What game caused your helli$h descent into computer building?

l88bastard

l88bastard

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 25, 2009
Messages
3,722
I have been gaming since the early 1980s and my first computer was a 286 12mghz whopper!

I played all of the greats on it, A-10 tank killer, Red Baron, Stunts, all of the Sierra games (Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest, Heros Quest, Police Quest)...and I fondly remember when my dad go a 486 50MHZ speed machine and how buttery smooth A-10, Red Baron and Aces of the Pacific ran on it....but I never went custom computer building until 2007!

I got out of computer gaming for a while, mildly returning to it in the late 90's and when Grand Theft Auto came out in 2001 I actually made my first video card purchase and got a 9700 pro which also served me well with Battlefield 1942...but I was still using a COMPAQ base computer with all that lol.

Crysis. Crysis caused me to finally junk the store bought PCs and go out into the strange world of saving money by spending loads of money on Hi-end computer building addiction!

So what game caused you to learn more about computers?
 
Wolfenstein 3D for Mac. Had to upgrade from 68030 to 68040. I hated computers but I wanted to play that game full screen.

And then, like you, Crysis really did me in.
 
Well, I was into computers when I was like 10-11 but no resources to build one :) Started around 12 or so when I could save some money. I registered on here about 10 years ago when I was 15. I think Quake, Quake 2, and the Unreal series got me into PCs.
 
i had all the classics named by the OP. along with wolfenstein, commander keen, oh yeah stunts, etc etc

doom and stuff ran fine on my old pc, finally mechwarrior 2 got me started on the upgrade bug, then unreal and everquest and the rest is history.
 
Well, first computer was an 8088 XT, Headstart Explorer PC, and played a lot of DOS games, and programmed some myself with QBASIC. Second computer was a Toshiba 335CDS laptop, 800x600 screen and 160 GB hard drive. My very first official 3D game was Half-Life 1. Since the 335CDS had a 4 Mbit graphics chip, I ended up running the game in software mode, but it ran very, very well in Windows 98 SE.

At that point, I knew I needed a desktop computer something I can fiddle with and something I can improve in the years to come. So, I would have to say Homeworld 1 was the first game I played on a computer system I built myself using a Radeon 9700 Pro running Windows XP Pro and 1 GB RAM on the system. I loved that game to death.
 
I believe it was Rome: Total War. I have been a console gamer for 30 years but this was the first pc game that really got me started with pc gaming.
 
Scramble, Donkey Kong, Defender, Space Panic, Galaga -> Way too many quarters in the arcades
Jetpack & other Ultimate games -> 1st home computer ZX spectrum
Fort Apocalyse -> C64
Wing Commander = 286 -> 386 + PC speaker -> Soundblaster
3dfx games (e.g. Airstrike,G-Police) = 2D -> 3DFX accelerator
CounterStrike/CS:S = Single player -> Multi-player FPS gaming w/ High polling gaming mouse, USB headset, widescreen LCD (though I miss my lag free 120Hz CRT), low-latency Internet, more CPU and GPU power in the ever increasing framerate quest.

Rest is history....

Never jumped on to the Physix or 3D glasses band wagon.

Newer games are more focused on being accessible for a large audience since the rising production costs don't really support the risk of relying on next gen hardware to run properly like Wing Commander did. The game single handedly drove the migration from 286 to 386. So everything has been incremental since 3DFX and Internet multiplayer.

The only way you could keep pace with all these changes is to do build your own PC. Heck the ZX81 had a build your own option similar to the Apple I. ;)
 
Last edited:
I think Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight was the game that forced my first video card upgrade. About a year or two later Half Life 1 was the inspiration for my first full custom build with a Nvidia RIVA TNT video card and a Celeron 300a running at 450mhz. That system got a lot of playing time.
 
Playing Tomb Raider when my Gateway shit out & I replaced the hdd they sent me under warranty. It came with no software installed so I re-installed every freakin thing. Never bought a pre-made PC again.
 
Its been a long time.....

I remember playing games on my brother XT Turbo clone (10mhz!). I played a game called Janitor Joe. Then I got into the Sierra games. (Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc). The XT could still handle that until the next generation of those Sierra games (Quest for Glory and other sequels) that finally made XT unable to play. (all this time I also had a Hercules monochrome video card).

That finally got me from XT Turbo to a 286-12 and my 1st color graphics card (EGA). I built it after taking apart my XT and putting it back together. I used a donated 286 mb/cpu that a friend of my brothers gave to me.

I remember getting the original Sound Blaster card and playing Leisure Suit Larry 2. It had cool sound.
 
extra high quality sounds and slightly faster smoother gameplay on the amiga going from 512k to 2mb, and fitting a second DF0 disc drive, and then later a faster co-processor :D

hiredguns started it really
 
It started with a Commodore 64, but I was too young to know hardware. My computer tweaking days didn't sart until the 486 era. Doom 2 was the first game to make me buy more RAM. Quake 1 was the game that made me purchase my first video card.
 
