What or who got you onto PC gaming?

Without going to all the consoles I've owned, it started with a ZX Spectrum +2, then a Commodore 64, then an Amiga 1200.

1st PC I can remember using was my cousins, only game he had was Monkey Island 2, blew my mind that he didn't have to use floppy disks or keep swapping them every minute!
Went round a mates house who had Doom, but it wasn't that much fun, litterally everytime you did something, you would get the loading icon.
Next I remember playing Doom 2 at HMV in Oxford St, don't see many places demoing PC games these days.

The 1 christmas, we finally got a 486 with Windows 3.1, I remember thinking it was the dogs dangly bits because it had a double speed CD-ROM!
I got Doom 1&2 and the original C&C.

Uncle came round for christmas and was addicted to Doom, I helped him shop for his 1st PC after new years.
 
Like most I started with home computers a C16+4, then C64 and finally Amiga 600.

However when it came out that Championship Manager 2 would not launch on the Amiga (I think it did eventually) and was coming out on PC, I convinced (edit demanded) that the family needed a PC :D

Somehow my mum bought into it and we got a 486 with 2MB Ram iirc, maybe 4MB. It was good enough to run Champ, so I was golden.
 
For me, it was counterstrike 1.6

I watched my friend play it a lot, and eventually got a crappy pc so we could play it. Many hours spent playing that game and CS:S
 
My dad got me into gaming, we built my first PC together when i was 12, hooked ever since up until the last 3 years when it has died off and i have other interests now.
 
humanlaptop said:
Like most I started with home computers a C16+4, then C64 and finally Amiga 600.

However when it came out that Championship Manager 2 would not launch on the Amiga (I think it did eventually) and was coming out on PC, I convinced (edit demanded) that the family needed a PC :D

Somehow my mum bought into it and we got a 486 with 2MB Ram iirc, maybe 4MB. It was good enough to run Champ, so I was golden.
Click to expand...
Championship manager was on the Amiga and the 2nd I believe but then went to pc only.
 
Gregster said:
Championship manager was on the Amiga and the 2nd I believe but then went to pc only.
Click to expand...

I know the original was, I had them all. But when Champ 2 came out, it was PC only for a fair while. Im sure it did go to the Amiga, but it was a mess from what I remember. Yeah a google shows it came out in 1997, couple years after the PC.
 
I'm 41, the first memory I have is playing defender on the Atari, my first computer was a Spectrum 48k, then an Amstrad with colour screen, then a Commadore 64 and moved onto an Amiga. A brief spell with a Sega master system and ps1 and then bought my first pc. Bought half life and quickly moved onto Team Fortress/Counterstrike and Quake, been hooked on multiplayer games since. I remember firing tfc up for the first time and couldnt believe I was playing against people from all over the country in the comfort of my own home.
 
Got a new "Time" PC or whatever that manufacturer was for Xmas 1997. Never played any games up to this point. When I booted up Mechwarrior 3 which came bundled with the computer, I instantly fell in love and the rest is history.
 
humanlaptop said:
I know the original was, I had them all. But when Champ 2 came out, it was PC only for a fair while. Im sure it did go to the Amiga, but it was a mess from what I remember. Yeah a google shows it came out in 1997, couple years after the PC.
Click to expand...
Ahhh got ya. I was hooked on the first all that way back.
 
Started out in 84/85 with a VIC 20 (I wanted a Spectrum 48, but my typical no good mid 80's dad would never spend that much! :() Still, I (and my parents in some form :D) learnt to program basic on it. Will always have a soft spot for the ol' Vic.

Went to the CPC 464 in 1988, which I still have in the loft. My mates all had Spectrum's, which while sporting so many more games, always looked a bit naff. I used that thing till about 1993. Lovely machine, but I never understood why they had the volume control right next to the power switch!

A good friend of mine moved up to an Amiga, which introduced me to Civilisation and Geoff Crammonds Grand Prix. This, coupled with regularly reading multi-format magazines like ACE and The Games Machine got me looking enviously at 16 bit machines and their incredibly complex games. The PC in particular seemed to have tons of military games that were right up my nerdy alley. So after hitting 18 and getting some cash, I blew most of it on my first PC, a 386.

The rest is (expensive) history.
 
