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[TheLetdown]

Remember manual-based DRM?

I think Ultima VII had this. Eye of the Beholder did, I'm almost sure of that.

For those who don't know, it works like this. At certain points, the game says "Please enter the word on page 18, 8 lines down" and you'd have to go to the manual and actually look it up to be able to play the game! They'd do this on boot so you couldn't get the (12 or so) disks from a friend, install and give it back.

 

[Spitz]

Awesome times i spent hours of time to optimize my autoexec.bat and config.sys to get more free memory to run the games.

 

[mackattk]

The Riva TNT era held so many special times in my life.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

Does anyone remember the "Aureal A3D" tech?

That shit was amazing. It made Jedi Knight an even better game than it already was.

I remember Creative bought them out even though Aureal was better. Sound has been pretty stagnant ever since. Unless you are an audiophile, you just use whatever comes with your motherboard.


I probably owned 65% of the games in the OP. Great childhood memories came rushing back.

 

[brainzelda]

Let me just boot up that Encarta maze game real quick...

 

[Digoman]

This thread makes me feel so old...

The 90's was a amazing decade for PC gamers...it was expensive, but the jumps in technology were incredible.

The first things that jump out when thinking about that time:

- The Space Quest 3 theme on the MT32. I had access to this module even before I had an Adlib/Sound Blaster so... Wow. (Well, this is probably in the really late 80's...)

- Seeing King's Quest V on a VGA 256-color monitor for the first time. The backgrounds were amazing.

- Hearing speech on a Sound Blaster (16?) on the Wing Commander II intro. Ok, so now if a game didn't support the MT-32 module and Sound Blaster at the same time... I had a really hard choice to make.

- Tomb Raider on the 3dfx's Voodoo. Very expensive purchase justified.

- Duke Nukem 3D in LAN. This multiplayer thing can be fun.

- Wing Commander III - "Is that the guy from Star Wars?"

- Quake, and Quakeworld CTF on the internet. My modem could do more then download porn GIFs.

And so many genre defining games such as Doom, Dune 2, Fallout, etc.

But, the "PC Gaming is complex" was very true. I was learning to program and of the first things I did was a menu system (using some batch extender) to manage all the CONFIG.SYS / AUTOEXEC.BAT versions.

Still, amazing times. Great games and so many jaw dropping moments.

 

[RodrigoDorta]

Last month i played trough interstate 76, great game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JCGZFQZkdc

LGR is a youtube channel about pc gaming, focused on ms dos and win 95~win 98 games

https://www.youtube.com/user/phreakindee

love this era of games, hold a very nostalgic place for me.

 

[Ryan242004]

Man that racing section... So many memories. I remember getting the voodoo 3dfx card, it made a world of difference! Good times.

 

[NOLA_Gaffer]

Trigger: 'software mode'

I dunno, part of me still kind of likes the unfiltered, chunky look that software mode offered up. If it wasn't for hardware mode's performance increases I would have used software mode all day long.

 

[malingenie]

This is where my nostalgia comes from. I recently spent $1200 to re-join the c master race (after a long hiatus). It can run new games at 1080P 60fps without breaking a sweat, but it's mostly used for DOSBox and such. It was an amazing time to be alive.

 

[Smokey]

heat.net ;___;

 

[Havoc2049]

Don't forget the flight simulator genre and it's sub-genres of combat flight simulators and space combat flight simulators. It was huge in the 90's. The genre was big in the late 80's and steamrolled through the 90's.

The Wing Commander series
Microsoft Flight Simulator and Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator
Aces of the Pacific
Aces Over Europe
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe
Falcon 3.0 & 4.0
Gunship 2000
Red Barron
Frontier: Elite II
X-Wing Series

 

[malingenie]

Don't forget the flight simulator genre and it's sub-genres of combat flight simulators and space combat flight simulator genre. It was huge in the 90's. The genre was big in the late 80's and steamrolled through the 90's.

The Wing Commander series
Microsoft Flight Simulator and Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator
Aces of the Pacific
Aces Over Europe
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe
Falcon 3.0 & 4.0
Gunship 2000
Red Barron
Frontier: Elite II
X-Wing Series

Knights of the Sky <3

 

[Nzyme32]

Does anyone remember the "Aureal A3D" tech?

That shit was amazing. It made Jedi Knight an even better game than it already was.

Oh man do I remember them! Always remember:

asp4wav

So many BSOD with that in once the company went under. Disable 3D audio and all was well

 

[Sophia]

I remember when we upgraded to 8MB. No longer needed a boot disk for playing DOOM. It was awesome.

Question for the people who are familiar with it: There was an old soundcard included with my very first DOS PC. I don't remember what the soundcard actually was tho, and no longer have the PC in question. What I do remember is that it had a sound test during the install where a man would shout "MULTIMEDIA SOUND CARD~!" over and over to a fanfare to see if it was working correctly. At which point it booted into Windows 3.1 to continue the rest of the setup. Anyone know what soundcard that was?

