How long have you been "PC" gaming?

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GagHalfrunt

Lifer
Apr 19, 2001
25,297
2,000
126
Green screen Apple IIe Lode Runner BITCHES!

I had an Apple II+ in the 80s, Lode Runner rocked. 150 levels and no save game, I finally beat it by leaving my computer on overnight on a long weekend and doing about 50 levels a day. Championship Lode Runner was great too, some truly evil levels that took a hell of a lot of trial and error to be able to get through.

No green screen for me though, I had an RF modulator and played it on a 19" color TV. I played Zork and the rest of the Infocom adventure games on the green screen. I still have that machine and it still works.
 

mizzou

Diamond Member
Jan 2, 2008
9,734
54
91
I remember in grade school, I would wake up super early and eat my breakfast, get dressed, so I could play some PC games for like 30-45 min before I left for school :)
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,067
1,550
126
I've been playing computer games since 1984 when my dad got an Apple 2e. (I was 4)

I have been playing games on "IBM compatible" computers (x86 architecture) since 1989-1990ish when my dad got an 80486 based PC.
 

Apathetic

Platinum Member
Dec 23, 2002
2,587
6
81
Moon Lander on a Commodore PET, 1978.
Yikes, 35 years.

Dang. I remember playing that on my school's Apple II+. I remember playing the game using paddles (they had one big knob and a button on the side). Anyone else remember those?

Dave
 

gorobei

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2007
3,654
980
136
interact-right-3.jpg

1978
 

Chiefcrowe

Diamond Member
Sep 15, 2008
5,043
174
116
Not exactly sure but around 1985 i think!

I recall a C64 and then Tandy 1000 (Pacman, Tetris, and a bunch of Sierra/Lucasarts adventure games to name a few), and then we had a 386 25MHz i think!

Later I somehow convinced my parents to get a Pentium Pro 166 MHz and we joined the CD age! I recall it was over 2000$, damn! It lasted a long time and later I put on some kind of linux on it for fun. I started college and used that computer, and had to put in an ethernet card.
I believe the next 2 computers I had were one I built which was a Pentium 4 with Win2K in a super big beige generic tower case and then an overclocked AMD Athlon 64 with XP.

I played the most amount of games in jr. high and high school.. much less in college and slowly started playing a bit more after college, but never has been the same amount as before.
 
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festa_freak

Member
Dec 2, 2011
136
0
0
1999. My parents were in the visions store and they weren't even looking at computers. I think they were looking at TV's. I didn't even ask them. It was janurary 10th so it was very close to after Christmas!

They ended up buying a Packard Bell 333MHz 64MB RAM 4GB hard drive computer. The guy gave us NHL 99 for free which was the first PC game I ever played.

I wanted a racing game so I got NFS 2 whic was also awesome. So fun to play split screen with friends. Then I got NFS High stakes which made my computer crawl. I then bought a 16MB Voodoo 3 2000. I could now jack up the graphics to max and I saw new things I had never seen before. Dust, shiny cars and lens flare!!!

My first shooter was Jedi knight: Dark forces. I played the crap out of that. Me and my buddies downloaded maps on dial-up and would play them over the internet. Then A friend got Jedi outcast. I had to uninstall every game to play it (to make room) and it was super choppy even on the lowest settings, but I still played some of it!

The rest is history.
 

thestrangebrew1

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2011
3,430
382
126
I was introduced to PC gaming somewhere in the late 90s. I remember an older family friend showed my brother & I Doom on his PC connected to huge house speakers and I was blown away. I couldn't afford a PC and wasn't really into video games at the time so I never got into it until I finished college and my brother introduced me to C&C zero hour. That was around 2002? since then I've been gaming on the PC exclusively.
 

walkur

Senior member
May 1, 2001
771
4
81
Started with a C-64, still remember recording freeware that was broadcasted over the radio.
Worked great (unless someone switched channels near the end of the program).

Switched to an Amiga 600 with 20 mb harddisk.
My dad still used the Amiga as a word processor until 1999.

1st PC was a P133 someswhere around '96 getting 10Mbps cable in '97-'98.
2nd PC was an OC'ed dual CPU BP6... man that was a beast...

I skipped the entire 2,3,486 dial-up era...
 