I was bought a Spectrum+ for school work. as ever it never worked out that way. Manic Miner was THE game for me! Eventually I got an Amiga as quite a few of my "in the know" friends at school had one. In my last year at secondary school, the school library got its hands on a top of the range laser disc playing 486dx66. It also had a dual speed CD ROM drive! Wowsers. And played Doom... From that point on I really wanted a PC, a dream which I achieved when I went to uni and got a grant to get a then top of the range Pentium 133 upgraded to 16Mb of RAM and a 15" monitor. Doom flew. Duke Nukem 3D was amazing. Quake rocked... Civ 2 in 1024x768 was stunning! Those were the days!
 
At the age of 8 (mid-1980s), my step-dad introduced me to the arcades. He showed me a game called Mr Do.

wC2ltZW.png


I then wanted that game so badly on a home computer! Out of inheritance money, I was given a 2nd-hand BBC Micro B+, a Mr Do port called Mr EE (not to be confused with Everything Everywhere lol) plus 34 other arcade ports for Christmas. The BBC Micro was great for arcade ports and Mr Do / EE was almost like-for-like.

nzQF3k9.jpg


The Beeb lasted me into the 90s, with a bit of Sega Megadrive at my mate's house where I was partial to Sonic / Sonic 2, Aladdin and Probotector (Contra Hard Corps if you're American).

UyIjCoR.gif


Then in 1998, I left home for uni and got my first PC in early 1999. My first 2 games were Warcraft 1 and 2. Blizz teased us wargamers on a Warcraft 3 release, but they kept delaying the date, to the point where I thought they missed the boat. So I went from Warcraft 2 to Age of Empires II which I considered to be the spiritual successor.

H9HZxz2.jpg


I never got to play Warcraft 3 in the end, which I think finally came out in 2002. In the early 2000s, I had a mad stint on Final Fantasy 7 and 8... I practially lived inside those games lol. There was no FF9 port for the PC, so I left FF after 7/8. Played the Sims for a bit. Had Sims 2 as well but I never gelled with that for some reason. I would then go on to play Sims 3 / 4 much later and I loved those.

Tt67cZr.jpg


World of Warcraft - played that from 2005 until 2009.

84Dglsy.jpg


After 2009, mostly games from the Steam client e.g. Bejeweled 3, Poker Nights 2, plus the Final Fantasy 7/8 ports, Age of Empires II / III port and I still play the Sims 4 via the Origin client.

TZg3ACO.jpg
 
Fishpan said:
Got a new "Time" PC or whatever that manufacturer was for Xmas 1997. Never played any games up to this point. When I booted up Mechwarrior 3 which came bundled with the computer, I instantly fell in love and the rest is history.
Click to expand...

My first PC was from Time, a 486DX2 66. Doom, Blake Stone and Raptor were part of the games bundle; that was me hooked.
 
As a child we had a C16 and later a C64, then in '92 I had an Amiga 500 which I adored. This was much later upgraded to an A1200 after the Amiga's time had really passed, and I also dabbled with home building a 486DX2 then DX4 from second hand parts that allowed me to play some older classics such as Fleet Defender and Sensible World of Soccer. Both ran superbly on my 1mb VESA local bus video card.

I will always clearly remember the moment that made me a real PC gamer though. Just before Christmas 1998 we'd arranged to meet at a friends house on the way to the pub. As another mate was running a little late, my friend fired up a new game to show me: Half-Life. I knew I had to have that game and a PC capable of playing it immediately, and swiftly blew most of my savings on a terrible Cyrix based machine which could just manage Half-life... at that moment I was forever drawn into the cycle of upgrades that continues to the present day.

Fortunately my wife was bought up by a mother who ran a local computer shop, and is also a PC gamer to this day. Upgrades are very expensive in our house, as it's always two of everything!

As some people have already commented, I feel privileged to have grown up during the time of the 8 and 16bit home computers, the birth of the internet and the rise of Wireplay, Barrysworld etc. The late 90's were truly a golden time in gaming.
 
My parents bought me an Atari VCS woody back in 1981. I remember playing Pitfall, but never completing it. I then I went down the Commodore route, with a Vic 20, Commodore 128 which could play Commodore 64 games with the cassette, then an Amiga 500 and finally an Amiga 1200. I took a few years off before I bought a basic PC from HP, but then realised I wanted better gaming performance and I built my first PC in about 2006.

And my parents still ask me, why at 44, I still play games so much.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom