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portalhavoc
September 19th, 2015, 08:43 PM
I have been playing games on the PC since late 2003 (When I was 3 years old. I'm 15 now.) on a custom built PC. (I remembered it having a Dell CRT monitor, a Logitech keyboard and a Microsoft optical mouse.

And it ran on Windows XP Professional as it was the standard for the time period.)

And the games I would mostly play were educational games by School Zone Interactive and Disney Interactive.

And then I later discovered a service called RealArcade that came bundled with RealPlayer. (If you remember that?)

And the games I remember playing on there were:

QBz by Skunk Studios
Ricochet Xtreme (AKA Rebound on RealArcade) by Reflexive Entertainment
SpongeBob's Obstacle Odyssey by (I forget the developer) :(
and
AstroPop Deluxe by PopCap Games

I used to play these games A LOT.

And we'll fast forward 10 years later to 2013 when I got a Steam account to play Portal and Portal 2.

Nowadays I play games like:
Borderlands 2
Quake II (A classic)
Civilization: Beyond Earth

And I still play Portal 2 occasionally. ;)

RichardET
September 19th, 2015, 10:16 PM
I never play actual games other than
maybe chess; what OS do you use?

portalhavoc
September 19th, 2015, 10:23 PM
I never play actual games other than
maybe chess; what OS do you use?
I use Windows 7 Professional and Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS.

mystics
September 19th, 2015, 11:20 PM
I've been PC gaming since I was like three years old, so the early 90s. Granted, I've been more of a console gamer, since that is a much cheaper option. I did get really into some heavy PC gaming between 2008-2011 when I got a really good computer, but the fact that it was outdated by 2011 (Battlefield 3 only ran at 15 FPS) highlighted the problem I have with making PC gaming my primary way of gaming.

Still, as long as FPS and strategy games exist, I'm sure PC gaming will remain an interest of mine. Even shooter games that offer more than just mowing down countless enemies (e.g. Portal, BioShock, Fallout) are still more fun to me on PC. PC has also traditionally been the only place to get mods on Bethesda games, but that may be changing soon, but I don't see them going back to add console mod support on Skyrim.

yetimon_64
September 20th, 2015, 06:58 PM
Since the old DOS/Win3.1 days I suppose for PC gaming, around '93 or '94.

Prior to that my "gaming" was on the old atari consoles and the old Commodore64 computers; from the very early 1980's up to my first DOS/win3.1 machine in '93/'94.

Nixarter
September 20th, 2015, 09:44 PM
I remember Doom, the Wing Commander Series, Myst, and others in the early 90's, but there were others before that. I remember putting in hours and hours on the Oregon Trail in our computer lab on Apple II's. That was probably the late 80's, but I don't remember exactly. There were other games, but that is the only one I really played more than once or twice. The period from 96-98 is still probably my favorite of all, though. :)

For gaming in general, I started with my NES in the mid- 80's.

Today I'm getting Linux to work with Steam. Hopefully I can ditch Widnows altogether :p

Just the other day Steam passed the 1500 game mark for Linux. Windows is still way ahead at 6500 or so, but the gap is closing fast. The Witcher, Metro, Bioshock, Ark, lots and lots of major titles are now on Nix. I challenge you to all join the party!

mastablasta
September 21st, 2015, 01:05 PM
in 83 or so I visited my mother in the office. she had pong :) on the work PC. at about that time Spectrum+ came to my home. then in about 86 I came into contact with Hercules graphics - wow! it was amazing spent a couple of afternoons playing at my cousin. but my own first DOS pc was in 94 I believe. I still have the Spectrum and the PC. they both work. though the PC has some slight capacitors issue. I upgraded it with win95 and was using it until about 2004 when I bought the one I have now. it was working fine for all the school stuff I had to do at the time. the current one with some upgrades can run the older games quite nicely. even some newer ones. but it does show it's age. taking 10 minutes to boot and load all that antivirus stuff... :D oh yeah still on XP - I haven't found a good replacement yet. Linux won't run the games. also drivers are not as good as on windows.

