PC Love?

[FatTrucker]

I bought my first proper desktop PC specifically for gaming in 2000, bought with Age of Empires II, and Deus Ex. Had owned a couple of PC's prior to that but never really used them as gaming machines.

It had an AMD Athlon 1Ghz processor (woohoo), 512Mb of Ram and a TNT2 graphics card running WindowsME *spits*, but I loved it. Quickly embarked on discovering and buying loads of old classics and all the decent new releases whereupon I discovered both the Internet and PC hardware upgrades. As a result I was primarily a PC gamer throughout the PS2 generation. It cemented my love for RTS and RPGs through the Age Of and C&C series and the various D&D and Star Wars inspired RPG's from Bioware. Then came Call of Duty and the United Offensive expansion which still rates personally as the most satisfying online FPS experience I've ever had.

Its only really with the 360 and its raft of features that offer access to similar types of games and genre's that I've reasserted consoles as my primary weapon of choice. I still think RTS and FPS are done better on the PC with a mouse and WASD than they are on consoles where various controls and interfaces have to be simplified or significantly damped (larger reticules, bigger hit boxes etc) to work properly.

[theantmeister]

1982: Snipes, Paratrooper, Rocket Lander, PC-Man

I played loads of Paratrooper. Great little game.

[MattyC64c]

DOSBox is by far the easiest way for DOS games, but Windows 95 won't run on it (I don't even think Windows 3.1 runs on it).

I understand that, what I mean is, is it possible to run Windows 95 Dos using Virtual PC 2007?

[theantmeister]

DOSBox is by far the easiest way for DOS games, but Windows 95 won't run on it (I don't even think Windows 3.1 runs on it).

I understand that, what I mean is, is it possible to run Windows 95 Dos using Virtual PC 2007?

Do you mean boot Windows 95 command prompt (aka DOS 7.00) or just run Windows 95? I've used Windows 95 on previous versions of Virtual PC, but it looks like they dropped '95 support in 2007

[snowkatt]

DOSBox is by far the easiest way for DOS games, but Windows 95 won't run on it (I don't even think Windows 3.1 runs on it).

I understand that, what I mean is, is it possible to run Windows 95 Dos using Virtual PC 2007?

yes but its unsuported
you could aways try oracle virtual box its free to download and use

[che_don_john]

PC gaming probably around 1996 for me, and mainly for playing Star Wars games. Up until then it had been Master System and Mega Drive. I hadn't touched a keyboard (for gaming at least) since my Amstrad CPC 464.

The PC had a massive 1GB hard drive and I would enjoy the likes of Dark Forces, X-Wing, TIE Fighter and Rebel Assault. I think it just about handled Jedi Knight, too. Christ, I even played Yoda Stories on that thing. The only non-Star Wars games I think I played were Doom and Jazz Jackrabbit. And SWOS, of course.

Between then and now I never really had a good enough PC to play recent games; I mostly had laptops because of uni, and pretty much only played Half Life, Counter Strike (there is no better game to play in a Halls of Residence), KotOR and Neverwinter Nights. But recently I've just bought a new laptop that seems to be able to handle current-gen games (well, it plays the ME2 and DA2 demos, at least!) so I guess PC gaming will start to creep back into my life.

The Old Republic, Dungeon Siege III and Diablo III are all on my radar.

[MattyC64c]

Oh how technology moves on. It amazes me that my HTC Desire and my iPod touch are many times more powerfull than that huge first PC I had back in the summer of 1996!

My first rig wasn't that good for it's time though, the 586 100Mhz Cyrix machines were pretty underpowered I though. Looking back I think I should have saved a little more and got an early Pentium machine. Games like Doom II, Dark Forces and the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games worked fine, but games like Wing Commander III and IV really pushed my system hard.

When I bought that machine, it had a huge (for the time) 1GB Hard drive, Windows 95 and 8MB Ram, I remember it cost me nearly £100 for an extra 8MB. It served me well through college though. It was the first machine that I truely used for both educational and gaming purposes.

[MattyC64c]

yes but its unsuported
you could aways try oracle virtual box its free to download and use

I've had a quick look at that cheers. Could that run Windows 9x based Operating Systems?

[greenberet79]

Got my first PC in about 1996. Well - my mum bought it for us for university, and was right royally ripped off by Dixons. I shudder to think how much she paid for a Packard Bell that was out of date by the time we took it out of the box. She wasn't to know, though.

Haven't done a tonne of PC gaming, but the ones I did play are three of my all time favourites, and I have solid-gold memories of my time playing them (post SNES / pre PSONE).

Grim Fandango - what a game! Some of the puzzles confused me and there was a bit slowdown/crashing on my PC, but it was still a wonder.

Commandos - possibly (POSSIBLY) my all time favourite game. Insanely difficult, but so addictive. Spent hours/days/weeks/months trying to defeat the Nazis!

Blade Runner - again a bit of slowdown on my creaking PC, but another cracking game. Love the film and this was genuinely just like being in the same world.

I got another PC in about 2006 but that was used mostly for emulators - and re-buying the three above games!

