PC Love?

[TwoHeadedBoy]

This is what I miss most about the old PCs:



So satisfying!

[DigitalDuck]

Oh man, that takes me back. The days when a PC couldn't switch itself off.

[MattyC64c]

This is what I miss most about the old PCs:



So satisfying!

God forbid you turn off before that appeared, bad things could happen, very bad things indeed.

[MattyC64c]

This is what I miss most about the old PCs:



So satisfying!

God forbid you turn off before that appeared, bad things could happen, very bad things indeed.

[theantmeister]

And, since that rare PC game thread reminded me of it, here's my list of big box PC games that I currently own (some are Mac versions, but try not to hold that against me):

Star Trek TNG: Klingon Honour Guard - A pretty good FPS based on the Unreal engine (I think?).
Star Trek TNG: A Final Unity - An ok adventure game. It has the original voice actors and digitized characters, but the cutscenes are, for some bizarre reason, really early CG (kind like the Magic Carpet intro). Data looks like a yellow lightbulb with a mouth.
Star Trek TOS: 25th Anniversary - Much better than "A Final Unity", but still not Lucasarts level. The best thing about it is that it has the original cast doing the voices and it feels just like an old episode of Star Trek.
Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force - My favourite Star Trek game. Elite Force is a great little FPS. Worth it just for the holodeck based deathmatch, but the single player is great fun too. The only thing that lets it down is the squad AI. Again, it is voiced by the original cast (including Jeri Ryan, who was added in a later patch).

(And, yes, I like Star Trek)

Diablo 2 - The boxart for Diablo 2 is truly awesome (and it's a pretty good game too!).
Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer - I think this is the same as the version that appeared on the N64. Good fun, if a little too easy. The music is especially excellent.
Outpost - This wretched stink pile ran on Windows 3.1 and has to be the most broken game I have ever played. A real pity, because the idea was so good and the game was actually quite addictive.
Tempest 2000 - The best game on the Jaguar also made a pretty terrific PC game. The music streams off the CD and it actually quite good. The gameplay is classic Tempest.
Deus Ex - I hated Deus Ex when I first played it. That last bit of the training mission where you were suddenly expected to be quite and sneak around just aggravated me (I died over and over trying to shoot my way through). The box is huge and really well designed.
Alice - Another really nice box. The game itself is a perfect demonstration of art direction over gameplay. More fun to look at than play.
Quake II - One of id's best, if not the best, games. I still play Quake 2 occasionally and it hasn't aged at all. The soundtrack does stream off the CD though, so you need to have it in the drive while you're playing to get the full effect.
Quake III - Q3 was ok, I played through the bots and a bit online, but it wasn't my favourite game ever. Great intro though.
C&C Red Alert - Still my favourite of the C&C series. The intro is a classic.
Space Quest IV - Picked this up for basically nothing on eBay a while ago. SQ4 isn't my favourite of the series, but the box and manuals were produced at the height of the big box era. The box is stuffed with brochures and manuals and a whole fictional magazine. The artwork is awesome and it has the classic 90's Sierra system requirements boxout (EGA/VGA and so on).
Codename: Iceman - This was the first PC game I ever bought. I still remember the day my parents took me into the local supermarket and let me pick a game out. It was this or Ultima (1 or 2, I forget). I probably just picked it because of the box art (and it was one of the few games that still supported hercules monochrome). I paid far, far, too much for this on eBay. There's a german guy (soundtrackguide_net) selling mint boxed Sierra games on eBay. Hideously expensive, but highly recommended.
Steller 7 - Found this in my local charity shop. The box is MINT. The disks still work. It was £2. I couldn't censored believe it.
Silpheed - Was sitting on the shelf next to Steller 7. Again, mint. Also £2. It was published by Sierra, but developed by Game Arts Co. For an early DOS EGA game, it is an incredibly fast and impressive shmup. Sadly Takeshi Miyaji, the game's creator, recently died.
Wing Commander 2 - Another charity shop find. It even had the blueprints inside. WC2 has a great story that is told in a really cinematic way. The gameplay isn't terribly varied though (I think there are only a two or three mission types).
Wing Commander 3 - Starring Mark Hamill! Sadly, I only have the budget rerelease, which, like all budget rereleases, looks like ass.
Microprose Formula 1 Grand Prix - aka Geoff Crammond's GP1. Recently found this on eBay for 99p. Probably my first grown up racing sim, it truly is one of the best games on the PC ever. You start off with all the driver aids on, the game throws you a curveball by mapping the cursor keys to switch drivers (I would love to know who thought that was a good idea), but you eventually work out the keys. The game just sucks you in and you turn off the driver aids one by one until you end up spinning off into a ditch. Brilliant!
Microprose Grand Prix 2 - Same as above, only with better everything. This game murdered even the highest end PC back in the day. I eventually got it to 20+ frames a second by turning all the detail off at which point it looked a lot like its predecessor!
Syndicate - I actually got this from the local PC Zone distributer after I complained about their shoddy service. It is the budget rerelease, but I suppose it was free.
Fatal Racing - A great little arcade racer by Gremlin Graphics. Duncan McDonald mentioned in his PC Zone review that it didn't really give you a feeling of speed. He was spot on. Still, the game has loops and crazy jumps, so that goes a long way to distract you from the engine's lack of pep.
Lords of the Realm - An old medieval strategy game. Never really got on with it.

