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[Krejlooc]

I adore PC gaming, especially historical PC gaming. There has never been an era where it hasn't been the best option for the high end gamer. PC gaming, from the very beginning, has always been awesome. I still have a robust, functioning PC collection that is actually growing still. My collection, in order of release/era:

NTSC Breadbox Commodore 64, all tricked out with Jiffy Dos installed

MSX/2, sony Hit Bit F1-II

PAL Commodore 64c

Atari 8-Bit, this is specifically an XEGS, not pictured is the keyboard and expansion module to retain full XL compatibility.

PAL Amiga 1200 with a 4gb CF kit installed, scan doubler/flicker fixer for VGA out, 2 mb PCMCIA ram installed, and SD Card reader replacing the floppy drive

PAL Amiga CD32 way tricked out, with an SX-1 expansion module installed, 4 mb Fast Ram + 68030 accelerator, 4gb Compact flash card installed with classicWB, and a floppy drive. Not pictured - PS/2-> A4000 keyboard converter

486DX at 66 mhz with an S3 Virge VGA Video card, Soundblaster 16 Pro, and CF->IDE Kit installed for easy hot swap games, you can see one sticking out in the front. The CD ROm drive is a 6x Toshiba drive, 16 mb of ram.

Pentium MMX at 233 mhz with dual Voodoo 2 in SLI with a Trident video card and a soundblaster 64 AWE soundcard, 64 mb of ram and a 32X CD Rom Drive. Installed is a CF Kit with windows 98 SE installed (for USB compatibility).

How about some GAMES??

Big Box Amiga, PC, C64, and MSX games

And some CD-Jewel Case PC-CD and Amiga CD32 games (plus PC Engine games hurr)

I chuckled when this topic about "historic" PC games began with an image of a CD-Rom. Does nobody else remember this:

Running these things today! First of all, I still have a CRT PC Monitor that all these machines feed to with a switcher:

My frankenswitcher. This can choose between multiple audio sources and video sources and direct them to either the PC monitor or a converter I have on my television

Game running on PC Monitor

press a button and

Game running on Television. I use a very cheap VGA->SVideo converter to do this.

CONTROLLERS! I have thousands, some busted, some working. I keep the most used, working ones in this big dresser in my closet where I segregate them by company/era:

PC gameport controllers (and mice and stuff)

Atar/CBM controllers (not the special Amiga gravis gamepad in the bottom)

Yay PC gaming!

 

[Beren the Empty-Handed]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wei0C21LBNM

OH MY FUCKING GOD.

I had completely forgotten about this game. They had us play it in elementary school! I got absolutely nowhere though...

And oh yes, DOS. I played a number of games that way. For the life of me I can't remember what though. One involved rabbits.

 

[Rentahamster]

Best manual

 

[IV Wolfe VI]

I miss playing midtown madness one and two on the zone ;(

 

[Dr.Acula]

Remember magazine demo discs? I came across these in a drawer the other day actually.

 

[neopokekun]

3DFX Voodoo wasn't a video card, it was a 3D Accelerator card. You needed a separate video card in your box besides the Voodoo.

Using an external pass-through cable.

 

[Ultratech]

Remember magazine demo discs? I came across these in a drawer the other day actually.

Haha, yeah.

Still got a few magazine discs from PC Gamer.
I remember one in particular had Magic Carpet II on it.

Mostly, I just had a ton of Shareware discs as well as a few game compilation discs (like Game Empire 1 & 2).

Played the shit out of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Heretic, the original Duke Nukem, and Quake.
Fun times there.

 

[Dictator93]

Using an external pass-through cable.

Yep, that is how I did it!

 

[Krejlooc]

Using an external pass-through cable.

Yup, I have 2 Voodoo 2's in SLI in that machine above. 1 pass through cable from Video card out to voodo 2 A's in, then video out from the same card. The second voodoo 2 is interfaced through the SLI cable inside.

