PC Love?

[MattyC64c]

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?

I first came a across PC gaming in late 1993, my friend had one of those fangled Amstrad Mega PC's, which was basically a 386 PC with a built in Mega Drive. Those machines were about £600 so he was one lucky bastard, especially because we were in our last year of secondary school, he had a PC and I all I had was a Mega Drive.

Anyway, the first game I saw on this rig was X-Wing, and I was quite frankly blown away. It was so smooth with really good (for the time at least) 3D polygon graphics. Having only really ever played 2D games, these 3D graphics were amazing.

I didn't get my own PC until 1996, oh the pleasures of messing with those config.sys and autoexec.bat files, just to get around that stupid 640k limit and enable that extended memory. There was some great games, but the PC could be such a pain back then.

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

[mainvein]

i first played pc games when my mate bought a 486 for about 1500 quid back when they very first came out, he used to brag about how great the games were but i wasnt impressed at all (much preferred my amiga).
i did buy at uni a pentium 1 - 166mhz with 64mb ram and stuck in a 3dfx card and was properly blown away by screamer rally and unreal tournament, grim fandango

lots of classic stuff on the pc, but i never stuck with it as a gaming platform, much preferred the whole stick game in and it loads with consoles as opposed to install, tweak video settings to get to run game with out too much bother, crash, install gamepad drivers for third time etc (and the classic one from games shops saying you cannot return game if it wont work on your pc, really annoying when you buy a game to find out that your specific videocard that you paid lots for is the only incompatible one with that game and no update ever released)

[Fred83]

Used to scoff at them first in contrast with amiga ports with their superior graphic and sound,then with the arrival of cards they finally caught up and over took the amiga,one of the appeals i liked about pc was its parts became eventually cheap and more easy to replace than of an old computer or game consoles.

Then playing the pc ports you learned the where more enhanced than the console ports,like grand theft auto,doom,theme park..

[Havantgottaclue]

I didn't get a PC until 1997. It was just around the time that 3dfx cards started to hit the market and I remember the vast difference in running Quake in software mode and with a 3dfx card, it was quite something.

Obviously I have happy memories of the first four Civ games, Dungeon Keepers 1&2, Conflict: Freespace 1 & 2 and Quake 1&2. I also had Baldur's Gate 2 at the time but it was unfamiliar territory and regrettably I didn't take the time to get into it. Having got totally hooked on Dragon Age: Origins I feel as though I missed out by not making the effort with BG2. I plan to make amends, as soon as I have the time.

The PC software scene is in rude health at the moment. The majority of the games coming out for the 360 are available for the PC, with obviously more customization options for controls, graphics and so on. Steam resonates with cheap deals and games you've never heard of* (Saira? The Path? Garshasp?) and slightly more heralded games not available on other platforms (Magicka, Amnesia: The Dark Descent). GOG are resurrecting game after game from the PC's immense back catalogue. It is, as they say, pure win.

* okay, I'd never heard of

[sscott]

Yeah, Quake sold an awful lot of graphics cards way back when. Seeing Quake 2 run so smoothly was something! Quake 3 even msre so.

[ipmarks]

Had an Amstrad 1512PC in 1987 which I played a lot of Infocom adventures on... also I remember Test Drive... but not much else.
Then not until 1996 odd for next PC which was a 386 DX100 or something, I remember vividly playing Grand Prix a lot with my friend lugging his whole system round to my house so we could do link up racing. Also Doom and Doom II were favourites
Late 90's saw a procession of 486's... and much joy with X-Wing, Dark Forces and the like.
Then Pentiums with Quake and Jedi Knight... and then I gave up with PC Gaming, as I just couldn't keep up with it.

My current PC is fairly high spec Quad Core etc... but it can't play any top end game well, as I haven't spent loads of money (or understood about) high end graphics cards. To be fair my old low end Pentium PC gets more use for games, as X-Wing, Doom, Quake and Tie Fighter are still as superb today as they ever were.

[Vyothric]

I'm originally a PC gamer - 3-Demon, Netherworld, Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, Supaplex, Major Stryker, Crystal Caves, Captain Comic.......these are my nostalgic gaming memories. Consoles weren't allowed when I was a kid, but we always had a computer so I've been playing PC games pretty much since I was born (1985).

I made the transition to online gaming in the late 90's with Quake 2 then later Unreal Tournament and I've continued playing new games....though due to the poor quality of games these days I don't use my PC for gaming much. I don't even play the old games very often as I still have so many console games to catch up on, but I plan to revisit them all one day.

[Katzkatz]

There was an article a while back in RG about DOS gaming. I think the 'X-Wing' series might be getting a feature soon. Which would be great. I hope RG cover a few more old DOS games in the future. I did suggest a feature on analogue joysticks as well.

I got into the PC gaming world in 1993. By then, VGA, soundcards and in built hard disks had helped the PC out a lot. Games like Day of the Tentacle, X-Wing, Civilisation, Railway Tycoon, XCOM and Pinball Fantasies made the PC a hit with me.

I did play a few other recent PC games as well(KOTOR, Freelancer, Freedom Force, Star Trek : Bridge Commander) which aren't the FPS! I also like Half Life 2 as well. Currently making my way through the original. Plus, I am taking Shadowgrounds for a spin as well(reminds a bit of Alien Breed).

I use Steam a little bit. Not much, I admit. I got an Imac recently and set up a virtual Windows 7 on there, so I can try out more recent PC games. I have both Bioshock and Mass Effect to play. Yeah, I know, I am a bit behind the times!