That's it! (I think?)

[lauraleebm]

I'm playing PC since early the 80s and my best playable moments were with it. I love collecting big box retro pc games.

[ChipTune]

I really think more PC games should be featured.. I always was spoilt for consoles, but come and go and they would, I always had a PC that I would use for gaming (and only gaming to be honest) from 1992 - now.. so I grew up with c:\games\ dir/p doom.exe etc etc

I love seeing DOS games and early win95 games appear, and they should get just as much attention os the other old computers / consoles etc

[rolan]

I used to like PCs purely for the lucasarts games but when they stopped making the likes of Sam and Max I literally lost my only reason to play PC games as frankly I just got fed up of them never working properly or not running properly with joypads, thankfully console gaming took over so when I buy a game it actually works now as my abiding memory of pc games is messages like Error cannot detect hard drive, soundcard, joypad... etc... didn't most decent PC games end up on consoles or the likes of the Amiga anyway?

So yeah, not super oppossed but I can't really think of any truly amazing PC games that didnt make their way over to other formats... (with the exception of day of the tentacle et al)

[Fred83]

- didn't most decent PC games end up on consoles or the likes of the Amiga anyway?

Usually in scaled down form,missing levels,less detailed graphics,i think early 90s pc wise is interesting,when amiga started to lose its grip in market due to commodores bust and cutbacks.

[hydr0x]

- didn't most decent PC games end up on consoles or the likes of the Amiga anyway?

Usually in scaled down form,missing levels,less detailed graphics,i think early 90s pc wise is interesting,when amiga started to lose its grip in market due to commodores bust and cutbacks.

I'd doubt even 50% of the great pc games of the 90s made it onto any other system, not to mention in unabridged form.

[Whazeboo]

After having own an Amiga for years I bought my first pc in 1995. Descent was my first pc game and first-ever 3D game I played. It has never been bettered.

[theantmeister]

Bit-tech have an interesting article on the 30th anniversary of the release of the very first IBM PC - the 5150. Did anyone actually have one of these? My first PC was the XT, which was "only" released in 1983.

[merman]

Fans of PC gaming should check out my Behind the Scenes article on Theme Hospital, in issue 113 of gamesTM which is in the shops now...

[IronMaidenRule]

Fans of PC gaming should check out my Behind the Scenes article on Theme Hospital, in issue 113 of gamesTM which is in the shops now...

Ooooh, will try and pick a copy up next time I am in town, loved playing Theme Hospital over the years but never quiet managed to complete it.

[SexyWayne]

I've been having a bit of a PC gaming weekend, really struggling to get to grips with DosBox tho, I can get the games installed and running etc... a few such as Death Rally run perfectly, but the Screamer games run like absolute dogs, I've had to drop them down to 256 colour VGA and they still run a little rough, I think my PC is overdue a upgrade or two, even the GOG.com version of Screamer runs badly, I would have thought a 2ghz Ahtlon would be enough... GOG's reccomended spec is 1.5ghz

Screamer Rally and Screamer will install ok using VDMsound but keep insisting the CD isn't in the drive no matter what I try even changing the drive letters doesn't work, and of course there aren't any no-cd cracks to be found anywhere... I'm about ready to tear my hair out