The voodoo2 rig above, I didn't have it when it was new. I used to drool and dream about it in PC Gamer, though. I would go to microcenter in houston and stare at the box in the glass case. I wanted that machine so badly. I built it last year. It was everything I hoped it would be. Back in 1997-1998, nothing could touch a machine with dual voodoo 2's. It was an absolutely beast (and several thousands of dollars at the time lol).

 

[Dr.Acula]

Using an external pass-through cable.

I'm getting 'nam flashbacks over here. IRQ conflicts noooooo!!! Where's my PS/2rate mouse overclock?

 

[The Elite]

My earliest PC gaming memories were playing Sword of Sodan and Roger Rabbit on my friend's Amiga.

There was also the Vic 20. I got hours of Gorf and Joust in on that.

 

[HPX]

Friends sharing 1 Starcraft CD key

Did you share the entire copy since safedisc drm? Also starcraft and bw both had spawn install iirc.

 

[Asparagus]

I'm really shocked how many people are referencing only mid-90s and later games. My first memories of gaming were booting games like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , and Commander Keens in DoS. Heck, I remember booting into Windows 3.1 to start other games.

They were just too expensive, even the Amiga was too much for my family

 

[Krejlooc]

My dad randomly got us into the PC game in 1988 by ordering an Epson 8088. The thing cost $1500. Even for the time he extremely overpaid. By 1988, that thing was basically a relic. He actually bought it off of QVC, no lie. It was pretty much an impulse buy.

That shitty machine, however, started he and I down a path that pretty much changed out lives. We still have that machine at his house, all packed away. That's the machine I was introduced to the internet with, it's the machine I began programming with, it's the first machine I ever upgraded and opened up. it opened such a world to us. We had a CGA graphics card inside, it was so freaking ugly. Playing Robocop or TMNT with like purple and teal colors, lol. Later we upgraded to an EGA graphics card. I remember that graphics card was like 15" long, it was so freaking huge.

Around 1991 my dad, who really took to computing thanks to the 8088, began planning for our first build. Together, he and I, over the span of about 6 months, speced out and built a 286 from scratch. We installed windows 3.1 on the thing. That experience building a PC was seriously incredible. I really have no idea how my dad picked up the skill to do that - he used to read tons of books on PC at the time and became very proficient in computing very quickly - but I'm extremely grateful that he thought enough to include his kid son in the process. I remember being bewildered by the prospect alone - we're going to build a computer???

From then on, we just kinda kept going with the flow. For much of my life I firmly identified as a console (specifically SEGA) gamer, but I've always had a PC around as far back as I can remember. Definitely an enormous part of my gaming history.

Being in the US, I remember running into an Amiga exactly once in my life until I bought one about 4 years ago. I was going to a friend's birthday party who lived down the road. The party was at a go kart place, but we were going to ride together since we lived so close. We were at his place waiting for another kid to show up who was going to car pool with us, and he was like "wanna see this game I got for my birthday?"

So he goes over to this huge looking keyboard thing and slides a floppy disk into it and up boots Lemmings. We played a few minutes before leaving, but I remember being bewildered by what I had seen. At the time, the sort of graphics on that thing were incredible, and the sound was better than the adlib soundcard I had at the time. I remember asking my dad about it when I got home but he had no idea what I was talking about.

I wish the Amiga would have caught on in the US. Its a fantastic format.

 

[Asparagus]

I'm jealous, my parents had no interest in computers, they didn't get a PC until the mid 2000s and even that was a handmedown.

The Amiga was pretty special, I would have killed to have one back then. I've flirted with the idea of getting a 1200 but don't really have anywhere to put it. Right now I'm more interested in exploring Roland music and trying to find a 5 1/4 floppy drive that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

 

[Krejlooc]

I remember, around 1999, my dad got me for my (EDIT: Christmas, not birthday, because I got a dreamcast that birthday) an ATI All-in-wonder Pro. I was a bit disappointed, because I wanted a Voodoo 3 3000, but that card really warmed up to me as one of my favorite video cards. For one, it was a combination TV-Tuner/Video card. That meant it had dual RF heads - one in and one out. This was extremely uncommon at the time - most video out cards either outputted via SVideo or composite. RF-out was pretty big. I ran the cable in my bedroom to my VCR, then to the PC, and finally to my television. This time, 1999, was around the time I began to get into trading anime and shit that was passed around in shitty realplayer formats. Back then, I'd either A) lug my PC to a local community college on weekends to use their T-1 line or B) Go to physical swap parties for videos. That video card changed me, and that build wound up being the very first HTPC I had. I ran all the video that went to my TV through that card.

