What or who got you onto PC gaming?

Gregster

Gregster

Gregster

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Hi Guys,

As some of you know me, I am rather old (46) and been gaming since I was a nipper. I started out with a Spectrum 48K and games like Manic Miner, Saboteur, Transformers and Head over Heals really started my gaming experience and I have been through so many different gaming systems from a Commodore C64, Spectrum +2, SNES, Megadrive, Amiga 500/1200/CD32, PS1/2/3 but the Amiga was always my favourite, as it was much more. I could use Bulleting boards and I remember linking up with my brothers Amiga and using a LAN (as close to what we use now I guess) connection to play Stunt Car Racer on 2 separate TVs and it was epic. I stuck with the Amiga, whilst my older brother moved over to PC and after watching him play Doom, I rushed out and bought myself a 386 Pentium machine and I have never looked back. There was something in that game that I had never seen before ever and although I had experienced fps 3D games before, Doom was in a class of its own. I have been a PC gamer ever since and I can't imagine being without it.

So, what got you started on PC gaming? Also interested in some history and if you are young or old :)
 
First game for me would have been on my uncle's zx80. Our first home computer was a dragon 32, but seriously got into gaming when I got a BBC master(race) 128 with a dual sided FD drive. Hundreds of hours of Elite with various other superior software games as well.

First "PC" game would have been civilization on a 486 dx2-66
I'm nearly as old as you are..

I particularly like being called a noob/hacker kiddo in bf1 :D
 
Was natural progression for me, started in something like 1981 with a Commodore Vic20 (with an enormous 3.5k of Ram ! WOO !) , from there went to Spectrum 48k, Spectrum 128k, onto Atari ST, Commodore Amiga and finally to a 386 SX25, then up through the 386s and 486s, early P60 and P90s and then continued progressing to where I am today.
 
for me it was a spectrum and loading games from tapes and had to wait.

had games consoles like the Saga Mega Drive, master system with the one built in game (lol) a PS, PS2 then went on to Xbox (original) and then a game cube.

after this i stopped with consoles as they got left for months without being played.

i had a PC that had windows 95 on, used to reboot on to Dos mode and load games like theme hospital, constructor, carmageddon etc. with a wopping 600mb HDD :D

over the years PC got replaced and then started building my own.

always prefer keyboard and mouse over controllers.

Now i currently have a Wii and Xbox 360 which my son use and i still stick to PC gaming
 
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I'm too young for this thread. Consoles started with the PlayStation, but for PC it was at the launch of XP. Got a desktop PC, got a pack of games like Medal of Honor and haven't stopped PC gaming since.
 
The local computer shop in Loughborough had a 4 way command and conquer lan setup.
What wasn't to love about that in 95, the need to want was overwhelming. Sadly it would take a few more years to get in on the gig, by then it was all about championship manager...

Totally sold the moment I fired Quake 2 online, no turning back.
 
I'm a similar age to you and had very similar early gaming experiences, Wing Commander 2 was the game that made me make the leap to PC gaming. I hate to think what it's cost me over the years in upgrades to play the latest and greatest games.
 
Similar to above with respect to the home computers but specifically Pool of Radiance by SSi on an Amstad 1512 in ~1988 I think was my first PC and game played on a CGA monitor and twin 360K floppy drives!
 
TBH I had a zx81 and it was pants, then a vic 20 and it was also pretty pants....

Then i got a C64 and the rest is countless hrs playing computer games.
 
My first memories are of having an Atari 2600 (the game in my signature might ring a bell for some of you), followed by, I think, a ZX81. Then, quite a bit a later, it was a BBC Micro B+. A PC of my own didn't come about until many years later; PCs were more common place by then and probably having friends that were into gaming themselves helped to rekindle my former interests.

I guess it could even relate as far back as when having seen my brother play through one of the first fighting fantasy gamebooks.
 
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I'm too young to have used anything running pre-Win95, I vaguely remember my dad having a Win3.1 PC but I don't really remember using it. But it was then I was a little older I really got into PC gaming, I got a brand new PC when XP came out, AMD Althlon of some kind with GeForce 2 64mb, I played various games mostly driving games.

I had a PS2 and a PS3 but never used them quite so much. Always preferred PC. And now I'm old enough to be able to afford a proper gaming PC I've started playing a few more things.
 
Runescape back in school - awful family PC (Packard Bell) & 56k internet = over 10 minutes to load the java based game Haha! Shortly followed by Legend of Mir 2 / Diablo 2 and playing CS1.6 and Halflife on a friends decent PC.
 
