covox Speech Thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFtFju1Gf4w
I still remember the first shareware I ever registered - Tyrian. Surprisingly the idea of a shmup with persistent upgrades never seemed to catch on, rather the genre gravitated more towards the highly technical bullet hell side.
I remember the devs planned to make a GBA port and I was super hype. But it fell through, and while the game was complete it never got a physical release. The devs put the ROM out at some point because they're cool like that.
I did play a ton of shareware stuff. The dollar store used to sell discs with 3-4 shareware games on each and I'd grab one every weekend with the money I got for lunch when we went bowling. I found One Must Fall 2097 this way.
I remember the devs planned to make a GBA port and I was super hype. But it fell through, and while the game was complete it never got a physical release. The devs put the ROM out at some point because they're cool like that.
I did play a ton of shareware stuff. The dollar store used to sell discs with 3-4 shareware games on each and I'd grab one every weekend with the money I got for lunch when we went bowling. I found One Must Fall 2097 this way.