Anyone here collect classic/vintage PC games?

GnomeCop

GnomeCop

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Been having a wave of nostalgia lately going through some old PC games I bought back in the 90s.

It was really cool when these games not only had to come on physical media but usually came packaged in large boxes with several books and manuals, sometimes even including cloth maps and random trinkets.

I have a few odd games from Origin Systems before and after EA bought them out as well as some early Westwood studios stuff and a bunch of games from Sierra.

Does anyone know of a good place where ppl talk about games like this or places to buy them (besides the obvious being ebay). I know I want to sell some, but maybe pick some up too.

Other than that, who else has a collection of old games? Any favorites or particularly cool titles that came in elaborate packaging?
 
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I still have most of the games that I bought and some of the imo cooler boxes or from iconic games but I would not consider myself a collector more of a hoarder:p (like Quake series, Half-life, DNF, Original shadow warrior, Fallout series, Baldurs gate and the other infinity engine games, but nothing realy old.)

I like the video's from Metal jezus rocks on YouTube he collects for a ton of systems and has lot's of big box PC games, he also used to work for Sierra.
 
These are the oldest computer games that I own,
IMG_1599.JPG


IMG_1598.JPG
 
hahah oh man, those are old school fo sho. MICROPROSE! I almost forgot about them.

The art they did on a lot of these old games is something I miss from the style all modern games go with
 
Denpepe said:
I still have most of the games that I bought and some of the imo cooler boxes or from iconic games but I would not consider myself a collector more of a hoarder:p (like Quake series, Half-life, DNF, Original shadow warrior, Fallout series, Baldurs gate and the other infinity engine games, but nothing realy old.)

I like the video's from Metal jezus rocks on YouTube he collects for a ton of systems and has lot's of big box PC games, he also used to work for Sierra.
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Oh Ive seen his channel before as well. I like some of the industry stories he has shared.
 
I stopped buying physical products years ago. Though, I do collect boardgames, and that's actually starting to become a problem. I might have to start selling some of it. I don't like how much of it takes over my space. If I could isolate it, I probably wouldn't feel so odd about it. Yet, I look at it and think to myself, "I need to grow up."
 
I'm an old fart and I remember a lot of those games, so I built a retro gaming rig using Windows XP with 3 gigs of ram, a old Raptor 10k rpm drive I had sitting in my closet, and all these games:
DOOM
DOOM2
Quake
Quake 2
Far Cry
Half Life
Half Life 2
Wolfenstein
Diablo
Diablo 2
Duke Nukem
Pain Killer
Return to Castle Wolfenstein


I'm retiring in February 2020, and I plan on moving this rig from storage to an actual setup in my spare room that my wife and I have (i.e. 4 bedroom house). I found a guy on Craig's list who was selling brand new desktops that he had sitting in his garage for 20 years. Picked up this one for $20. Even included a new power supply. This setup is NON-INTERNET.
 

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Executioner said:
I'm an old fart and I remember a lot of those games, so I built a retro gaming rig using Windows XP with 3 gigs of ram, a old Raptor 10k rpm drive I had sitting in my closet, and all these games:
DOOM
DOOM2
Quake
Quake 2
Far Cry
Half Life
Half Life 2
Wolfenstein
Diablo
Diablo 2
Duke Nukem
Pain Killer
Return to Castle Wolfenstein


I'm retiring in February 2020, and I plan on moving this rig from storage to an actual setup in my spare room that my wife and I have (i.e. 4 bedroom house). I found a guy on Craig's list who was selling brand new desktops that he had sitting in his garage for 20 years. Picked up this one for $20. Even included a new power supply. This setup is NON-INTERNET.
View attachment 178954
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I am guessing there was a non-Steam version of Half Life 2. I always thought it was a Steam game. I got it with my GPU back in the day,
9600xt.jpg


I also recently setup a retro XP box for my Matrox RT.X100 video editor and fired up Half Life 2 and was playing in Ravenholm and thought the graphics were messed up since some sections were really really dark.
I forgot that you had a flashlight to see in the dark areas, lol.
IMG_3308.JPG
 
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hahah man now I want to build a retro rig, but damn that list of games makes me think that I wont see sunlight for several weeks if I had easy access to them...
 
Yeah, I collect vintage PC games. My pride and joy is that I have every Sierra game ever made pre-1995 sans Ultima Escape From Mount Drash. Just can't find a copy within financial reasonability.

Most of my games are in storage, but here are a few of the games I have:







 
Zepher said:
I am guessing there was a non-Steam version of Half Life 2. I always thought it was a Steam game. I got it with my GPU back in the day,
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They put a steam key in the box for gpus, I've never seen a non-steam version.
 
