Memory Lane - Which were your first games on the PC?

[Tigranes]

As a pretty poor kid, my first games weren't particularly chronological. At one point - I think I was about 10 - I would go over to a family friend's house, where I would hang out with the older kid playing these two games for about 12 hours straight:

The beauty of ROTK2 was that everything could be done on the numpad at blinding speed. We would just take turns commanding our countries, and read through an epic 10-volume version of the Romance while waiting.

 

[Decado]

The graphics from those late 80s/early 90s Sierra games are the comfiest of all time. If I could be reborn inside of a computer game, I'd live here.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

As mentioned earlier in this topic, the first game I played on PC was Mystic Towers (downloaded the shareware version from a local BBS... I did not have warez access), but the first game I bought for PC was Police Quest 3. It was on the discount table at my local downtown mall so I only payed like $3 for it new in a sealed box. I thought it was great and completed it (probably the first game I did in fact complete on PC). By that time Sierra had switched over to colorful VGA graphics and it was a definite eye opener compared to the EGA-equivalent of Police Quest 1 on the Amiga which I had played earlier but never completed because I got stumped. PQ3 was the first time I saw digitized graphics in a PC game and I had to smile when I saw one of the game's producers Roberta Williams on the hospital bed at the end miraculously recovering because I had cracked the case.

 

[GhostCow]

My first two PC Games were Raptor and Leisure Suit Larry 3. I think I was in middle school when I was playing LSL. My grandma just gave me a huge stack of disks full of pirated games that some guy at work had given her. She never did figure out why I was asking her random questions like what was Gerold Ford known for? Or who died in love story? She even got me a .txt copy of the anti-piracy questions from the same guy when I hit that part later in the game. She must have had no idea what was going on and I bet that guy was laughing his ass off.

 

[luj1]

I remember the very first time we installed Windows in the home PC. I looked through all the directories and thought it's so messy, there's a couple of folders that have about 8000 files in there. That's going to be such a pain in the ass when I have to dir /w /p. So I divided them into "Windows1" and "Windows2" until I had a dozen manageable folders.

Once we got the computer able to boot again, I think that's when I found The Greatest Game

My stepmom had that on her office PC. I remember as kids we had to tag along with our parents when they had night emergency calls (they owned a pet clinic) and this was one of the games we would play.

I dunno why, but that reminds me of Bow and Arrow I used to play on Win 3.1

 

[Shadowfang]

Prince of Persia.

 

[anvi]

Did you complete Prince of Persia? I loved that game. I liked the second one too.

 

[Shadowfang]

Did you complete Prince of Persia? I loved that game. I liked the second one too.

Never.
I played it at a friend's of my father and I was probably 6 to 8 years old.

 

[luj1]

As a pretty poor kid, my first games weren't particularly chronological. At one point - I think I was about 10 - I would go over to a family friend's house, where I would hang out with the older kid playing these two games for about 12 hours straight:

The beauty of ROTK2 was that everything could be done on the numpad at blinding speed. We would just take turns commanding our countries, and read through an epic 10-volume version of the Romance while waiting.

I loved Scorched Earth

 

[Glop_dweller]

Command HQ

https://www.mobygames.com/game/command-hq
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_HQ
https://store.steampowered.com/app/329630/Command_HQ/

 

[Nifft Batuff]

DOS 4.0

 

[cvv]

Prince of Persia.

#MeeToo.

That day when mom announced she got "a real computer" in the office and there's a "beautiful game" installed. By a real computer she meant a PC you see, as opposed to my lulzy wooden Atari 2600, and by a beautiful game she meant Prince of Persia, as opposed to my favourite game of all times up until then - Adventure.

Next day I visited her after working hours and my jaw literally dropped, seeing them sick PoP production values. I thought "how can anyone ever top that kind of animation, it's almost real".

And sure enough, nobody ever did.

 

[MurkyShadow]

 

[Erikkolai]

 

[Child of Malkav]

Thief The Dark Project
Age of Empires 2
Jazz Jackrabbit
Heretic
Splinter Cell 1
Hitman 2 Silent Assassin
Age of Mythology

 

[A horse of course]

I think the first game I played on PC was Myth: The Fallen Lords.

Playing an RTS with these graphics was a huge leap coming from the Acorn and Amiga CD-32 when these were the kind of visuals I was used to:

 

[Ovplain]

Had a 120 MHz 486, 8 MB of RAM, 853 MB hard drive.