Old_Grey_Wolf
September 22nd, 2015, 09:30 PM
I don't play Personal Computer (PC) games anymore. I first played PC games in 1980 on a TRS-80 Color Computer. It had a 6809 8-bit processor, 32 KB of RAM, and ran at under 1 MHz clock rate. It didn't run Microsoft, Mac, or a Linux OS. Instead, it had a BISIC language interpreter stored in ROM. Of course the games were for my children. :-\"

Here is a 2 minute youtube vedio of some TRS-80 CoCo games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2QlXXU0waw

Welly Wu
September 23rd, 2015, 12:13 AM
I must be of similar age as Nixater. I remember his PC games well. Today, SteamOS + GNU/Linux is a rising star that is growing up quickly. I see a lot of good PC games available each passing week. I keep buying more of them each month when my rather large personal budget permits. I don't play a lot of SteamOS + GNU/Linux PC games yet, but I do like to collect them and it is a rather expensive hobby to do so, but I can well afford it. I guess that I started PC gaming in 2012 when the Humble Indie Bundle had their Linux games on sale. That was when I had a 2012 System76 Lemur and those indie Linux games ran like a champ. Today, I have a much more modern and powerful ZaReason Zeto desktop PC and I can play almost all of the latest SteamOS + GNU/Linux PC games. I have 655.00 PC games in total and 354.00 are available for SteamOS + GNU/Linux. I plan to buy quite a bit more, but I got pretty much almost everything that I want by now. These extra SteamOS + GNU/Linux PC games are just extra gravy for me.

Copper Bezel
September 23rd, 2015, 11:04 AM
also [Linux] drivers are not as good as on windows.
As good as on Windows XP? Seriously? Where you have to manually install a driver for every peripheral you own, and sometimes need to do it again when you plug it into a different USB port?
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17749392/Reactions/ponymotes/e08.png

Frogs Hair
September 25th, 2015, 02:29 AM
1999 , on my first computer (Gateway Essential 400c) running Win 98. :o

My first two games.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Z-Q5KVTyI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ebdhvezZVA

Kpenguin
September 26th, 2015, 02:13 AM
I started PC gaming when I was about three or four. We had a Dell Dimension 2300 with a Intel Celeron 1.5ghz processor, 500mb of memory and running Windows XP Home. We upgraded a two years later to a computer with a 2.5ghz processor and 4gb of memory with Windows Vista. I remember playing construction and racing games mainly. When I was about six, my Dad bought all the Need For Speed games up to Hot Pursuit 2. I quit PC gaming for quite a while when I was eight, then picked back up again last year. I play SuperTuxKart, Minetest (though I really want to buy Minecraft), and a bunch of random Windows Store games.

Mike_Walsh
September 27th, 2015, 12:53 AM
...I keep buying more of them each month when my rather large personal budget permits...

...but I do like to collect them and it is a rather expensive hobby to do so, but I can well afford it...

...that was when I had a 2012 System76 Lemur...

...today, I have a much more modern and powerful ZaReason Zeto desktop PC...

...these extra SteamOS + GNU/Linux PC games are just extra gravy for me...

...and there are those of us making do with relatives 'hand-me-downs'... :rolleyes:;)

Can't see the point of 'gaming'. A good way of wasting rather sizeable chunks of your life....! It's not even as if you actually have anything concrete to show for your efforts at the end of it.

Ah, well. Each to their own.


Regards,

Mike.

Welly Wu
September 27th, 2015, 01:20 AM
Don't forget the Steam achievements! PC gaming is for fun. It can be lucrative to become a semi-pro and eventually get sponsored to join an international team for a specific PC game title. eSports is becoming a booming industry worldwide and even ESPN covered a specific tournament not too long ago. These are not my goals or desires at all though. More colleges and universities are creating PC game degrees and they are creating their own teams by offering full scholarships or paid stipends for competitive PC gamers of all ages worldwide.

I'd say that last year was when I really started to get into PC gaming more frequently. The number and quality of games available are astonishing and the frenetic pace with which leagues and teams are creating communities is nothing to be taken lightly. PC gaming is driving sales in the PC industry for hardware and software combined. It is the only niche sector within the PC industry that is experiencing rapid growth and more revenues and profits are generated which attracts the attention of more PC OEMs and ODMs along with ISVs to cater to the market demands of enthusiasts and world class champions alike. Were it not for the rapid rise of PC gaming, the PC industry would be in a recession by now.

mikodo
September 27th, 2015, 05:12 AM
Can't see the point of 'gaming'. A good way of wasting rather sizable chunks of your life....! It's not even as if you actually have anything concrete to show for your efforts at the end of it.
So, what is waste?