Executioner said:
I'm an old fart and I remember a lot of those games, so I built a retro gaming rig using Windows XP with 3 gigs of ram, a old Raptor 10k rpm drive I had sitting in my closet, and all these games:
DOOM
DOOM2
Quake
Quake 2
Far Cry
Half Life
Half Life 2
Wolfenstein
Diablo
Diablo 2
Duke Nukem
Pain Killer
Return to Castle Wolfenstein


I'm retiring in February 2020, and I plan on moving this rig from storage to an actual setup in my spare room that my wife and I have (i.e. 4 bedroom house). I found a guy on Craig's list who was selling brand new desktops that he had sitting in his garage for 20 years. Picked up this one for $20. Even included a new power supply. This setup is NON-INTERNET.
View attachment 178954
Click to expand...

Had that same case in blue back when I had way to many computers. Played all those games listed along with the Delta Force series, Red Faction, and etc..
 
I think I still have the discs and cases for some old pc games lying around. But I'm likely to just keep getting them digitally from GoG. I don't have the space to collect more boxes as cool as they are, lol.
 
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M76 said:
They put a steam key in the box for gpus, I've never seen a non-steam version.
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Ja, I have the physical collector's edition of Half-Life 2 that came with the t-shirt and it required Steam. Unlike today, though, all the game files installed from the discs. It just needed to connect online the first time to verify and decrypt the damned thing which took just about a week on my 56K dialup connection. Steam was plagued with connection issues due to that game immediately after release.
 
Nytegard said:
Yeah, I collect vintage PC games. My pride and joy is that I have every Sierra game ever made pre-1995 sans Ultima Escape From Mount Drash. Just can't find a copy within financial reasonability.

Most of my games are in storage, but here are a few of the games I have:
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Holy crap that's an awesome collection, you even have the weird Ultima games like Martian Dreams!


This is part of my collection, it is like box 1 of 6. I dont know why I have 2 Ultima 8s.... game wasnt great and was buggy as hell. Looked cool though.

JnsfLZ4l.jpg
 
I was later to the party for PC games the first PC game I bought was Ultima Online in 1997 at Best Buy while looking for a Job =P Have a shit ton of console games though would like to get rid of them but then again some are gems that I couldn't replace. They don't make t hem like they used to that is for sure you have knockoff of original game. I actually miss full boxed version of games I'm still impressed when I see games on the shelves at Walmart that hard copies and having them replaced when sold out is the ticket of getting a following still is have a hard version of the game with instructions anyway and maybe a key code. If Dark Age of Camelot never had a hard copy at Walmart I don't think it would have been a popular game same goes for Ultima Online and Everquest series. I mean they still have World of Warcraft hard copies along with Diablo 3 and Star Craft Blizzard know what they are doing.
 
GnomeCop said:
This is part of my collection, it is like box 1 of 6. I dont know why I have 2 Ultima 8s.... game wasnt great and was buggy as hell. Looked cool though.
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I actually liked Ultima VIII, but then again, I came into the series a bit late with Ultima: The Black Gate for the SNES. At the time, I had been a huge adventure game fan, but Myst, a.k.a. the worst game of all time, killed the genre. (Can you possibly tell I don't like Myst?:p). If you're looking for an adventure game pre 1995, there's a good chance I own it. Anyway, I had played some RPGs from earlier, but never really got into the genre until the mid 90s, at which point, I started hunting down RPGs of yesteryear. Fortunately, for my bank account, this was before the time video game collecting became big, so I was able to buy up copies of all the Ultimas + Akalabeth for a couple dollars apiece.

As for duplicates, check my pictures above, tons of duplicates:p
 
I have several now " retro " games. Nascar Racing 2003 probably being the most valuable as it's complete boxed with manual ontop of just being stupid expensive. But I also have 2 storage boxes of floppy disc games, several 1990's cd based shareware collections. Multiple copies of all original Doom games, floppy and Steam versions of the Commander Keen games..

I wish Keen got 3D or at least later counterparts. It was a solid story and gameplay rivaled Mario.
 
matt167 said:
I have several now " retro " games. Nascar Racing 2003 probably being the most valuable as it's complete boxed with manual ontop of just being stupid expensive. But I also have 2 storage boxes of floppy disc games, several 1990's cd based shareware collections. Multiple copies of all original Doom games, floppy and Steam versions of the Commander Keen games..