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ibex333

Diamond Member
Mar 26, 2005
4,086
119
106
I started gaming on 286 and 386 in middle school back in 1995-1996. Parents couldnt afford to buy me a PC so I played in school... I played things like Arctic Adventure, Oregon Trail, Missile Defence and that silly game with helicopter.. Cant remember what it was called. One day I saw our teacher and a few other kids play Wolfenstein 3D on the teacher's PC which was "souped up" by 90's standards. The game looked like a dream.. I only saw a glimpse of it and was amazed by the incredible graphics.. I thought I'd never in my life have a PC that could do something like that.


Then parents got me a 486 DX 100MHz. I played "Doom", "Dogfight", "Mortal Kombat" and "Command and Conquer"... or was C&C already on my Pentium? I cant remember...

anyway.. Gamed since then... forever and ever.

But it was really SEGA Genesis that got me into gaming. Things like Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Mercs, and Streets of Rage.
 

lozina

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
11,709
8
81
Keeping my mind sharp? Pah yeah right. More like keeping me lazy and out of shape!
 

homebrew2ny

Senior member
Jan 3, 2013
611
61
91
Ok, I want to change my answer....

~I've been gaming since getting a Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device in 1947, played missile simulator till my eyes bled, been hooked ever since~

/I win thread
 

MBrown

Diamond Member
Jul 5, 2001
5,724
35
91
Since probably 96. I was ten years old and I used to play SU-25 all the time.
 

AyashiKaibutsu

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2004
9,306
3
81
Since around 94 is when I started doing it constantly. I was able to just barely play them (parents were scared to let me use computer) for a few years prior. Been playing video games constantly since 87 (4 years old).
 

DefDC

Golden Member
Aug 28, 2003
1,858
1
81
Around '79-'80 my older brother received an Atari 800 for Christmas. I was 7 and he was 8. We already had an Atari 2600. He had a few cartridge games for the Atari 800, and a local computer store which would rent them, which was amazing! (Game rentals, in the early 80s? Awesome!) My brother started going to computer swap meets and built quite a gaming collection. I received my own Atari computer and once I played Ultima 3 for the first time, my RPG/PC gaming addiction had begun!

I was also an avid console gamer, all the way up to the Playstation 1. However, PC games were my always my bread and butter. I bought a Playstation 2, but it was rarely used once games like Baldur's Gate and Unreal Tournament hit the scene. PC Gaming was where it was at. I wasn't seeing any kind of innovation on the console front. Crazed network gaming jumped from Doom, Warcraft 2, UT1, Battlefileld 1942, to WoW. No more room for consoles for me!

I went from:
Atari 800 (1980s)
Commodore 64 (Late 80's very early 90s)
286 Family computer (1991)
486 My own, in college (1993)
and then yearly upgrades from there...

Now I'm in IT, and have computers all over the house. :)
 

tkivisto

Member
Sep 24, 2012
26
0
0
My parents used to rent a Commodore 64 sometimes...I still don't know how THAT worked because I was pretty young. That was around 1984. We played games on it mostly and then one day my parents suprised us as we owned one! I can still remember how excited my brother and I were about that.

We still played on the C64 until he went to college but alas our time for that system was quite reduced.

Our first "PC" in modern terms was a 386-compatible. I remember my brother explaining that the sound on the Commodor was far superior, and then we got a sound card for the PC, and then I got my own PC (Cyrix processor) for college...

...and met a new friend from Malaysia who knew a lot about computers. He upgraded my processor (AMD K6-II) and told me about how you could swap video cards..I remember trying out a 3dfx Voodoo2 (which didn't want to play with my set up) so I went all out and spent some more of my summer job money on a 3dfx Voodoo3. I had never been so excited about a personal purchase. I plugged it in and loved that it just worked!

Now I have probably owned 5-6 generations of ATI/AMD cards since then and it's crazy to think how much more computational power we have at about the same prices we did way back then.

The funny thing was that when my brother and I still got together for years, we would hook up the C64 and re-live a little part of our childhood.
 

loddie

Member
Jun 13, 2010
26
0
0
Ever since my parents went out with some work friends and their teenage son kept an eye on me at their house by showing me his computer games. I ended up playing Loom for like 6 hours straight while they were out.
 

ElFenix

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Mar 20, 2000
102,414
8,356
126
Since tie fighter. never had a c64 or an apple ii or anything like that. Had a nintendo to game on and my parents weren't going to spend gobs of money on something else to play games on. So i only played at friends' houses. Had various work cast-off macs to do school work and stuff on.