[theantmeister]

My parents bought me my first PC (an IBM XT) back in...1989 I guess? By then it was already slow in comparison to 286s, but it did introduce me to the joy of PC gaming (and programming as a kind of side effect ). I played loads of great games - Sierra adventures, arcade ports, simulators and poor Amiga ports (imagine Xenon II in orange and black with PC speaker music, that's how I played it).

I think the mag does an ok job of covering PC games. It would be nice to see more PC stuff on the back too... pages though.

[theantmeister]

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?

The first game I played on my PC was probably Sopwith. It was either that or Alley Cat or Rockford. I dunno if I was impressed by those games, but I remember the first time I saw Prince of Persia my jaw hit the floor. It was so beautiful and moved with such fluidity - even on the creaky old XT.

I didn't get my own PC until 1996, oh the pleasures of messing with those config.sys and autoexec.bat files, just to get around that stupid 640k limit and enable that extended memory. There was some great games, but the PC could be such a pain back then.

Ugh, don't remind me. The problem was made worse when sound cards, cd-roms and mice came along. They all needed drivers and TSRs, all of which ate into your precious base memory. It was a never-ending quest to find a mouse driver with the smallest memory footprint possible. Even then you had to spend hours running memmaker and manually tweaking config.sys to squeeze that last morsel of base memory out so that you could play Dune 2 with mouse and sound. And then of course some games wouldn't run in that configuration, so you ended up having to implement boot menus. Fun times!

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

Yup, loads. Piracy was rife at my school and so I played lots and lots of DOS games (and, to be fair, I bought all I could afford with pocket money and presents and such). Everything from Space Quest 1 & 2 through to the VGA adventure games like Indy & the Last Crusade, through all the multimedia stuff like Rebel Assault, Wing Commander, Ripper and so on, through the early 3D games like Doom, Duke Nukem and Descent, through to the early 3dfx stuff like Tomb Raider and GTA. Some really interesting and fun games came out of the DOS days. The Bitmaps, Origin, Bullfrog, Psygnosis, Sierra, Lucasarts, Ubisoft, id, Core, Epic, Apogee, Interplay (amongst others) released some of their best work for the PC back in the DOS era.

Do you still play PC games?

Yup. My current PC is a Core i5 with an Ati Radeon 5770. I also still have a P3 (I think!) box with a Sound Blaster AWE64, running DOS 6.22 and Windows 95. Although these days I tend to just stick with DOSBox if I want to play a classic DOS game.

Lets face it, the PC doesn't get much of a look in on Retro Gamer.

..nor on the forums. I dunno, it just seems PC and DOS threads all sink like a stone here.

[pforson]

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

Yep and yep.

I progressed from the Amiga to the PC pretty early on (486sx25 era). The games I enjoy the most are 'PC style games'. Games like Simcity, Civilization, The settlers, Total Annihilation, Point and Click adventures and old school western RPGs. As such, the early 90's DOS gaming era is my most fondly remembered.

I currently collect old DOS games, especially early CD releases. I've got about 150 (at a guess). Although oddly I play them all on a Mac Mini using 'boxer' - by far the coolest dosbox front end ever!

If I get the time I'll post a pic of my setup.

Pete

[thelatestmodel]

I was both a PC and console gamer from about 1993/1994, I forget the exact year when my interest was piqued but it definitely came from titles like Doom, Sim City 2000 and X-Wing.

My family got our first Windows-based PC when Win 95 was released, a 90Mhz Pentium. It was absolutely brilliant, I remember trying out demo discs and shareware for pretty much anything I could find. I really didn't care what it was, I just tried it all out of curiosity!

Just off the top of my head, I remember playing Wing Commander IV, Doom, Hexen, Carmageddon, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Descent, Duke Nukem 3D, Day of the Tentacle, The Dig, Age of Empires, Dungeon Keeper, Crusader: No Regret, Dark Forces, X-COM Apocalypse, Magic The Gathering, Little Big Adventure, Apache Longbow (the Digital Integration one)... I'm sure there were others, but it was a glorious time in my life. So much to discover.

[hydr0x]

Hah, reading names like 3-Demon, Alley Cat and Sopwith on the RG forum. I never thought that'd be possible

A while ago I compiled a list of very early PC games that I used to play as a kid, sorted by their actual release year. Here it is:

1982: Snipes, Paratrooper, Rocket Lander, PC-Man
1983: 3-Demon, Digger, Frogger
1984: Alley Cat, Sopwith, Sokoban, Rockford, Jumpman
1985: Willy the Worm

There's even two ASCII games in there

[MattyC64c]

Last week I read in an issue of Computer Active, that it's possible to install Virtual PC 2007 on Win 7 and install another old OS. Microsoft would have you believe that it requires a professional or Ultimate edition of Windows 7, but apparently it works just fine on Home Premium. I haven't tried it, its free now according to the article. Does that mean I could install a Copy of Windows 95 and use DOS? Or would my machine be too quick?

Or is just easier to use Dos Box? I bought Master of Orion 2 from GoG.com last week, it's using Dos Box to run.

[theantmeister]

Last week I read in an issue of Computer Active, that it's possible to install Virtual PC 2007 on Win 7 and install another old OS. Microsoft would have you believe that it requires a professional or Ultimate edition of Windows 7, but apparently it works just fine on Home Premium. I haven't tried it, its free now according to the article. Does that mean I could install a Copy of Windows 95 and use DOS? Or would my machine be too quick?

Or is just easier to use Dos Box? I bought Master of Orion 2 from GoG.com last week, it's using Dos Box to run.

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).