Did you know, that games like the first Doom for example costed around 1/3-1/2 of a salary in the Czech Republic back in the day? The funny thing is, the actual amount of money was the same as today - 60 dollars for an AAA game. And yes, our salaries back in 1993, shortly after the fall of the communism, were around 4-6000 CZK. That amounted to 133-188 USD.
So it was either trying to carry grog in mugs without them melting in the virtual space and not eating in the real world, or having a PC just for the display. Of course people chose neither. Everybody pirated everything and anything :D I don't remember a single person with an original game.
Not so funny a fact #2 - my first PC had 20Mhz 1MB RAM 40MB HDD. It was the year 1992 and the PC costed nearly 6x a normal salary.
Bro, it is certainly possible that games used to cost that much back in the day, but I would be genuinely surprised if anyone actually bothered buying "original" (originálky, jak jsme říkali za starých dobrých časů) games back when Doom came out. Pirate copies were openly advertised in newspapers (Anonce atp.) in the 90s, back when you could fit multiple games on a single CD they were selling for a few crowns, a bit later the prices were like 20 CZK per CD (ie I paid 40 CZK for Tiberian Sun that came on 2 CDs and 20 CZK for Myth II, which was on just one). In about mid to late 90s, authorities actually started to notice piracy as a bit of an issue and I remember that a guy my father used to mail order the games from actually got arrested (not sure what the sentence was, probably just a probation). After that there was a brief moment when internet became a thing, but torrents weren’t widely used yet, so people would post adds for pirated games online and send CDs by mail, prices were still more or less the same. The only time I was ever interrogated by the police was when this dude (used to run a web called something like secretgarden.cz) got busted and the cops found my address in his records or something. The cop could not spell "Knights of the Old Republic" so I ended up typing most of the protocol on a shitty old typewriter for him (that was in 2003 or thereabouts). After that it was just torrents all the way.
It was my impression that for about a decade and a half, most people only got original/none-pirated games from the gaming magazines.
Hrozne rád bych zkompletoval Andrew/Ice/Mrkvoun/Papík éru score. Ale asi už je nikdy neseženu.
Jó, to bejvávaly časy - já si tedy předplácel Excalibur, Score jsem kupoval spíš jen když měli nějakou dobrou plnou verzi na CD. Všech těch starejch časáků mám furt doma hromadu ve skříni.
Jinak z český produkce jsme měl hodně rád Operation Flashpoint, Vietcong, Original War, Paranoia (to byla stará CZ kopie Duny II) i ta Mafia byla docela fajn. Když jsem byl hodně malej, tak jsem taky dost hrál český adventury (Agent Mlíčňák, Tajemství oslího ostrova, Ve stínu havrana atp.). Jinak KCD je taky fajn.
Is there a Czech (voiced) version of Oblivion? If yes, could someone make an LP?
Doubt it. There was a phenomenal (unofficial) Czech voiceover for Doom though (Imps called you a fagot while doing melee attacks and such), but I couldn’t find any videos of it online.