Pc gaming in the early and late 90's where wil it stand in history

[gepeto]

The early 90's through the early 2000 found a variety of well made pc games. A bevy of strategies, fps and adventures. That era doesn't seem to get much love possibly due to the console era and the fact that they were pc's.

The pc's power at the time was well ahead of console. the recent years seen the consoles catch and at least hold its own against the pc.

Sure doom games get there respect but I personally loved alien vs predator 1 and 2 kingpin ,jedi knights, Baldur,s gate, ice3wind dale. grim fandango. the unforgiven ,total annihilation. redneck rampage, the longest journey,homeworld. star trek elite, bridge commander

Plus a whole lot more. There are so many games out there from that era it would be worth it for someone to buy and old pc cheap and get to playing.

I sometimes wonder where that era will fall. I was looking through my collection man them were some great games and great developers.

I guess do to all the different config. dos ,voodoo,tnt. Them games are gone forever.. What ever happened to the company that was trying to build a pc that would play mostly all games via patches downloaded. Maybe that was 2 ambitious. Any proto mahines out there.

Are these games lost forever due to the fact that they are not produced in mass quantities like consoles? I just sometimes wonder where that era will stand.

[Blackcrow]

They are not lost, just getting harder and harder to run with each new OS. Yet if you look around, say for Ultima VII you will find the Exult engine so you can play, Ultima VIII and VI are going through the samething, as for the other ones I have no problem running them through xp. Though I do know what you are talking about.

Then again you look at the companys that are still going, Nova Logic, they've been around forever. Yet they still support their games on their main site, and if you needed a new copy at least there you could buy a new one. Unlike EA who hasn't done anything with the Ultima games, just let them fall off their site, all but Ultima Online anyways.

Setting up the different configs doesn't really take that long, maybe an hour or two finding what you need and setting them up. Some games say Windows 95, well that's an easy fix most the time.

These computer games might not have as big a following as some of the console games though if you look around you will always find a group/site/forums. Where people will be willing to talk about all the great things the game offered. (I mean people still mod for doom. )

[YoshiM]

Lost as in forgotten? Naw. It's easy to think that way when all people really hear about are the console and hand held games. PC gamers who've been around a while will remember those titles and will reminisce about 'em. In talking about them other gamers that didn't get a chance to play X-Com or Grim Fandango will look around the web to play them-either buy them or (depending on one's moral compass) download them from the many places that have game repositories.

In regards to being "lost" as in "unavailable"-I think a majority of the titles are still able to be found. Perhaps not on the retail shelf but thanks to eBay and a variety of stores these games can still be purchased. Gametap is also becoming a good source to play classic titles like the Ultima games, Space Quest or Planescape:Torment. Again, depending on one's moral compass, you can get games from places like The Under Dogs.

[Flack]

Summing up PC gaming from 1990-2000 is a pretty big gap. In 90/91, I owned a 286/10 (12, with turbo!) During that era you're talking about games like the original Prince of Persia, Out of this World/Another World, Test Drive 2 and 3, and so on. I don't think there's anyone who thought the Commander Keen series (90/91) looked anywhere as good as the Super Nintendo platformers. In the early 90's I had to continually hear from my Amiga-owning friends how much better their systems were for gaming than my lame PC was (they were right).

As computers and computer graphics advanced, so did PC games. By the time games like TIE Fighter were released (95), PC games began advancing past their console counterparts. A big part of that was thanks to PC CD-Roms. Once we got past the "Interactive CD" era, PC games really began taking off.

[cyberfluxor]

I think most know where I stand on this.

Whenever I find a good deal on an old game it's already in my hands. Even if the floppy is dead I'm going to buy it for the box, inserts and all other goodies. I've actually already had a few games I picked up last summer go dead, luckily I backed the disks up! I just love preserving these classics.

[gepeto]

Summing up PC gaming from 1990-2000 is a pretty big gap. In 90/91, I owned a 286/10 (12, with turbo!) During that era you're talking about games like the original Prince of Persia, Out of this World/Another World, Test Drive 2 and 3, and so on. I don't think there's anyone who thought the Commander Keen series (90/91) looked anywhere as good as the Super Nintendo platformers. In the early 90's I had to continually hear from my Amiga-owning friends how much better their systems were for gaming than my lame PC was (they were right).

As computers and computer graphics advanced, so did PC games. By the time games like TIE Fighter were released (95), PC games began advancing past their console counterparts. A big part of that was thanks to PC CD-Roms. Once we got past the "Interactive CD" era, PC games really began taking off.

Good point I am probably talking more mid to late 90's. I rememeber my 486dx66 with 12mb the 1or 2x cd rom was 150.00. At that time I didn't get doom. I remember the amiga era around 1990. I purchased one just to play dragons lair. it was on like 7 floppies it was a great effort. I really enjoyed the amiga. It had some nice software.

Around the mid 90's I drifted away from the consoles and headed towards the pc. It could have been the joy of waiting for the next big thing. The pc gamer demos. Who would win the next video card war. I would have never thought 3dfx would have ended up up like they did. It was an interesting era. I still have the gaming magazines cd rom with the first video clips of the upcoming blockbuster halo before being bought solely for the xbox.

With consoles you can go get the used games or try to find them at the local game store. With pc's games I feel it was more like you had to be there. When I first played the unreal tournament demo. I knew that was going to be awesome. Something about it.

People come over my house and talk games. I start praising the pc games and they are like okay next.

Little do they know. I will pull out my win98 machine in a minute. I have never tried to run the older games on my win 2000 machine. I will have to try fire up some blood ,redneck rampage and janes navel warfare and see what happens.