First games I played on a computer were probably solitaire and minesweeper. And 'Bow and Arrow.' And a couple hours later I found 'Ski or Die.' And 'Gods,' for some reason that was on that computer too. I'm assuming whoever set that computer up for 8-year old me just threw a FEW random games on it real quick. Can't remember if there was anything else. At least not right then, right away. My parents didn't really 'get' games. Got a NES for Christmas a year or two earlier, had the one game it came with and then that was it. For example. With the computer I eventually got a 'Megapak 6' bundle thing which had a couple fun games. And the only other thing they ever bought me was 'Dune.' Which I didn't really dig. I had seen 'Dune 2' by then, I wanted that. 'Dune' was not 'Dune 2.' What a nightmare, I was so excited to get it!

Anyway, yeah. Some of my first games. One early memory is also getting a pirated copy of WarCraft 1 on four floppies. Mortal Kombat 3 on 13 or 14 floppies! And of course one of them didn't work. Plus that stupid 'ARJ,' could never really remember how the command went.

Oh, man, I really, really wanted to play Duke Nukem 3D and a pal of mine finally managed to hook me up with a pirated copy on a CD. And then my stupid CD-Rom was too slow to play that particular CD, it could not read at the speed it was burned at. Or something. Couldn't install the damn game.

Saw my first computer magazine sometime in 1995. Saw there was a CD and it said 'WarCraft 2' on it. SCORE! Hassled my dad into buying it. Then the stupid game ended after 3 missions. It was obviously a demo. 9-year old me had no clue what a 'demo' was. Was rough.

Man, that f'ing 486 computer. Remember my dad bought more RAM for it, went from 8 MB to 32 MB, all of a sudden 'Blood' wasn't crashing anymore! I was thrilled.

And also distinctly remember eventually going to a 233 MHz MMX Pentium. My 'Moto Racer' laptimes decreased by like 20 seconds!

 

[RolePlayer]

Rollercoaster Tycoon
Starcraft Broodwar
The Sims

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

This.



Twas the first PC game I actually owned and played on my own PC. If we're talking the first game I ever played I guess it was Quake 2 on my cousin's.

Spoiler

I was a consoletard before that, please forgive me

 

[jebsmoker]

i had some pc gamer demo disc that had the full gdi campaign from tiberian dawn. i played that quite a bit. i also remember watching my dad play half life 1 (along with mods they like hunger) and being completely amazed by what i saw, so it's no surprise i would play that

 

[anvi]

Who had the Wolf3d floppy demo? Everyone I knew with a PC was playing that.

 

[anvi]

Had a 120 MHz 486

 

[octavius]

Ultima Underworld on my brother's 386. The game that forever made me gave up on my Amiga.
I can't remember the first one on my own first PC, only that I surfed the internet for porn all the first day and all night until I had to go to work. The net had a finite size back then, 'cause I remember that at some point the same bitches came popping up again and I had gone full circle around the whole free porno net.

Doom and Heroes of Might&Magic were among the first games at least. Used to play Doom co-op on my gaming buddy's 486 before that.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

The very very first time I ever laid fingers down on an IBM-compatible keyboard to play a PC game was at Worcester State College in Worcester Massachusetts almost exactly 30 years ago to the month. There was a mutant named John who was head student of the computer room there. I say this because he was a total computer savant who looked like something right out of an Olaf Stapledon science fiction novel except he had glasses, really bad acne and wore a blue dungaree jacket every day to class that I doubt he ever put in the laundry since he bought it. Anyway, he had the VGA (EGA?) version of Blockout installed on his computer and I started clumsily playing it. I think I lost within seconds then Odd John took over with his Six Fingered hands (I'm sure) and at warp speed played the game perfectly as I stared in stupification. I asked him how much the game cost. He said $40. "Fuck" I replied. "Don't think I ever payed more than $5 for a game."

 

[c2007]

Had a 120 MHz 486, 8 MB of RAM, 853 MB hard drive.

That sounds like a beast.

In my days of yore, that was world class rig. Step up to 128kb ram with a 300baud modem and a 10MB external HD... now you are ready to hack MCI with an autodialer, and call Chinese people and yell at them. Also, download the warez.... only 6 hours to download Richard Garriot's Autoduel!!!1!