P.C. Game Ponderings!

[TopCatGr58]

Hey there folks,

With the upcoming release of DOOM III on Wednesday, I got to thinking/reminiscing about my first "Actual" IBM computer and the first game that got me really addicted to PC Gaming!

Prior to acquiring in 1994 my blistering 486SX-25 juiced up with my DX-50 coprocessor, with 16MB ram, 540MB "doubleSpaced" hard drive, Dos 5.0, Windows 3.0, 4x multimedia CD-rom, 1MB onboard video at 256 color 640x480 res, soundblaster 16, 15" monitor, 14.4kbps fax/modem..... I had been using since ~'88 a Commodore 64, then a 128, had used Atari 2600 and ?5200.

But when I got The Original DOOM game and installed it, my wife became an instant computer widow!! The realistic pseudo 3D environment was so involving, and sound effects and soundtracks, and the lighting and gameplay kept me enthralled for hours every night for , sitting there IN THE DARK with just the light from the monitor and the scary sounds echoing from the desktop speakers!!!

I then got Doom2 as soon as it came out, and then the other iterations, Final Doom, and collections of extra homebuilt levels/Wads! Then they came out with HEXEN, and that was quite fun as well

Then I progressed to Duke Nukem 3D, that was very fun to play and also very entertaining with his rude/crude comments, as well as the gameplay locales.

As you can see, I enjoy the 1st person shooters. There were several other games that came out afterwards like Dark Forces but the lack of saving options ruined that one! Quake was a nice leap forward. But I didn't get really hooked on any other game till LARA CROFT "bounced" onto the scene!

By this time, we've had Nintendo's and Playstations burst onto the scene. I played the 1st Tomb Raider on the PS1, then got II and III for the PC, along with my Gamepad pro for all the necessary control options!!

A couple of years ago, got the XBox system, but there wasn't many games that caught my attention, until Medal Of Honor!!!!
And I just finally finished Halo.

Well, to the question, just curious to hear about YOUR first PC game addiction, and such!!??

[JohnSg]

I started gaming on a friend's Commodore VIC20. He was in awe when I landed a Cessna by keyboard. I was a little surprised too and a lot hooked. My first real graphic flight sim was on an Intel 286, it was MicroProse's F15 Strike Eagle. Then I graduated to Falcon 3.0 when I got my first 386SX in 1989. When MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineGaming became technologicaly feasible, I got heavily into Fighter Ace on Microshaft Game Zone. The developers eventually took the game over from MS and I helped out in beta testing. Last December I finally broke my addiction and have been online game free for over seven months now.

[pgg]

Topcat, Motogp2 - race Rossi's RC211V on 'legend' level. (in the rain)

[Geezer]

I bought my first PC in 1987. It was an 8 MHz PC XT clone and had 2 floppy drives and no hard disk. I paid a grand for it...

In no time at all I got hooked on a shareware game called hack. I was loosely based on D&D and I'm not willing to admit how much time I spent concurring that damn game.

Now when I take the time to play games it's either Warcraft or Diablo on a 1.7GHz AMD.

Geezer

[strom]

Let's see.....
There was Flight simulator II on my dads atari 1040 STf, and there was starglider II, silent service, etc.... and a crude platform arcade, I got hooked to.
Then I went to my cousins house, he had a schneider PC.. XT clone... hostages, test drive, etc...
Then I got my 386 DX 40... and there was doom, dune, betreyal at krondor, etc.... later GTA, GTA3 and vice city.
And gothic I and II, fallout I and II, americas army operations, call of duty, etc....
Long way from atari with BW monitor and 1 meg of RAM to AMD 3200, 1 gig of ram, 21" monitor etc....

LP

[sksxs1100]

would it sound bad if i said I still have the atari 2600 and SWMBO's commodore? lol
they sit here in boxes.... and just cant get rid of them

[thumperjsa]

My little brother actually had a computer before me. Anybody remeber the ADAM computer by Coleco. I don't think they lasteed very long. They were giving out a $500 scholarship to entice people to buy it. I wonder how many people did ever take advantage of it. He ended up returning the computer and getting a commodore 64. I beleive it is still sitting in the closet of my parents house.

I still have my Atari 2400 with about 45 games or so sitting in my closet.

The first computer I worked on was a TRS-80 Model 1. The first computer game I can remember playing was Zork (which was tet based. At that time, I was going to a tech school to learn to repair computers. I still somewhere have a schematic for an XT computer. Back then I was doing component level repair on them. Nowadays, if something is wrong, pull out a card or whole motherboard and replace it.

My first PC was similiar to TCs except it was a 486 dx 33 and with the high end 14" monitor, I think I paid about $3k for it. I upgraded the 486 dx 33 processor to a DX/2 66 and I think it cost be about $450.

By the way, Doom was excellent. I used to play after hours at work 1-2 nights a week with several guys and have LAN wars. When Quake came out, we started playing that heavily.

Memories...

[Pat Kelly]

Half Life, H.L. Blue Shift, H.L. Opposing Force, H.L. Counterstrike, H.L. on-line multi-player.
I went through Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem, et. al.
Delta Force series is cool too.
Remember Battle Zone the arcade game? There's a PC version that is very realistic with several missions.

1st computer was a 486SX25 (DXII 60), 170MB HD (1 GB), 4MB onboard RAM (32MB), 5 1/4 floppy, 3½ floppy, no sound (added), no modem (added), no CD ROM (added). I still have it and it works perfectly (slowly).