It was such a cool thing at the time. I could even play PC games on my TV, which, with my microsoft sidewinder was actually really cool. It's kind of embarrassing to admit that my first playthrough of Half Life, the original, was on a TV with a gamepad lol.

 

[Mentok]

wat

The shareware era experience was trading stuff on floppy disk!

Hahaha yup! Where a game came on multiple disks for installation. Anybody else remember playing games on BBS?

 

[Krejlooc]

Hahaha yup! Where a game came on multiple disks for installation. Anybody else remember playing games on BBS?

Not playing games over BBS, but I remember downloading games and posting across BBS.

The internet was wildly different at that time. Believe it or not, my dad got a second phone line installed specifically for the internet back in 1990. That shit was popular in the mid 90's and we were rocking that shit at the turn of the decade, lol. He did so because he'd download all day and night from BBSes on our 14.4 modem. And, because we paid for internet by the minute (hour?) at that time, he'd rack up huge phone bills in the process lol.

 

[MasterOfPastures]

I played the demo of Opposing Force before I got to play the original HL. And I have fond memories of building custom MP levels in Red Faction with my brothers. And the variety of games was beyond astounding in those days: Anachronox, Deus Ex, Metal Fatigue, Giants Citizen Kabuto....
In my opinion, the Golden Age of PC gaming was from 98 to 02-03. THere were gems, but it was not until the end of 2007 that PC came back thanks to Steam.

 

[Krejlooc]

I think we're currently living through the golden era of PC gaming, but my second favorite era of PC gaming has to be the time when the 486 reigned supreme, so from around 1992 till 1995 when the pentiums started really edging it out.

That was such a magical time, when PC was still very much a 2D machine. You had stuff like Doom and Blake Stone, sure, but you had lots and lots of 2D games of various genres. Apogee and Id and Epic Megagames reigned supreme. Thats when you got stuff like Hocus Pocus or Jazz Jackrabbit or Tyrian or One Must Fall.

Of course, I'd argue that every era of PC gaming has something worth checking out.

 

[Rhomega Beta]

Yeah, I remember playing games like Dark Forces, Descent, Hexen II, and The Dig.

Which are all available on Steam.

 

[Mr Git]

I still keep all my old PC and DOS games, despite not even having a floppy drive in the house. If any pop up on GOG I instantly buy them. It was nice when game installations barely took up megabytes of disk space.

 

[petran79]

i remember being spoiled by amiga 2000 games from 1989 to 1992.
Occasionaly atarist and amiga 500.

Then a downgrade from 1992 to 1994. My friends green monitor 8088 speaker sound. But with amazing games like monkey island 1, lakers vs celtics, prince of persia, golden axe, savage, project neptune, metal mutant, night hunter, barbarian etc but long loading times.

Then his bro upgraded to a 486dx2.66 mhz in 1994, adding later sound card and cdrom.
First game that impressed me: jill of the jungle

We got our own 486 pc, i added sc and cdrom too. Best gaming years of my life. We borrowed games from each other.

1997 i got my own pc,a 200 mhz pentium. Gaming lasted till 1999. Had to upgrade for newer games. Then i was mostly to emulators. Windows xp ruined bc.
2010 i decided to try pc gaming again and discovered steam.but i prefered the amiga and 486 years

 

[Talamius]

Started with the C128. (128K RAM!!!!) Played a bunch of the gold box AD&D games and arcade ports of....varying quality with an Atari joystick plugged in.

It took minutes to load a game off a floppy. I can't even imagine how slow the tape drive was.