[theantmeister]

So I'm trying to remember all the games I played back when I first got a PC. The problem is, the more I think about it, the more games I add to the list:

Karnov - I must have put a few hours into Karnov on and off, but never got very far. The PC speaker version of the soundtrack is burned into my memory though!
Golden axe - I seem to remember the PC port of this being pretty solid. A friend of mine had a VGA card and it looked really good on that. I had to play it in orange and black. Here's a tip - you can copy and rename any one of the sprite files to swap the graphics for that character, including the player's characters. You can actually play as one of the enemies, Death Adder or even the little thiefs
Space quest 1-3 - I played loads of Sierra games back then, but Space Quest was my favourite. Space Quest 3 was the last Space Quest that worked properly on the XT (you could hack 4 to sort of work). SQ3 is a great game though.
Stargoose - A weird into the screen shooter starring a goose. Could never get very far in it.

More as I remember them!

[snowkatt]

yes but its unsuported
you could aways try oracle virtual box its free to download and use

I've had a quick look at that cheers. Could that run Windows 9x based Operating Systems?

i tried it with windows 98 and quite frankly the setup went apeshit and froze
i installed the same ( orginal cd btw ) windows on virtual pc 2007 and things seem to be just fine win 98 is responsive enough its not like treackle and you arent waiting an hour and a day just for the desktop to appear
havent played any games yet though

[pforson]

yes but its unsuported
you could aways try oracle virtual box its free to download and use

I've had a quick look at that cheers. Could that run Windows 9x based Operating Systems?

Another option is VMWare (and Parrallels if you have a Mac).

I've successfully run Windows 98SE and 3.11 under VMWare. However, most virtulisation software does not emulate but uses your computers own hardware and offers new drivers (does that make sense?). As such, most games run very very fast and you have to try and slow them down. I've also run into a problem using VMWare, in that my modern graphics card doesn't support 256 colours - which means most old games can't run at all!

There is also no 3D support in any os's pre XP.

Basically, it's very hit and miss trying to get old games running under virtulisation.

Ta,
Pete

[snowkatt]

or failling that there is also Q
i tend to run all my old games that cant or wont run in vista on a p 2 laptop with windows 98 installed
it runs best on real hardware

[Freestyler]

Lets face it, the PC doesn't get much of a look in on Retro Gamer. When did you first play games on a PC and were you impressed?

For me it was when my Amiga 1200 couldn't "cut it" any more. Not for me, because it will always be my most favourite computer in the entire world, but for my wife. My trusty Amiga managed to put her through College and some of University, but unfortunately it could only go so far. The dreaded "compatibility issues" with PCs and Macs finally forced me to buy a Windows PC. A Celeron 266Mhz "monster" as I recall.

As for games, it was the Emulation scene that got me the most. Messing with .cfg and .ini files to squeeze extra speed was a game in itself! Upgrading the entire motherboard so I could run an AMD K6-2 350mhz chip practically doubled frame rates on everything! Then I discovered a 3DFX card...

Did you play PC games in the good old days of DOS? Do you still play PC games?

Absolutely. My first love was always Adventure and Point & Click games, so the PC was well served by these. More-so than my trusty Amiga in fact. I could fire a list off until Doomsday about all the great DOS games. That is; back before Doom came and changed the world. No more interaction via senses, wit and intelligence. Just point your gun graphic and shoot until dead. Nearly twenty years later and what's changed?

Modern PC games? Not really. Beyond games that can only realistically be played on a PC (MMORPGs for instance) it's finished for me. The constant push to buy kit every 3 months is something that I fell out of love with a LONG time ago. PC games are graphical demos anyway. Why spend £500 on a GFX card when I can play the same game on an entire console costing 5 times less? The whole "It's in super-high rez with fantastic textures!!" is just a bullshit argument to a guy who's more than happy to play Megadrive games in 320x224 with a whopping 64 colours on screen at once!!

The modern PC Gaming scene is done. It's all graphical demos. Like the late Nineties Amiga scene.

[Farzlepot]

Another 'hell yeah' for some PC love! As a dedicated PC gamer from the fifth gen to the beginning of the current gen, and with some fond memories dating back earlier than that, I'd be happy with some attention to some of the greatest gaming experiences of all time in a future edition of the mag!

The biggest problem with the PC elite is a complete disregard of their past. PC gaming is undeniably associated with an unending march forwards in terms of power, speed and graphics. Why play HL1 again when there's HL2? Who cares about FO1 when there's FONV? It's a gaming community so obsessed with specs and fidelity that there hasn't really been such a significant retro scene for PCs as there has been for consoles until GoG came along. Maybe this has as much to do with the difficulty of getting older games working on newer machines as anything else, but I still think it's a cultural thing. After all, console gamers have to make do with the hardware they're given for half a decade or more, whereas PC gamers just slot in a new card every time they come across a game their machine can't handle.

Whatever the reason, it's criminal to omit older PC games, which aren't just brilliant in their own right, but have also traditionally shaped the direction of console gaming as well.

P.S. the problem with the Microsoft Virtual Machine is, although very good at getting the older operating system working, it's not built for games. It hasn't got the ability to deal with modern graphics cards and can't seem to emulate older ones. At the end of the day, there's no substitute for having an older machine handy. Build the most powerful PC that your OS of choice is capable of supporting and you'll have no trouble, but PC emulation is infinitely harder to accomplish than console emulation, and gets harder still the further back you go.

Thankfully, much like I never throw away old consoles, I never throw away old PCs either!