I wish Keen got 3D or at least later counterparts. It was a solid story and gameplay rivaled Mario.
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My copy is in the same condition. It's insane to see how much NR2003 is worth these days. When Papyrus went defunct and they were working on iRacing I just held onto my copy for dear life out of pure instinct.
 
Surprised we're not seeing more Wing Commander boxes in the pics here. I cut my teeth on that entire series. The Matrix game was a fun time too. I have a ton of old stuff boxed up in my basement.
 
I really miss being able to buy a boxed game and getting some stuff in the box. Manuals, keyboard overlays, maps etc.

Not really doable in the digital download age, but it was cool when it was still a thing.

The digital junk they stick in with "digital deluxe" versions of games is kind of worthless.
 
sknight said:
Surprised we're not seeing more Wing Commander boxes in the pics here. I cut my teeth on that entire series. The Matrix game was a fun time too. I have a ton of old stuff boxed up in my basement.
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I totally forgot about that series! I think I have a copy of Wing Commander 3 and 4 (when they went crazy with FMV). Gotta dig these up but I think I also own them on GoG as well.

I tried playing them on a modern system awhile back and it was tough to play
 
twonunpackmule said:
I stopped buying physical products years ago. Though, I do collect boardgames, and that's actually starting to become a problem. I might have to start selling some of it. I don't like how much of it takes over my space. If I could isolate it, I probably wouldn't feel so odd about it. Yet, I look at it and think to myself, "I need to grow up."
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What's wrong with board games as an adult? I have a small collection, love them, play with my family and with friends.
 
schizrade said:
What's wrong with board games as an adult? I have a small collection, love them, play with my family and with friends.
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I'm not saying there's a problem. I'm saying I have a problem. I own quite a few. Not a small collection by any means. Several ikea Kallax full, in fact. You'd think I was running a store or a rental place. Several of the games are still sealed. As, I just kept purchasing from Kickstarter and what have you. FOMO was real. I've finally gotten over it but it took awhile. Now, I'm staring at a collection that I doubt I'll ever be able to play. So, it's a knock at myself...not boardgames.
 
I think I the only knock I have against board games and vintage PC game (big box type) collecting is that it takes up so much space:eek:
 
twonunpackmule said:
I'm not saying there's a problem. I'm saying I have a problem. I own quite a few. Not a small collection by any means. Several ikea Kallax full, in fact. You'd think I was running a store or a rental place. Several of the games are still sealed. As, I just kept purchasing from Kickstarter and what have you. FOMO was real. I've finally gotten over it but it took awhile. Now, I'm staring at a collection that I doubt I'll ever be able to play. So, it's a knock at myself...not boardgames.
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Hah, ok I hear you then. I started on the kickstarters, but Massive Darkness RUINED that for me. I just said never again. Great minis for D&D etc, but that game was hot garbage.

Just do some house cleaning and liquidate. Good games hold some value.
 
I still have, purchase and display unopened die cast cars. They only cost $1-5, and they are all worth at least their original MSRP
 
schizrade said:
Hah, ok I hear you then. I started on the kickstarters, but Massive Darkness RUINED that for me. I just said never again. Great minis for D&D etc, but that game was hot garbage.

Just do some house cleaning and liquidate. Good games hold some value.
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Yea, I have a couple of good ones sealed. I have a mint and sealed first edition of a Study in Emerald.
 
I REALLY regret selling my Pc game boxes and only just last week started looking for decent condition ones. I bought a complete original boxed copy of Doom 3 last week. Will get more eventually.
 
who knew port #666 was reserved for Doom ( 1993 ) in even current builds of Windows? I knew it was port 666 ever since first playing it multiplayer. But never knew it was system reserved till a youtube video and I had to investigate
 
matt167 said:
who knew port #666 was reserved for Doom ( 1993 ) in even current builds of Windows? I knew it was port 666 ever since first playing it multiplayer. But never knew it was system reserved till a youtube video and I had to investigate
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I thought everyone knew.
 
matt167 said:
I'm starting to think I'm the odd one out, especially with playing so many hours of doom back in the day
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Well, damn, add me to the club! Playing Doom online was before my time though, I was still on consoles then. First MP online game for me was Day of Defeat.
 
HL2 also came physically, in Orange Box. Well, I assume it did. Orange Box had a few discs. But it has always required Steam to play.
 
chameleoneel said:
HL2 also came physically, in Orange Box. Well, I assume it did. Orange Box had a few discs. But it has always required Steam to play.
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Yes.

It also release physically back on it's original launch day in 2004. However, it also required Steam to play. I had the CE. So, I also got a bunch of the other Half Life games included and a XXL t-shirt because everyone thinks gamers are built like tanks.
 
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