Boot into C64 mode and LOAD "*",8,1

Mine long since quit but I'd love to find a working one someday.

 

[Kilrathi]

Setting the jumpers for IRQ on ISA cards and hopefully you didn't set it to another device's irq.

 

[Krejlooc]

i remember being spoiled by amiga 2000 games from 1989 to 1992.
Occasionaly atarist and amiga 500.

Then a downgrade from 1992 to 1994. My friends green monitor 8088 speaker sound. But with amazing games like monkey island 1, lakers vs celtics, prince of persia, golden axe, savage, project neptune, metal mutant, night hunter, barbarian etc but long loading times.

Then his bro upgraded to a 486dx2.66 mhz in 1994, adding later sound card and cdrom.
First game that impressed me: jill of the jungle

We got our own 486 pc, i added sc and cdrom too. Best gaming years of my life. We borrowed games from each other.

1997 i got my own pc,a 200 mhz pentium. Gaming lasted till 1999. Had to upgrade for newer games. Then i was mostly to emulators. Windows xp ruined bc.
2010 i decided to try pc gaming again and discovered steam.but i prefered the amiga and 486 years

The best part of that time period was the wild west feeling that PCs had of the time. By 1992, the big players in the console industry were already pretty much established. Joe Schmoe down the street couldn't make a Sega Genesis game and start selling it... but you could do that with PC (and everything I've read about the heyday of the Amiga scene tells me it was the same way). That freedom and openess of the software community lead to a lot of great stuff. Sure, it's likely that 99% of all software put out for the Amiga and pre-windows 95 DOS was probably garbage, but that's because there were hundreds of thousands of titles put out. Far, far more than the average console output. If even .1% of all titles released on these platforms were worth playing, you'd wind up with an enormous number of games to play. And usually, they were quite different from what you'd find anywhere else.

That feeling is a big reason why I say we're living through another golden age. Thanks to the advent of VR, and the ways PC is leading that revolution, the days of feeling like the world has reset and fortunes are there for the taking are back again. We're about to see a lot of very experimental, very cool stuff coming out.

It took minutes to load a game off a floppy. I can't even imagine how slow the tape drive was.

I loaded Salamander last night to test my new C64C via tape, and it loaded for over 7 minutes. So slow.

 

[Mupod]

Yup, I have 2 Voodoo 2's in SLI in that machine above. 1 pass through cable from Video card out to voodo 2 A's in, then video out from the same card. The second voodoo 2 is interfaced through the SLI cable inside.

The voodoo2 rig above, I didn't have it when it was new. I used to drool and dream about it in PC Gamer, though. I would go to microcenter in houston and stare at the box in the glass case. I wanted that machine so badly. I built it last year. It was everything I hoped it would be. Back in 1997-1998, nothing could touch a machine with dual voodoo 2's. It was an absolutely beast (and several thousands of dollars at the time lol).

Back in the 90s my friend was telling me about how his neighbour had two voodoo2's in his PC. I always figured he was full of shit, but apparently not.

Funny reading up on the history here. So it was called SLI, but it's a different technology than the SLI we know today.

 

[Krejlooc]

Funny reading up on the history here. So it was called SLI, but it's a different technology than the SLI we know today.

Kinda sorta. It's the same technology, but the model has changed. 3DFX invented and owned SLI. When Nvidia bought them, they inherited SLI and maintain it to this day. As of the announcement of the 900 series cards, Nvidia is changing the SLI model again.

Originally, when it was 3DFX technology, SLI worked by alternating interlaced raster lines per card. So card A would render all the even fields and card B would render all the odd fields.

SLI as most know it today works with frames instead of fields. Card A will render all even frames, while Card B will render all odd frames. Crossfire, from ATI and later AMD, is basically a clone of this model of SLI.

The new SLI is built specifically for VR. It's devoting an entire card per eye. Card A will handle the rendering for all of the left eye, while card B will handle all the rendering for the right eye.

This is all just software/driver changes, the actual hardware behind SLI has remained the same for years.

 

[Javaman]

PC gamer magazine DVDs/CDs were the best! Full free games.