I'm 44 now, I only played on console when I was young, starting with Atari back in the early 80's. Moved onto SNES then Playstation, and Playstation 2 (by then I was hooked on Gran Turismo and F1 games). It was my father in law who got me properly into PC gaming, starting with Command and Conquer, then my next door neighbour helped me build my first PC, I found online racing (Live for Speed) and I haven't looked back since. I love it, I can completely escape from reality, do something I'd love to do in real life on my PC now in virtual reality...gaming has come a long way in the last 20 years.
 
Had a bed with Mario and duck hunt with gun. But I remember watching my uncle play commander keen, wolfenstein, doom and Duke nukem and hexen
My first pc had a monster game you were a character with a baseball cap and a slingshot. I always remember if you left him idle he would look at you and fire a slingshot and crack your screen. Mental at the time.
Despite going that far back my first online no game I played was halo on pc.
 
Since I was in my teens I played football manager and to this day still play it, also seeing my dad playing GTR and letting me do a few races for him really got me into Sim Racing, If had Playstations and Xbox but I always go back to PC gaming...

I think online gaming on consoles has more immature people playing that can't race properly or when playing football games they end up just scoring own goals because they're losing, where as PC gamers seem more mature which is ideal
 
I'm 38 and my first gaming machine was one of these badboys:

https://www.bing.com/images/search?...uter&simid=607986075718126011&selectedIndex=0

Followed by a Spectrum 128K +2 complete with (utterly useless) light gun.
Then one Xmas I unwrapped a NES and I remember the whole family being blown away by how good the graphics were!
That was followed by SNES and Megadrive (my brother's who turned to the darkside (SEGA)).
Got an unexpected PS1 for Xmas when I was 17 and had another wow gaming moment when I first played Tomb Raider.
Then I had a 15 year gap of no gaming until I picked up my first smartphone - the Samsung Galaxy S2. I started playing the Gameloft titles that replicated HALO and Call of Duty - I can't remember what they were called, I think the HALO clone was called NOVA...
This got me back into gaming so when I was offered a PC through a scheme in work, I ordered the Samsung all in one computer with an Intel i5 CPU and AMD 7950 series graphics card. After learning my new PC was capable of running modern games I bought Far Cry 3 and was hooked straight back in to gaming having being amazed at how immersive games had become. I played quite casually for next 3 years - enjoying my gaming but (perhaps blissfully?) unaware of frame rates and all the enthusiast tech and knowledge that goes along with being a 'proper' PC gamer. That all changed when I decided it was time for an upgrade after my Samsung was struggling to play Rise of The Tomb Raider. I went a bit daft and splashed £2000 to the rig in my signature and have since been sucked into the world of PC gaming enthusiasm. I'm now addicted to buying games - my collection now stands at 250, around 100 of which were purchased this year. Help! I can't stop...
 
i've dipped my toes in the waters over the years, started with missile command and frogger 2 on my dad's work pc (in 1990's cornwall a pc was a rare enough beast! i still have my old gamepad from back then.)

but was mainly a dirty console peasant apart from a breif spell of playing co-op joint ops online with my step dad, good times.

but my real entry to the master race came in 2012, building a rig on a shoestring budget and starting out on modded skyrim, of course i've since replaced everything i had to skimp on (lack of ssd, poor case, psu, gpu, monitor and other peripherals) although sadly i haven't had the time recently to really do most of my library justice (almost everything i like is a 4h+ session job).

its a tricky balance, online pc gaming has a more mature and serious audience, although unfortunately sprinkled with hackers and generally packed to the brim with people who are just plain better than i am, i dont have the time nor patience to devote to getting good enough for it to be enjoyable, so always preferred co-op etc. consoles have less cheating but then there's always the 12 year olds giving it large on chat.

funny how times change, i'm just old enough to remember not having a pc or internet, and now having just 2 smartphones, a tablet, and a mediocre laptop is bad without the rig :(
 
My Dad had a PC to work from home back in the 80s, we had a disk with Sopwith and Digdug on it. I was gutted at the time cos I wanted a NES, at least it got me in to PC gaming though :cool:
 
Some great responses here and good to see a few of us going all the way back to the Speccy. I can see how PC gaming is a turn off when you look at the price of a decent setup and then look at the price of a console but great to see youngsters also jumping to PC gaming.
 
For me I was gaming for long time... but what got me in gaming for thousand of hours was The Elder Scroll Morrowind..... From that point I did have all of the consoles but always come back to pc... Now I'm only PC gamer and dont think it will go to any console ever.
 
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