Does anyone miss the days of simple PC gaming?

I

illuminate

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 24, 2007
Messages
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Like the title says, does anything miss the days of picking up $10 PC games at wallmart, and playing them on your stock PC that you bought? no upgrades, no worrying about FPS or temperatures. You could play it on your Pentium 2, 3, or even 4 for us younger people.
I know that not everyone had this, but for me, i was playing medal of honor allied assault, and need for speed hot pursuit 2 just 2 years ago, on a stock HP system. Now, we try to get the best games, best hardware, trying to max our system. Now i try to get the most out of my 7600gt OC'd... trying to play need for speed carbon on high, or CoD4 on medium...

anyone else miss those days of simple gaming?
 
When the hell was it ever simpler than now? Lets go back to before your Pentiums period. Remember trying to figure out if you had a VESA Video card back when 7th Guest came out? How about needing a boot floppy with different himem settings FOR EVERY FRICKIN GAME. Config settings in menus? HEll nah, ALL in the .ini's, and not just for tweaking like today. Windows gaming = simple.

I'm not even in my 30's yet and I already sound like a geezer......
 
pigwalk said:
When the hell was it ever simpler than now? Lets go back to before your Pentiums period. Remember trying to figure out if you had a VESA Video card back when 7th Guest came out? How about needing a boot floppy with different himem settings FOR EVERY FRICKIN GAME. Config settings in menus? HEll nah, ALL in the .ini's, and not just for tweaking like today. Windows gaming = simple.

I'm not even in my 30's yet and I already sound like a geezer......
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yep, i totally agree. the bit about feeling like an old geezer already and remembering that far back...
 
notice i said us younger people... i know how hard it was to game back when.
 
Hmm at least we don't have to use radios to copy our games like we did in Atari/C64 times :)
 
illuminate said:
notice i said us younger people... i know how hard it was to game back when.
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? i'm in my mid 20's and still remember the old 386 days and how hard it was to install a game. let's not forget the quake2 periods when modding communities were starting to pop-up and all you wanted to do was play a simple mp game but every server was going to take you like 3 hours to join (stupid dial-up). or maybe today is really easy seeing how you can download a patch in 10 seconds and maybe visit tweakguides.com for a little guidance and then you're immediately playing.... now that I think about it, OP wtf are you talking about? sounds like you didn't oc your old pentiums, which is why you never worried about it. the hardware scene has always been there, all the way back to the dual voodoo cards. it sounds to me like you were too young to remember what was going on/didn't realize that higher fps could actually make the game run smooth.
 
I remember when I could go to a used software store and pick up all the Wing Commander games on disk. Install, plug the joystick into the sound card, and you were good to go.

I remember the first CD-Rom game I ever bought when I installed a 2x CD Burner on my Pentium 133 mHz - Lost Eden. That game had some of the most stunning music I ever heard, that 10 years later I was finally able to find someone in Europe who had the soundtrack.

Gaming now is both much simplier, and far more complicated. But as long as the games are fun and entertaining, that's all that matters, whether it's 2D or 3D.
 
I remember buying games on a dozen floppy discs, and discovering that at least one of them was bad, and occasionally one was left out of the box. There wasn't much more aggravating than that, at the time.
 
HA. I remember the good old days! And running 7th Guest wasn't THAT bad, was it?
d:\install? hehe
But yes, the install wasn't the pain, getting the sound and control setup was. And yes, I actually miss those days - good thing for DOSbox!
 
I can't honestly say it's much simpler than Vista right now.

Put in disc, installer auto runs for you, select basic settings, it installs, upgrades dx if necessary dumps a shortcut on your desktop, you double click and you're in game. It even tells you if it thinks it's not installed correctly and offers to install with recommended settings if you have problems.

Driver updates are pretty rare, you can get away without updaing your video card drivers more or less every 6 months or so, other system drivers like mobo/audio should never need upgrading. Even AAA titles scale over about 3 years of hardware...

It's the people who fiddle and dont know what they're doing, or those who bought a dodgy PC from down the road which is riddled with viruses, or install stupid shit from the web, these are the people that have problems, they need to look after their PC.
 