 

[Magnus]

BIG, THICK, MEATY MANUALS. YES.

 

[gblues]

Fun fact: you can still get Windows on floppy. How'd you like to be the poor schmuck installing this?

http://blog.dk.sg/2013/10/25/upgrading-to-windows-8-1-using-3-5-floppy-disks/

 

[Krejlooc]

Fun fact: you can still get Windows on floppy. How'd you like to be the poor schmuck installing this?

http://blog.dk.sg/2013/10/25/upgrading-to-windows-8-1-using-3-5-floppy-disks/

Haha. OK, this is most likely a joke

What makes this so incredibly dubious is that modern microsoft OSes have a bug in their floppy drive driver that corrupts floppies when they read them. I killed a bunch of floppies on windows 7 last year this way on accident.

That said...

That was in June, and yes, that's from floppy

 

[Mupod]

BIG, THICK, MEATY MANUALS. YES.

I still have my Warcraft 1 and 2 manuals. The lore and presentation in them were so good that they are honestly the reason I got so heavily into that series. The best thing was how the maps were at least somewhat usable even in WoW 1.0.

I also liked the Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries manual. It was done in the style of a college informational booklet, except it was for a mercenary training school or something. It even had little quotes from 'alumni', it was great.

 

[Theonik]

Back in the 90s my friend was telling me about how his neighbour had two voodoo2's in his PC. I always figured he was full of shit, but apparently not.

Funny reading up on the history here. So it was called SLI, but it's a different technology than the SLI we know today.

Actually, after 3dfx went bankrupt nVidia bought them, 3dfx engineers went on to work on the GeForce FX. The ones who left when on to work at ATi. The SLI we have today is a direct descendant of 3dfx's SLI.

Edit: Already clarified better above I see. That's what I get for not refreshing the thread.

 

[LordBaztion]

I remember that Steet Fighter 2 came in 4 floopy discs. I had to imput sf2 (or something) on DOS.

 

[Krejlooc]

I assume most in this topic follow Lazy Game Reviews? Probably the best retro-PC review source around. Also, Lemon Amiga and Lemon 64 are excellent resources for those looking to get into retro commodore gaming. Both tie into the Amiga Magazine Rack project to scan and archive of-the-time reviews for many micro-computer games.

I love that more and more people are looking back at this segment and era of gaming, as retro console gaming is huge. PCs and especially commodore machines (and especially the european centric micro computers like ZX Spectrum or Amstrad CPC) really get the shaft when people talk about the history of gaming, when they were huge deals.

I have a theory about the time game players growing up in influencing their tastes such that they form a baseline of features that must be present for them to enjoy games. It explains why, for example, many NES/SMS players have trouble going back to atari games, or why SNES/Genesis gamers may have trouble exploring 8-bit libraries, and so forth. Obviously many exceptions, but a general rule.

In summation, without going into detail about my theory - you generally are comfortable playing games in the style of games you grew up playing. Lots of people grew up with a particular style of game that is pervasive today, but was just a sliver of gaming back in the 80's and 90's. That said, that sliver offers much for these modern gamers to explore. For example, if you like platformers like Mario or Sonic, there is a ton of stuff worth playing on these retro machines. Stuff like Jazz Jackrabbit or Great Giana Sisters of Meyhem in Monsterland or Zool 2 or Chuck Rock 2 Son of Chuck or Creatures 2. games like that. If you're an action game fan, these old platforms hold lots of value.

These formats are worth exploring today. They just take a little more work to get into. Not much, just a little. With Amigas, it's practically like a console to begin with. Just pop in the disc and turn the thing on. No commands to type to load the game or anything.

 

[spirity]

PC gamer magazine DVDs/CDs were the best! Full free games.

I was always more of a PC Zone fan, but usually I bought both.

 

[rrs]

CD checks and box store game purchaes were my past of PC gaming. I've always had a lean towards playing games on a computer and went full out on it about 7 years ago and never looked back.

 

[uncredited male]

I have all the original packing and manuals for all the Fallouts and infinity Engine games. I always liked the binder manuals.