Atari 7800, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Playstation and PS2. Several Gameboy and Gameboy SP's floating around the house (4 kids 13, 11, 5, and 4).

Wife and oldest son like Medal of Honor and Command and Conquer.

[sixtysix]

I had a VIC 20 of my own and started gaming on that and an Apple IIe we had at high school. Now I thrive on only the finest PC games, the current crop of WWII shooters has kept me busy for the last couple of winters - RTC Wolfenstein, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor. Grand Theft Auto 3 also was a winter project. This game is cheap now and just plain kicks. This winter I have GTA vice city and a few others to play. Unreal Tornament 2004 is coming soon....UT2003 was pretty cool......I love the online stuff if I can find people who are similar in skill level to me. I got really good at UT2003 online, but the others I was just average. I am usually Gutwagon online, if you see me this winter, be sure and toss me a hand grenade and say Hi.

[Snow]

Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, Civilization (I soon hated the game because my brother would hog the computer playing that for hours), and Street Rods 2.

I also looooved Hexen and Duke Nukem. We also got into Warcraft 2 a bit later. I've got Warcraft3 now and like to fire it up every now and then. Jedi Academy is a must have.

When my neighbor brought over the new Doom shareware, I almost wet myself...I should've known better to install and first play it at night.

Btw, many of the Best Buys have been selling D3 early...bad, naughty Best Buy!

If you want to see a line of geeks, be sure to go to your local Best Buy between 10:30pm and midnight tonight

As for our computer, it had a 170 meg WD hard drive, floppy drive, 486SX-33 (man, I dreamed of having a math co-processor, especially when Quake came out) 4 megs of system ram, 256K (not megs, kilos) of video memory, and no sound card. We upgraded to 8 megs ram and added a CDrom drive later, along with a Soundblaster 8bit (non-stereo).

[nashville_bill]

My first was an IBM PC Jr. with an add on that broght it all the way up to 64K of RAM. It also had a 5 1/4" floppy (low density) and used plug in modules to run applications. I was able to fit all of the needed files for MS Flight Simulator on one of the floppies so I didn't have to stop and change disks in the middle of the program. It was almost "Stat of the art" at the time. I still have the PC Jr., but I don't still use it.

[tommystinson]

I put together a 486 DX-4/100 in 1994. It was right about then that Intel released the P-60 (Pentium). They were having problems with math errors with the P-60 and getting bad press. Anyway, I had 32 bit disk/file access and VESA local bus video letting me run circles around all the Pentiums with 16 bit motherboards. I paid $200 each for 2 8-meg SIMM's. And around $900 for the processor. I spent way too much time playing Rise of The Triad, a shooter. My life (as I knew it) ended when I bought The Elder Scrolls: Arena, a role playing game. Addiction, to be sure. My characters name was Mortis, a 21st level fighter. I remember having an original Macintosh with Zaxxon, supposedly a 3-D space shooter. One of my favorites was Commander Keen in "Goodbye Galaxy!" For any other nerds out there: 386DX had 375,000 transistors, the 486 had 1,300,000, the Pentium had 7,000,000 and I think the current P-4's have somewhere around 40,000,000 transistors. If you could print a schematic with say, 10 transistors per square inch, the schematic would be 2/3rds of an acre. Uhh, can I get that in a PDF?

[gaffer77]

ATARI 2600 THEY STILL AINT DEAD YET,THEY ROCK I STILL USE A WOODY EVEN NOW TUTANKHAM,RIVER RAID THEY ROCK,ALSO COLLECT MASTER SYSTEM MEGA DRIVE ,SINCLAIR AND COMMODORE 64 WELL DID COLLECT THEYRE ALL BOXED UP EXCEPT THE ATARI ,COS I LOVE IT

MANIC MINER WHAT A GAME,HANG ON,SPACE HARRIER

ONE GAME MADE BY ATARI FOR PROPER ARCADE IT WAS CALLED BURNIN RUBBER PLAYED IT IN A CAFE AFTER MY PAPER ROUND EVERY SATURDAY MORNING WITH MY WAGES WHAT A GAME NEVER SEEN IT SINCE GOT SOMETHING SIMILAR ON THE 2600 BUT GRAPHICS ARE CRAP YOU HAVE TO JUMP ISLANDS,DODGE DUMPER TRUCKS AND OTHER CARS THROUGH THE SEASONS OF THE YEAR BASIC BUT ADDICTIVE AND PLAYABLE

OH I CANT LEAVE OUT WONDER BOY FANTASTIC AND MANX TT ON SATURN YER MAN NOW WERE ROCKIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gaffer77]

bump and jump was the 2600 game i was barkin on about,anyone know if the arcade version was burnin rubber for sure i last played that in 1985!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Shadow]

The first computer I remeber having was a TI-99 made by Texas instruments (basically a keyboard with a cartridge slot on it). Then upgraded to a 8088XT PC & got hooked on Populas shortly there after. The next few games that got me as the PC got better were:

X-wing, & all it's cousins, Descent 1 & 2, Freespace 1 & 2, Starcraft, Warcraft 2 & 3, and Diablo 1 & 2

Then got introduced to the PS2 with Gran Turismo, GTA 2,3, Vice City, Armored Core

Then in December my "buddy" showed me Halo on Xbox & that was it I was done, eagerly awaiting Halo 2 now that I finished the first one on all difficulty levels.