My grandfather, who was a WWI RAF pilot, and had a rather unusual Master's Degree by 1922, liked to walk for hours at a time down the rail road tracks. He did this regularly. He was a very accomplished person and worked in that vein full-time until he was 75 years old. My grandmother hated his passion for walking down the railroad tracks and was often heard by others and myself, complaining about it. She would have preferred he had spent his free-time doing what she thought was appropriate. She, who had live-in maids, paid for by the money, my grandfather made.

My brother has multiple physical handicaps and is not able to provide a living for himself and is in receipt of a disability pension. He too, likes to walk for hours every day in the country-side, with his large German Sheppard.

Are these long walks a waste? I don't think so. My grandfather probably needed to clear his mind, from heavy responsibilities. My brother I know, likes to stay active, even though he is handicapped. I am sure his staying active like this is paying him physical benefits, contrasted to succumbing to his disabilities and not being this active.

I'm getting older and will soon be past the age when I can work. Then, I will be in receipt of different old-age pensions.

I wonder how I should waste my time in retirement so, I am not criticized by others for not doing activities that provides for something concrete. Or, I if I should just not bother listening to the others, as my grandfather did with my grandmother?

Hmm ... I think I will go for long walks.

Afnan
September 27th, 2015, 07:31 AM
I have been PC gaming since I was a little kid, it was back in 1999 that I think I started pc gaming, I used to play Tomb Raider. Nowadays I mostly play on PS4 and not much on PC.

QIII
September 27th, 2015, 08:19 AM
We used to play a really rudimentary "role playing" game in '77 or '78 on a terminal connected by an acoustic coupling (that was before ATT allowed people to connect directly) to a mainframe.

"You are walking down a corridor and come to a "T". Type "L" to turn left, "R" to turn right."

Good fun.

syntaxerror74
September 27th, 2015, 10:15 AM
In the 'Orwell year', in 1984.
Well you wanted to know about PC, so personal computer gaming, hence I should not bore you with my home computer days.
It was actually my dad's PC, an IBM XT with two 360KB drives, and an orange O/I power switch in a size that you'd rather find in high-current systems today ;)
As a small kid, I played the IBM version of Frogger, then Michael Abrash's BIG TOP (loved this to bits), Conquest, Buck Rogers (TEN times harder than the C64 version!!), Decathlon (surprisingly the keyboard DID survive it), Digger, STYX (by Windmill Software, with a peculiar in-game sound that resembled a wasp trapped inside :D)

And many more. Cool times.


1C00 DC.W YEAR, $07CE
1C02 JMP YEAR


Yeah, let's move on to 1998...
I am incredibly glad that I could witness these great PC gaming times with Quake (I + II + III) and Half-Life (I + II) when they were brand-new. These times will NEVER return, because a lot of the software gaming engines used in the 2010s are simply derivatives of old work, just embellished quite a bit.
Not to mention the countless additional packs that followed meant to surf on the wave of success as long as possible (e. g. HL Opposing Force et. al.)

Wadim_Korneev
October 10th, 2015, 12:20 PM
Started gaming on my PC when I was 5 with WC2, I've been playing PC games since. I would say I've been an avid PC gamer (Gamer in general) since that time, but only in the past 4-5 years have I begun to refer to it as my hobby.

forrestcupp
October 10th, 2015, 01:35 PM
If Commodore 64 counts, then probably around 1986 when I was in 9th grade. My broke self finally was able to get an x86-based system in 1995. It was a 75MHz Pentium Packard Bell. It came with Windows 3.11 with a free upgrade to Win95 when it released. I was on top of the world. Some of my favorite games in those days were Myst and King's Quest VI.

My son and I just built a gaming PC earlier this year. Before that, I had been using only laptops for a long time.

kostkon
October 10th, 2015, 06:38 PM
Early 90s, I guess. My age? Well, a preteener (back then.)