This was the gold standard. Mine are in better shape than this one.

 

[MrCunningham]

Using an external pass-through cable.

This coupled with an S3 ViRGE.... I was never lucky enough to own a Voodoo card back in the day, I was too young and didn't have any money. But I remember watching my cousin set one of these up.

The first proper 3D accelerator I remember owning was the ATi Rage Pro 64, and I think it had a whooping 8MB's of RAM. Though some games didn't work properly with it (Unreal Tournament ran in some weird hybrid graphics mode (I think?) and games like Alien VS. Predator had serious graphics issues with half the polygons missing on certain maps. I went from this to a GeForce 256 with 32MB'sof RAM and holy sheeet, what a difference.

Worst part was no kind of standards of box dimensions on PC retail boxes. So your collection was a mess.

Why does this need to be shaped this way?!

It was Eidos. Pretty much every Eidos box from Tomb Raider 1 to about 1999(?) had this weird triangle box design, and it was really only their games that did it. I wish I never sold my copy of FFVII for PC.

 

[adamantypants]

Not pre-Steam at all, but this thread convinced me to reinstall Battlefront II... it's on 4 CDs. I'm so used to downloading games these days instead of installing from physical media that I forgot what a multi-disk install was like.

I just installed Wolfenstein TNO from disc because fuck 40 gigs of downloads.

On that note, PC game prices are way cheaper. Even in physical, Wolfenstein was $20 cheaper than consoles.

 

[inm8num2]

I love these threads. I just have two words to add:

Bouncing Babies

 

[thecjm]

It was a big deal when PC Gamer went from floppy disc to CD-ROM. For some reason they always had this terrible intro menu that ran like hot garbage.

Some big gaming hardware milestones for me:
-Getting a boxed multimedia upgrade kit from Best Buy, complete with a VHS tape explaining how to install it. CD-ROM, sound card, and speakers all in one box!
-My first RAM upgrade, from 4MB to 8MB, letting me play Warcraft II
-My first video card, a VooDoo Banshee. Lots of Rainbox Six and Halflife that year.


One of the fun things about PC gaming in the 90's was that boxes were not standardized. Most boxes were rectangular, but had all sorts of different dimensions. And some were really weird shapes. I bet whoever had to stock that stuff hated them.

And if you hate day-one patches now, image opening a game box and along with the game's cd are a handful of floppy disks with patches on them. And if you didn't have the internet, that was the only patch you would ever see!

 

[2002whitegt]

King's Quest was amazing! Great memories playing this on our hand me down computer from my cousin.

Year's later it was Viper Racing - being able to play against my cousin from my house was just crazy to me. Setting it up was half the fun. Explaining to my mom to not answer the phone when it rang because I was going to hook it up to my pc.

Then there's the memory of all the pc games I got from Wal-Mart that wouldn't run on my pc, and the fustration of not knowing why, lol.

 

[Apt101]

I remember the gigantic boxes. Things used to take up half of one of my bookshelves.

 

[Red Blaster]

steam wasn't really steam until the release of the orange box anyway

halcyon days of battlefield 2

 

[thecjm]

Wing Commander aint got nothing on this!

 

[Kanhir]

Air Traffic Controller. I spent my life on this.

There's no stress nowadays that can match just sitting there anxiously sending out all your directions and then waiting for the next update, hoping you've averted disaster. Oh, and hoping no planes just decide to pop out of an airport.

 

[lt519]

Then, naturally, there's the Myth II uninstall fiasco:

Whoops, you deleted my entire damned hard drive? Goody.

I went to pick it up on release night and EB Games wouldn't sell it to me when they heard about the bug. What a fiasco that was...

 

[OrlanisWorks]

I wish I remembered where my floppy of Wolfenstein 3D was. I never thought of it as much until now, hehe. Used to have a super shitty laptop from the 90s that I'd play it on. And then Return to Castle Wolfenstein came on CDs whooooooa!

Before Steam and before very nasty DRM like Securom on Chaos Theory.