Remember manual-based DRM?

I think Ultima VII had this. Eye of the Beholder did, I'm almost sure of that.

For those who don't know, it works like this. At certain points, the game says "Please enter the word on page 18, 8 lines down" and you'd have to go to the manual and actually look it up to be able to play the game! They'd do this on boot so you couldn't get the (12 or so) disks from a friend, install and give it back.

You are right. Eye of the Beholder did have this. Source of frustration because I got the game second hand and there was no manual included. A few other games had it too. I remember The Journeyman Project Turbo having it on my grandmother's Windows 95 PC.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

Awesome OP!

About the title:
- What was the first game you made your own bootdisc for?
- What was the first game you saw a "with/without" 3D acceleration comparison screenshot of? ...and was your mind blown?

My first bootdisc I don't remember (might have been X-Wing but for a friend's computer) and the comparison screenshot was for Dark Forces 2 (Storm Trooper helmet). Before that picture in a magazine I thought 3D accelerator cards were just to take load off a cpu.

 

[ViolentP]

I'll never forget having to upgrade to 8MB ram to get Phantasmagoria. And 25MB hard disk space for Return to Zork? Christ.

 

[Havoc2049]

BTW, the pic with the 8" and 5 1/4" floppy diskettes in the first post are sooo 80's. ;-p

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

Remember manual-based DRM?

I think Ultima VII had this. Eye of the Beholder did, I'm almost sure of that.

For those who don't know, it works like this. At certain points, the game says "Please enter the word on page 18, 8 lines down" and you'd have to go to the manual and actually look it up to be able to play the game! They'd do this on boot so you couldn't get the (12 or so) disks from a friend, install and give it back.

Star Control II had you find solar systems on their space map to play the game.

 

[Fuchsdh]

Remember manual-based DRM?

I think Ultima VII had this. Eye of the Beholder did, I'm almost sure of that.

For those who don't know, it works like this. At certain points, the game says "Please enter the word on page 18, 8 lines down" and you'd have to go to the manual and actually look it up to be able to play the game! They'd do this on boot so you couldn't get the (12 or so) disks from a friend, install and give it back.

Only game I recall having that had that was this:

You have to enter in random aircraft tech specs on launching (like gross weight or max thrust) that came from the manual. Infuriatingly it was incredibly finicky about input so god help you if you did (or didn't) add the units or put in a comma... to add insult to injury you had to recognize which airplane it was by its spotters guide silhouette rather than just having a name to look up.

 

[capitalCORN]

I got Wing Commander III as a pack in with a joystick way back in 96(?). All I had was a 486 DX33 with 8mb of RAM, but I wanted to play the game SO BAD. I swear, everything was fine, except for the load times, which took like 30min+ for each mission. I still played through the game many times over. I lent the game to a friend who had a P133 and the difference was MASSIVE. The load times took seconds, and the SVGA graphics shit on my machine. Those were fine days...

 

[whiteninja]

Last year I found an old pc on the side of the road someone was throwing out. The thing was a complete system and even had a packet with the ad for it. I was able to restore it with the disk and it still works although the hd is loud as hell.

I made scans of the ad here: (sorry about the scan quality, I couldn't get it all on there.)

http://imgur.com/a/MtyL1

 

[KingV]

Remember manual-based DRM?

I think Ultima VII had this. Eye of the Beholder did, I'm almost sure of that.

For those who don't know, it works like this. At certain points, the game says "Please enter the word on page 18, 8 lines down" and you'd have to go to the manual and actually look it up to be able to play the game! They'd do this on boot so you couldn't get the (12 or so) disks from a friend, install and give it back.

Leisure suit Larry had a version of this to keep kids from playing where it essentially just referenced stuff from 20 years ago in trivia questions.

 

[Lux R7]

What a time. I love the already mentioned big ass boxes!
My Riva tnt2 aladdin couldn't run avp properly at the time, i remember the game crashed every time i tried to shoot with the marine's rifle. But maybe it was already pretty old.

 

[KingV]

I got Wing Commander III as a pack in with a joystick way back in 96(?). All I had was a 486 DX33 with 8mb of RAM, but I wanted to play the game SO BAD. I swear, everything was fine, except for the load times, which took like 30min+ for each mission. I still played through the game many times over. I lent the game to a friend who had a P133 and the difference was MASSIVE. The load times took seconds, and the SVGA graphics shit on my machine. Those were fine days...

I played Wing Commander 3 on a 486 too. I do remember those load times, and they had the loading screen that looked like a cockpit and the screen in the middle would update constantly to mask the crazy long loading.

 

[zephervack]

Playing Need For Speed 4 with Hardware acceleration at 1024 * 768 after only having software renderer was amazing.

Back in 1999, hard to believe it was almost 720p resolution, it would be years and years before home consoles could come close.

Love the thread.

 

[capitalCORN]

I played Wing Commander 3 on a 486 too. I do remember those load times, and they had the loading screen that looked like a cockpit and the screen in the middle would update constantly to mask the crazy long loading.

Oh yeah! 4 8 6 B O Y S

Anyone else remember Star Crusader and Millenia: Altered Destinies, back when Take2 still gave a shit about the PC market (Although the less said about HELL - A Cyberpunk Adventure, the better)...?

 

[Daffy Duck]

Buying games in big cardboard boxes.

I had that Packard Bell PC in the OP cost me about £1,900! Pentium 2 MX 233 MHz, 3.2Gb HDD and I think 32MB RAM lol

 

[JordanKZ]

Man... This thread brings back memories of my childhood. It really wasn't fun messing around with IRQ values, trying to find out what sound card your off brand soundblaster really was, and the like.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

Talking about racing games, anyone remember THIS:

For some reason, me and ALL of my friends had it and we all sucked at it (playing with a joystick or keyboard).
It just looked awesome and was a benchmark for our PCs (I played at ~20fps). Probably the most hardware demanding not-3D-accelerated game I can remember.
Edit: Actually some voxel-based games had higher recommended specs, but that was when 3D acceleration was already around and the average consumer CPU had gotten more powerful as well.

 

[5taquitos]

Remember manual-based DRM?

I think Ultima VII had this. Eye of the Beholder did, I'm almost sure of that.

For those who don't know, it works like this. At certain points, the game says "Please enter the word on page 18, 8 lines down" and you'd have to go to the manual and actually look it up to be able to play the game! They'd do this on boot so you couldn't get the (12 or so) disks from a friend, install and give it back.

Prince of Persia took you to a room full of potions after the first level, each with different letters. You had to find the right paragraph and word and then select the correct first letter. Drink the wrong potion and you die.

 

[Taikun]

brb playing Descent in stereoscopic 3D in like 1997.

 

[BlackLagoon]

Before Direct X was hatched, starting a game from a boot disk was almost required, especially if it was a Lucas Arts game. You wanted joystick/CD-ROM support, or extra memory. This is what needed to be loaded before hand. Here is a good example of what was needed to create a boot disk.

Bah, boot disks were only "required" if you didn't clean your config.sys and autoexec.bat regularly for unnecessary TSRs. Then in 91 DOS 5 came and let you load stuff into high memory, and memmaker which automated the process in DOS 6 in 93. But after that more and more DOS games used DOS extenders like DOS/4G which eliminated the DOS memory limit altogether.

Windows 95 was a huge upgrade from Windows for Workgroups 3.11 which added plug-n-play, 32-bit architecture and longer filenames. Complete list of Windows versions here.

Hahahah, you mean Plug-n-Pray. Seriously, early PnP was pure horror. Give me jumpers and DIP switches any day over that nightmare.

 

[Daffy Duck]

Lol plug-n-pray not heard that for years.

 

[Dipswitch]

Pentium 100, 16MB of RAM. Tempted to say 40MB HD but I honestly can't remember the size. Ordered it through a catalog, as I needed a PC for college. Had my dad co-sign a loan, after which he promptly threatened to break my legs if I didn't make the payments.

One of the first games I can recall buying was Mechwarrior II. Holeeey shit, was I blown away. Got pretty good at making boot disks and squeezing every last driver under the memory limit. Upgraded to a Voodoo card pretty quickly, then a Voodoo II and then moved into full machine builds. Haven't looked back since.

 

[Ash735]

Voodoo had the best box designs, such a basic design yet iconic, you always could quickly spot one of their GPU's in a store.

 

[Captain Zyrain]

The Riva TNT era held so many special times in my life.

SO SO SO good. Man, I could finally have a PC that rocked and it wasn't super expensive!

I think the first game I played on mine was Sho.. Shogun? Shogo: Mobile Armor Division!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0u2x_q_nKI

God it was magical.

 

[blast processed]

Don't forget the flight simulator genre and it's sub-genres of combat flight simulators and space combat flight simulators. It was huge in the 90's. The genre was big in the late 80's and steamrolled through the 90's.

The Wing Commander series
Microsoft Flight Simulator and Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator
Aces of the Pacific
Aces Over Europe
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe
Falcon 3.0 & 4.0
Gunship 2000
Red Barron
Frontier: Elite II
X-Wing Series

I'm going to add it in. As well as Descent Freespace.

 

[StMeph]

No Civilization 2 (OR ALPHA CENTAURI) or Mechwarrior hurts.

 

[Beerman462]

I didn't get into PC gaming until 1997. I bought an NEC with 266MHz Pentium 2. 16MBs(I think) of EDO Ram and a Trident 3D card that barely worked. I was stuck with software rendering mostly. Going from that/PS1 to a Voodoo 3 3000 was probably the biggest jump I've made. Unreal on Voodoo was crazy also in 1999 Everquest was mind blowing. By the time PS2 came out I was on a GeForce2 MX and with in a year the GeForce3.

Also I have that issue of PC Accelerator....

 

[Tain]

As a young kid I remember starting with my brother's 386 (I think, maybe it was a 286). I'd largely play Lemmings, Wolf3D, and LucasArts games on that. Later my mom got a 486 laptop. I'd use that pretty heavily for anything I could get my hands on, which was lots of Doom, X-Wing, trying to make sense of XCOM, cheap shareware disks from bargain bins, etc. I was really young for most of this. No sound hardware, either.

I eventually got my very own cheapo prebuilt IBM Aptiva with a K6-2 in 1998, with paper route money. This was a hugely important machine for me, as it's also shortly after our family got internet access. I played a ton of stuff on that, but the biggest game was Duke Nukem 3D. It and ZZT/MZX, with their editors and massive mod scenes, drove a real interest in me for making my own content for games and learning how they worked on a deeper level. I also played Quake and Quake 2, not that they ran very well. My friends and I dabbled in online gaming via Heat.net and Internet Gaming Zone.

Admittedly, I also dug into "abandonware" a lot during this period. I learned about a shitload of slightly older PC games via abandonware communities. Emulation was a pretty magical thing as a kid, too, though still fledgling.

Some time in late 1998 I get my first exposure to Quake 2 running on a Voodoo 2. This was an eye-opener. I mean, I had seen the N64, I had seen texture filtering. But that obviously couldn't compare to 800x600 Quake 2 running at smooth framerates. Another friend gets a Voodoo Banshee and plays Half-Life, a game from the future, and I'm drooling. Around the same time my local game store gets an import Dreamcast demo kiosk. You could really feel GOOD CLEAN 3D visuals (at home!) taking off. My own PC could only cleanly play Jedi Knight and a few other Direct3D titles, as my poor ATI Rage II or whatever couldn't do OpenGL, lol.

A little later, in 2000 or 2001, I build my own PC with a GeForce FX, but we're outside of the 90s now. The late 90s and early 2000s were a big whirlwind. All this crazy emerging technology on both the PC and console fronts, all this time I spent playing both new games and digging into old games, all this time spent experimenting with level editors and mods and basic scripting, all this exciting new online play stuff. Very dense time in my memories.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

You never used a bootdisk for 3DFx graphics cards. All of those 3D specific functions required Windows 95 or greater.

 

[CaptNink]

I'm loving this thread so far! Thanks for the memories.

 

[Tain]

You never used a bootdisk for 3DFx graphics cards. All of those 3D specific functions required Windows 95 or greater.

I paused at the thread title for the same reason, lol. It's meant in a "from boot disks to 3dfx cards" sense, not boot disks that somehow boot to 3dfx cards.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

You never used a bootdisk for 3DFx graphics cards. All of those 3D specific functions required Windows 95 or greater.

There were Dos games that used that. Dark Forces 2, the first Tomb Raider got fixes that made it possible for example. Descent 2 and Carmageddon too... I think (or was Carmageddon windows?)

also, yeah, not how the thread title was meant.

 

[zephervack]

SO SO SO good. Man, I could finally have a PC that rocked and it wasn't super expensive!

I think the first game I played on mine was Sho.. Shogun? Shogo: Mobile Armor Division!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0u2x_q_nKI

God it was magical.

Seeing Shogo running in its full glory with an accelerator was an experience, soooo good. I remember just shooting rockets to the sky to see when they would disappear.

 

[Kijof_San]

Autoexec.bat and config.sys we had so much fun...

I remember the first time I got a Voodoo and booted Quake 2, OMG it was so amazing run the game with the killer graphics and frame.

 

[tuxfool]

You never used a bootdisk for 3DFx graphics cards. All of those 3D specific functions required Windows 95 or greater.

Clearly you don't remember that the pass through cable connected to the floppy drive for this very purpose.

 

[terencecah]

i loved reading PCXL as a kid

 

[blast processed]

Hahahah, you mean Plug-n-Pray. Seriously, early PnP was pure horror. Give me jumpers and DIP switches any day over that nightmare.

I never said it was good. Shit never worked.

Voodoo had the best box designs, such a basic design yet iconic, you always could quickly spot one of their GPU's in a store.

Damn right

I played Quake 2 in software mode at home, so I'll never forget the first time I went over to the new netcafe and saw it in high res, graphics accelerated glory. And then just weeks after that playing Quake 3 there.

Quake 1 looked real good in software mode but ran like butter with a 3d card.