Well my first gaming computer was a gateway (back when they had the gateway country stores, man those were nice) and I had the 2nd best machine they offered (the best one used a p2 xeon) Pentium 2 450mhz, 192mb of memory (custom ordered) voodoo 2 + voodoo banche in SLi (16mb frame buffer total) nice 17 inch CRT (still probably the best looking monitor ive used to date) a 13.9GB hd, and a 4x cd rom a joystick and a bunch of games, cost 3400 dollars all told.

I never realized that quake 2 was the demanding game of the time, because my video cards owned it, I was 10 at the time, but that computer kicked ass. Gaming was so simple back then, you install the game and play, I never worried about if my computer could handle it or not, I never worried about console ports, you want to make your game better? install some mods, Back then there were many options for multiplayer matchups, all of them were free, mplayer, msn gaming zone, heat.net < - still my favorite, and gamespy. Quake 2, quake3, rainbow six, battle zone, microsoft flight simulator 98, all great games, something you don't see anymore, every game being great, we have evolved so much in technology and graphics, so not every game can be good anymore.

I did have more hardware failures however, I killed 2 processors, 3 motherboards, 3 hard drives, and 1 voodoo banche in a 2 year period, with the combined effects from me and power surges.
 
Simply go back to simple gaming. Buy an old PC and get some old PC games and enjoy. It's a free country.
 
I rather enjoyed the old days when OpenGL was still a legitimate contender to DirectX... and when they were both being dominated by Glide.
 
Absolutely. I completely miss the days of Space Quest, Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Sam n Max, DoTT and Prince of Persia. Many, many memories. Although back then I didn't have a great computer for many years and was stuck on a 286 for quite a while, then upgraded to a 486dx2 and man, those games flew! :)

In fact.. I've got a CD with all those old games on it I made when I was younger. I should find it..
 
Master Blaster said:
HA. I remember the good old days! And running 7th Guest wasn't THAT bad, was it?
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Back in the day before usenet it was hard to find any decent info about your computer. When 7th Guest came out I had NO idea what Vesa was, whether my compter had it or not, and whether I could get it or not. Didn't even have a CD-Rom back then but I knew I would get one if I could have played the game. Ended up not having it and never played it :(.

Once 95/98 and gaming through the gui became possible, gaming has been more or less as simple as it is now. The more money you throw at it, the easier it is. Has always been that will, will always be that way.
 
Pezzy said:
I remember when I could go to a used software store and pick up all the Wing Commander games on disk. Install, plug the joystick into the sound card, and you were good to go.

I remember the first CD-Rom game I ever bought when I installed a 2x CD Burner on my Pentium 133 mHz - Lost Eden. That game had some of the most stunning music I ever heard, that 10 years later I was finally able to find someone in Europe who had the soundtrack.

Gaming now is both much simpler, and far more complicated. But as long as the games are fun and entertaining, that's all that matters, whether it's 2D or 3D.
Click to expand...

That must have been the Kilrathi Saga pack for Windows 95. Prior to that, you had to tweak like crazy to get enough memory free for WC3 or WC4 before they released the Win 95 wrapper for WC4...

Scarily enough I just installed WC:prophecy on my Vista x64 box. Installed without a hitch, but since my box has an Intel x3100 video board, it turned off the transparency and lens flare effects even though I hard set the game for direct X. :(

Direct X 5.0, those were the days...
 
lol, I still remember playing Descent and hitting that turbo button, smoothed everything out ;)

Dome said:
two words: turbo button
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Although, configuring the sound was never an easy task. Anyone remember..

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T2

:eek:
 
i remember thinking a a kid, some day I'll be able to select 'general midi' and my life will be complete.
 
inotocracy said:
lol, I still remember playing Descent and hitting that turbo button, smoothed everything out ;)



Although, configuring the sound was never an easy task. Anyone remember..

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T2

:eek:
Click to expand...

Arrgghhh, don't say that. I'm breaking into cold sweats just thinking about it. Obtaining more base memory was also a nightmare.
 
Hmm I dont know when it was easier than it is now, except well for the activation and copy protection bullshit, but still its easier than before.

I remember having to the floppy thing to load EMS memory to some games or to actually free those 640k of conventional memory to play games. Fun times! Not really simple though.
 
pigwalk said:
When the hell was it ever simpler than now? Lets go back to before your Pentiums period. Remember trying to figure out if you had a VESA Video card back when 7th Guest came out? How about needing a boot floppy with different himem settings FOR EVERY FRICKIN GAME. Config settings in menus? HEll nah, ALL in the .ini's, and not just for tweaking like today. Windows gaming = simple.

