Were Early PC Games Fun To Play( Back IN) the 1990's Or A Complete Pain?

[killashrub]

Of my top ten favorite games of all time at least two are PC games from the 90's. One is "Damage Incorporated" and the other is "Terminator : Future Shock" absolutely top end shooters that rival any shooters of its time. I still enjoy playing them. If you have never played these two and love shooters, then I suggest getting them both and playing them.

[tripredacus]

IIRC Terminator: Future Shock was a buggy mess. I never got that game to work properly.

[killashrub]

IIRC Terminator: Future Shock was a buggy mess. I never got that game to work properly.

That's weird. As a kid I never had any trouble installing or running this game. However I did encounter a glitch during game play. I went to a location I wasn't supposed to yet and I was unable to progress further or go back. So I had to load a previous game save.

On another note, I recommend anyone who has never played Damage Incorporated to go buy it and play it. No problems at all and is easily a top game for me. It is also considered abandonware now so if you want to try it you can download it online. You can get it to work on windows 7 as well but requires ending the explorer.exe and dwm.exe processes in Task Manager for it to function. Most likely an aspect ratio or resolution problem with the game on todays PC's.

[bikingjahuty]

IIRC Terminator: Future Shock was a buggy mess. I never got that game to work properly.

This game was the object of my desire in the mid-90s, but by the time I got a PC I could not find it anywhere

[dharmajones93]

Of my top ten favorite games of all time at least two are PC games from the 90's. One is "Damage Incorporated" and the other is "Terminator : Future Shock" absolutely top end shooters that rival any shooters of its time.

Oh this took me back! This, X-Wing, Duke Nuke'm and Shadow Warrior were my adolescent playhouses! I was young, but old enough to get these up and running on a DOS machine. I had to play them at my grand father's house. He had disabling back issues and the computer was his way of escaping.

They were a mess, but fun. I definitely transitioned to the 64 when it came out, but Diablo II and Starcraft were always my true loves. What was worse than getting them to run was trying to play online on your 56k dial-up, and your mom would interrupt the line to do god knows what and interrupt your Hell Diablo run...

[tripredacus]

I remember not being able to play or figure out how to play multiplayer games in the dial-up days. But still I would download multiplayer maps for Doom or Duke Nukem 3D and explore them. I remember some pretty amazing Duke Nukem 3D maps. One was of a Star Trek ship, another was some castle.

[brazbit]

They weren't a pain at all (nor were they "early" PC games by the 90s, early 3D maybe) They were excuses to get the latest Rage 3D card or Sound Blaster. I loved figuring out new ways to get the most out of the hardware. DIP switches to individually set IRQ & DMA values, then feeding that information into each game. Running multiple config.sys and autoexec.bat configurations based on which programs and features I would want for that session. High Memory, Expanded Memory, RAM drives, TSRs and all that jazz. Being a PC gamer during that era lead to a career due to having to know virtually every aspect of each and every component in your machine and what worked and didn't work with what and why. No complaints here, it was the most fun, hands on, job skills training I could imagine.

[undertakerprime]

I found PC games in the late 80's-early 90's to be more annoying. I didn't mind dealing with a DOS interface, but having to enter your sound card settings and installing from multiple floppies was time consuming and irritating, if you could get the game to work at all.

When I went to college in '94, my parents bought me a state-of-the-art computer with a new-fangled device called a CD-ROM drive, and it came with The 7th Guest. I used that computer more for gaming than for schoolwork, playing Doom I & II, Duke Nukem, Myst, Command & Conquer...
By that point, installation was pretty much automatic and I don't recall having any issues.

[oldgamerz]

They weren't a pain at all (nor were they "early" PC games by the 90s, early 3D maybe) They were excuses to get the latest Rage 3D card or Sound Blaster. I loved figuring out new ways to get the most out of the hardware. DIP switches to individually set IRQ & DMA values, then feeding that information into each game. Running multiple config.sys and autoexec.bat configurations based on which programs and features I would want for that session. High Memory, Expanded Memory, RAM drives, TSRs and all that jazz. Being a PC gamer during that era lead to a career due to having to know virtually every aspect of each and every component in your machine and what worked and didn't work with what and why. No complaints here, it was the most fun, hands on, job skills training I could imagine.

I'm impressed if what you said is you. There are probably over a multiple billion different ways, or possible. how to operate any computer by now.  there is even a way to make entire song, or music with code. and even movies too.

[oldgamerz]

I thought I bump this topic since, recent posts in the community have been about getting an old PC up and running. I think this topic has something worth looking over but that's just me.

[scraph4ppy]

Had a ton of fun playing stuff like SimAnt, SimCity 2000, Lords of the Realm 1 and 2, edutainment stuff like Mischief Makers/Super Sleuths, the Trail games, a couple freeware games, etc. Not exactly graphics powerhouses and we had a Mac back in the day and thus couldn't play a lot of the stuff (and were perhaps a bit too young) but at least they were easy to install. That said, I think I came in right at the start of "modern" computer gaming, where you wouldn't have to figure out how to boot stuff up on DOS.

[dashv]

I used to spend my days optmized config.sys and autoexec.bat to have enough high memory to load certain games. I was making a living out of doing this.

#MeToo

I remember doing weekly disk defrags, running memmaker, tweaking the bios, whatever it took.

And the internet was in its infancy back then so you could search for stuff on Altavista but for the most part if you didn’t know what you were looking for already, forget about it.

I’d tweak a single bios setting at a time run Duke 3D or Doom with a stop watch. Make notes. Next setting.

I had a Cyrix 486 DX2 66mhz with 8mb of ram, a vesa local bus video card, and a Logitech soundman wave soundcard.

My friend had a 133hmz cyrix with a pci video card and 16mb of ram but I still smoked the hell out of him in Duke 3D over 28.8k landline.

He was so excited when he got his new computer but his excitement turned to frustration when I was still crushing him with my old cobbled together pc. We literally got it as part of one of those Sally Struthers “learn a carreer in your spare time” tv commercials.

Later I upgraded the motherboard and cpu to a dx4/100mhz and 16mb or ram and I was absolutely unstoppable. Until quake came out.

That game demanded an authentic Penguin with MMX or it would just crawl.

Anyway. Back to the original question. DOS games were a pain but I personally enjoyed figuring out how to get them to run more than actually playing the game sometimes.

This led to me fixing other folks computers, going to college for programming, building websites, and now full blown global data centers.

80’s console gaming got me into 90’s PC gaming which got me into what I do professionally.

Religion aside for the moment, I kinda owe everything I am and have to video games.

Being a PC gamer during that era lead to a career due to having to know virtually every aspect of each and every component in your machine and what worked and didn't work with what and why. No complaints here, it was the most fun, hands on, job skills training I could imagine.

We have this in common.

I miss Happy Puppy games. Anyone here remember Happy Puppy?

It was kinda the Steam of the 90’s for Shareware.

[scoobs22]

I had no issue with PC games back in the day, even on a basic computer. I wish I could play Dark Earth again. I have so much nostalgia for it, but I would have no idea how to play it these days.

Well this should get you going: https://archive.org/download/Dark_Earth_1997_MicroProse