I played all the old games of the late 80s/early 90s as well. (Sierra Games, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Sim City, Commander Keen, Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, Rick Dangerous, Prince of Persia, Lemmings, Civilization, Civilization, Civilization, Civilization and Civilization, etc.)

I always appreciated faster computers, but never had the means to do anything about it.

My first overclock was running my 8Mhz 286 at 12mhz (I was still new to oc:ing and afraid of it, so I didn't try this until after replacing it with my 486 as a final goodbuye. My first overclock I actually used was when I made my new 486 sx25 run at 50Mhz by adding a small HSF unit (stock it didn't have a heatsink or fan). I did this to get better frame rates on Xwing :p You just don't get 100% overclocks anymore :p

My first 3d board (Voodoo 1) was bought to play quake, and I experimented with overclocking, but still didn't really have the means to do anything serious. This system (pre-MMX Pentium 150Mhz @200Mhz and 3DFX Voodoo 1) got me completely hooked on Half Life.

My real downfall as measured by time and money spent on equipment upgrading and overclocking was fueled in part by Counter-Strike in college ~1999, and also by graphical demos and benchmarks. This peaked when I cracked multiple top-of-the-line AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1400 CPU's with an Asetek Vapochill case I spent WAY too much money on, and then decided it wasn't worth it anymore.

Since graduating in 2003 I had mostly given up games until recently rediscovering Civilization (in the form of Civilization IV) and Half Life 2, necessitating upgrading my non-gamers Geforce 9400GT to a Radeon 5750. That's about as crazy as I get these days though.
 
Descent 3

I loved Descent 1 and 2, but they didn't require serious systems. Descent 3 handed my computer its ass.
 
Quake, hands down...

I spent my entire paycheck on a Voodoo card just to play Quake in Glide, it was totally worth it too! I later upgraded to two Voodoo 2 (8mb) in SLI, lasted through Unreal Tournament and the original Tribes.
 
My cross over into building PCs began around the same time Unreal and Quake 2 were released. I bought my first AMD rig with an Athlon Slot A CPU rated @ 600mhz. I quickly learned with my first build how much temperature impacted the operational abilities of the PC. Those slot A cards ran HOT, especially if you didnt seat the heatsink and fan correctly and bought a crappy, budget case that had zero airflow. I think I got my first AGP card back then also. It was an S3 Savage, sporting a whopping 32mb video memory with a breakthrough 4x AGP bus. Prior to this, I already had the 3D bug from 3DFX cards. Namely the Canopus Pure3D 6mb (opposed to the usual 4mb common around that time) Voodoo1. I was blown away at how it transformed Carmageddon and GTA.

I started playing games and had my first computer back in 1984, starting with the mighty BBC Micro. Then in 1989 my first PC, a 286 with 12mhz of pure grunt, armed with a massive 640kb of memory and a huge 20mb hard drive. So so many awesome gaming memories on that little PC. Sierra catalog, X-Com, Syndicate, Wing Commander just to name a few.

Ahh, the nostalgia .. Good times :D
 
Bought it and thought it was kinda lame. A co-worker hounded me to download the patches to play it online, and after that... goodbye sleep hello dead Germans!!!

BF43 and BC2 are the reason I'm going my next build.
 
I started off with a Commodore 64 back in 1984. One on One (Larry Bird vs Dr J), Beach Head and Summer Games were the first games I had. Just blew me away with the graphics and gameplay. Ive been hooked ever since.

One on One

Summer Games

Beach Head

I guess Ive been a PC gamer since 1984.
 
Programmed an ASCII representation of the Star Trek Enterprise floating across the screen of a Timex Sinclair. Then went on to a NEC 8Mhz XT with a Co-Processor playing golf. Love it so much that I became a hardware junkie.

Many, many years later I'm a [H]ardForum Junkie. I wonder what the next level of "Junkie" will be. :p
 
I've been a PC gamer since ~1993, but I was 13 then.

When I had enough money to build my own computer at 19, Half Life is what drove me to chase better framerates. My first build wasn't enough to keep up good framerates, and I didn't know crap about anything:
266 Mhz celeron
64 MB of RAM
Refurbished 13 GB hard drive (OMG!)
Diamond Stealth II S220 PCI that I got at a local computer store. It ran Tomb Raider and Thief, so it was OK i guess.
 
It all started with Wolfenstien 3D in 1992, with Doom a year later. Quake was really the catalyst for me to learn about hardware and building computers in '96. Been a hardware enthusiast ever since.
 
Counter-strike (~2002 era), I remember needing to upgrade my ram, which doubled my framerate. I later upgraded my video card when CS: Source beta came out around 2004.

I didn't do my first computer build until 2006 though, and that was just because I had a bunch of money and an already aging system. Back then I built/upgraded because I needed it for performance, now I just blow money just to have the newest stuff - it's a terrible addiction.
 
Been a PC gamer since the early 90's but the first machine I built for myself was in '99. Voodoo3000 for Quake3.
 