I'm not even in my 30's yet and I already sound like a geezer......
Click to expand...

7th guest - oh snap - i had that game lol - i couldn't figure those damn puzzles out for shit

I got stuck and said we'll screw it......


edit: just looked it up on youtube... the score still gives me chills lol
 
Did anyone else read the post title and come in here looking to chat about Pac-Man and Galaga? Thanks to M.A.M.E I don't miss those days :)
 
i don't think it was a pc game but i played joust and paperboy 100 billion times

I also played dig-dug, megaman, and contra omg.... yes lots and lots of contra
 
I always just played games in DOS when I was little. Not much to do there when install your game.

Well it depended upon the game but it was never that bad for me.
 
Simpler now in my opinion. My rig is powerfull enough that I just pick what game I want to play on it. No reading min or preferred system requirements, no tweaking DOS settings, no making sure the soundcard will run by tweaking DOS settings. I just install and go. MUCH simpler nowdays.
 
inotocracy said:
Although, configuring the sound was never an easy task. Anyone remember..

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T2

:eek:
Click to expand...

Yup, I just turned 24 and still remember having to do that with my 386. That, and editing the FILES=XX, BUFFERS=YY, and STACKS=ZZZZ commands in config.sys.
 
I remember oregon trail and later the first roller coaster tycoon which my pentium 2 could play if I remember correctly.

I don't miss having to manually install game updates/patches though.
I'm only 21, but some of you youngins' will never now how much of a blessing steam is.

Soooo nice to know you will get an update automatically and that it will work almost 100% of the time without you having to do anything.
Figuring out where this and that file go is extremely annoying.
 
LOADING DOOM2.WAD.........................................................................................................................................................
 
WTF is the OP's post talking about? So 2 years ago every game could run on a shitty pre-built PC? And games were only $10? Umm, no. Just no. There were always demanding games. It's not some new trend. But it was way worse in the 90s because games didnt have any graphical settings that you could adjust besides the resolution. Have fun playing Quake 2 at 320x240 or some shit.

Playing online was a bitch as well. Broadband was not readily available and you had to use 3rd party software just to find servers. Needless to say, I dont miss those days at all.
 
I remember this about my early days of game:

Code: 
Music Device?
General MIDI <--
Sound Blaster
Sound Blaster Pro
Sound Blaster 16
Gravis Ultrasound
Adlib
Pro Audio Spectrum

Sound Device?
PC Speaker
Adlib
Sound Blaster
Gravis Ultrasound
No Sound Device

I/O Port?
220 <--
230
240
250
260

IRQ?
2
5 <--
7

DMA?
1 <--
2
3

High DMA?
5 <--
6 
7 

Channels?
1 <--
2 
3
4

Of course there were also games like SimCity 2000 (DOS) that you had to choose which video card you had and how much memory was on it. Chances were that your card wasn't listed and you'd have to use the generic VESA driver and hope to god it worked.
 
Injection of <3 said:
WTF is the OP's post talking about? So 2 years ago every game could run on a shitty pre-built PC? And games were only $10? Umm, no. Just no. There were always demanding games. It's not some new trend. But it was way worse in the 90s because games didnt have any graphical settings that you could adjust besides the resolution.
Click to expand...
And before that, you needed to know how to make a boot disk or a batch file. And even in the pre-3d days some games sucked or were unplayable without having extra hardware mainstream machines didn't have. Like a sound card or a cd-rom drive :p
 
when I was a little kid descent, pitfall (snes version), and tie fighter were all my parents needed to buy to shut me up for several hours. Old school gaming was awesome though I will admit the community of current games is appreciated.
 
I know I miss the simple days of having to manage memory, and having to create a new boot disk when I got a new game.
 
Anybody remember downloading patches with a 48.8 modem?.... I used to connect before I want to bed and hope the damned thing had loaded and not erred by the AM. That was a lot more simple!! (Now I have FIOS and a 150 meg download takes a few minutes instead of all night....).

Honestly, I don't think PC gaming was ever that easy and upgrading to get games to run (or run well) was no different than today (really way worse like a lot of OP are saying). Maybe games like Crysis make us think things are worse. I dunno. It was worse to me (and I am old!.... in my *gulp* mid-forties). And like that OP said, online play sucked monkey-balls!!!!
 
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