We are talking about PCs, not micros, right?

poorguy
October 25th, 2015, 04:57 PM
i started out doing flight simulator 2002 so thats when i started.
windows xp had just been out for a little while and i remember everyone raising hell about what a big POS it was. imagine that!
anyway i had built a pretty good game tower for the day and of course for flight simulator 2002 you didn't need much hardware.
then flight simulator 2004 came out and man it was awesome as it had more planes and far better scenery then flight simulator 2002 but both were excellent.
well finally flight simulator x came out and it was even better than any other previous versions however the hardware demands made it to where i had to build a bad ass game tower which i still use today.
i am thinking of getting x-plane flight simulator as it will run on linux and that would be super.

the poorguy

Shazaam
October 25th, 2015, 07:15 PM
I don't play Personal Computer (PC) games anymore. I first played PC games in 1980 on a TRS-80 Color Computer. It had a 6809 8-bit processor, 32 KB of RAM, and ran at under 1 MHz clock rate. It didn't run Microsoft, Mac, or a Linux OS. Instead, it had a BISIC language interpreter stored in ROM. Of course the games were for my children. :-\"

Here is a 2 minute youtube vedio of some TRS-80 CoCo games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2QlXXU0waw
Same here. Bought the CoCo for my son-in-law who never touched it.

Metalpen1984
October 28th, 2015, 03:42 PM
I remember Doom, the Wing Commander Series, Myst, and others in the early 90's, but there were others before that. I remember putting in hours and hours on the Oregon Trail in our computer lab on Apple II's. That was probably the late 80's, but I don't remember exactly. There were other games, but that is the only one I really played more than once or twice. The period from 96-98 is still probably my favorite of all, though. :)


Same, I started by playing Doom and Wing Commander 2. Awesome games. I am already 31 and now plays World of Warship randomly. Yes, as a father and husband you don't get time for gaming. When my kids get old I am going to play video games with them. Hopefully there are still good games there.

Arbiter
October 28th, 2015, 10:28 PM
I started PC gaming back in, oh 1988 or 1989 on my old IBM PC XT. The first games I ever bought were the original SimCity and (a couple years later) Wolfenstein 3D. Installed it from a 5.25" floppy disk (couldn't use the low-density 720k 3.5" that came in the box as I had no 3.5" drive at the time). Wore out several 9-pin serial mice playing that game :)

wewantutopia
October 28th, 2015, 10:40 PM
1987 playing "Test Drive" on a Compaq Portable. My mom worked at a place that rented computers to business and was able to bring one home. It was great!!

pauljw
October 29th, 2015, 03:04 PM
1984 8-bit Atari - Rescue on Fractalus

Doug S
October 29th, 2015, 04:16 PM
Approximately 1977 on a SOL terminal computer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor_Technology). The game programs were on cassette tapes. In addition to chess and a star trek game, there was one called "target" (I think), with ships and freighters that traversed the screen while the player attempted to target and shoot them. The very cool thing was how engine sound effects were generated. EMI was generated by specifically coded loops, and by placing am AM radio directly on the computer, and tuning in the interference it just so, the ships had various engine noises. A lower "tug tug tug" sound for a freighter, and a higher faster type sound for a smaller ship.

Edit: ~1975: There was also a lunar lander game we used to play on the teletype machine that was connected to some computer in the physics building at University (not a PC). It was written in basic. The player had to land the lunar module on the moon before running out of fuel.

matt_smith2
October 30th, 2015, 11:31 PM
The first game I remember playing a lot was Harrier Attack on the Amstrad CPC6128 my Dad had. After that in the early 90's one an IBM 286 Micropose F15 Strike Eagle and Rowan's Battle of Britain. In about 94 or 95 I got my first PC a Vale 486 DX2 66, on this machine I remember spending £108 for 4Mb of RAM, also adding a ODD and SoundBlaster. It al went down hill from there, over the years spending £1000's on computers to run the latest greatest games and flight sims of the time. Had a X-Box at some stage in my life, rarely used it, becoming an expensive doorstop which I ended up giving it to my neighbour.

Sableyes
October 31st, 2015, 11:43 AM
1997. Muds and Ultima Online on the most dire PC from Tempos (any Brits remember them? :) ) on the most appalling BT dial up connection. Online gaming was hard in those days.... :)

ChriSASIN
November 6th, 2015, 05:11 PM
Never, always been with Sony Mwahaha ... who am i kidding, i see my loss ...

Sableyes
November 6th, 2015, 09:46 PM
Used Wine for years which isnt really Linux gaming, but passed though lods of Linux MMOs in 2006 - 2008. Had a website about them for a while too.

Wadim_Korneev
November 11th, 2015, 11:33 AM
I remember playing Atari, the handheld games like Merlin/Simon/and Football... and of course the stand-up Arcade games.