First computer was a Commodore 64...endless hours of 4th&inches, Impossible Mission, Beach Head, Bruce Lee, Shogun, Rambo, Gorf, and Forbidden Forest.

That was back in the mid 80's when I was like 7/8 years old.

My first PC was a hand-me-down Pentium something...I want to say Pentium II??? I wasn't even in the frame of mind to pay attention to hardware at this time so I have no clue on what the specs were...I know it barely ran Links golf. :)

This thing ended up shitting the bed and I talked my wife into getting a Gateway...ew...anyhow, I remember choosing to "upgrade" the video card to an Nvidia MX 440??? Can't remember exactly what it was...My first real PC game purchase was Jedi Outcast...from there came my first real video card upgrade...the Geforce 4 ti 4200...OH YEAH BABY!!! It's all history from there.

Now I'm dreaming of building a tri-xfire rig with 3 5870'd. :)
 
For me it was the original Command & Conquer along with Command & Conquer Red Alert. Prior to that I used a combination of an aging Macintosh (upgraded Macintosh IIcx which sucked because even at that time most Mac games required a PowerMac) as well as what was at the time a 10+ year old 386 system.

Command & Conquer was the game I had so much fun playing at my cousin's house that I absolutely did everything I could to get a new PC that could play it. And when I did that was the first computer I had that wasn't some ghetto old hand-me-down. This was also right when the internet was starting to take off also so the timing was good.

I did upgrade an old 286 with an ISA CGA Videocard a few years before that when I was in 5th grade so that I could play Megaman 2 on 5.25" Floppies. That was all still old tech at the time though, got the CGA card at a garage sale for $5...
 
erf said:
First computer was a Commodore 64...endless hours of 4th&inches, Impossible Mission, Beach Head, Bruce Lee, Shogun, Rambo, Gorf, and Forbidden Forest.
Click to expand...

The first computer I purchased was a Tandy Color Computer (aka known as the "CoCo" by its fans) and I can't remember a single game I played on that machine very well know. Played a lot, more than I do now.

But I've always liked haveing the power to play any PC game at max settings, maybe Far Cry got me into the SLI realm, and Crysis is still a work in progress though that's finally getting to the point where it's starting to fly.
 
Unreal Tournament got me big into gamming, but it was Jedi Knight II that got me into upgrading constantly...

I remember, I had ordered a GeForce 4 Ti4400 a few days before JKII came out. I didn't get it in time, so I had to make due with my Radeon 7000 for that first night. I overclocked it and overclocked it some more, put a 80mm fan next to it... and I played for like 6 hours straight, and the card gave up the ghost.

It died for a good cause. The Ti4400 arrived the next morning.
 
Been playing PC games for most of my life, but didn't really care about performance for years. As long as I could just play the game (regardless of graphic settings) I was fine. I still remember beating Shadow Warrior with about 10 fps :) . That was back in '98 or so. Don't even remember what crap-tastic rig I had running then.

Fast forward to 2003. I just graduated high school. I had built up a decent pile of cash working after school, so I decided I was going to get a new PC. A friend had just gotten some $1300 Dell and showed me MoH:AA and BF1942. I had to be able to play those games too. So, I went to a local computer store and dropped $1400 on a PC, bought both games, and played happily for a couple years. The PC here had a Pentium 4 2.8, 1gb of ddr 3200 ram, a 120gb HDD, and an nVidia fx5900. Probably overpaid, but I was happy.

Then FEAR came out. My poor GPU just couldn't handle it. So, I spent $300 on an AGP 7800gs. I was able to run with more eye candy, but it was still choppy. Then I found this forum. While browsing here, I read that a CPU upgrade would get rid of that. Then I read that I'd need a new mobo for said CPU. etc. etc. etc.

And thus began my descent.......
 
mr_zen256 said:
Prior to this, I already had the 3D bug from 3DFX cards. Namely the Canopus Pure3D 6mb (opposed to the usual 4mb common around that time) Voodoo1. I was blown away at how it transformed Carmageddon and GTA.
Click to expand...

Cool! I had forgotten all about this board :). I had the European version of that Canopus Pure 3D 6Mb board. The 6 meg version was co-developed between Canopus and Miro. While the identical board, in Europe it was sold as the "Miro Highscore". I brught it with me over to the U.S. and used it way longer than most, until it finally died in '99/2000 some time, and I replaced it with a Geforce 2 GTS, if memory serves (though my memory is not serving me as well as it once did)
 
Myth:The Fallen Lords got me to buy a 3dfx Voodoo 2. Since then, there has been no looking back.
 
GL quake pretty much. But i was into it before that. Unreal shortly after that. ;)
 
Quake 2. I got sick of playing CTF in a small fuckin window the size of a credit card just to run it smoothly. I honestly don't know how I played like that, and somehow still had fun.

Asked my mom to sell my Playstation so I could buy a Voodoo Banshee. It really started when I bought a Pentium 200 to replace my pentium 100 to run Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger full speed with nice sound via emulation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top