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

Zarathustra[H];1035786564 said:
And I just remembered another two that I had forgotten about that were amazing (though not graphically)

Tank wars!

Tankwars-shot.jpg


Followed a year later by the much improved Scorched Earth!

Scorched_Earth_gameplay.png


Back in my 286 days these games were some of the best hot-seat multiplayer games around!

(I'm still a little bit bitter that the version for the Amiga 500 named "Scorched Tanks" was so much better

gameplay.png
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ZOMG!

Scorched 3D...

and it's freeware too.

Scorched_3D_40.1_screenshot_2.jpg


Time wasting will surely ensure...
 
Started PC gaming with wolf 3D and Doom. First upgrade was a goldfinger on a slot A athlon. Needed to get some extra FPS for Half Life, Baulders Gate, and Deus Ex. Did a full custom system around Max Payne timeframef, and bought a GeForce 4 Ti 460 when it came out.

Hadn't made an upgrade or component purchase since 2003; that was until yesterday.
 
Never really was a PC gamer I was raised on consoles and just enjoyed breaking, building and fixing PC's :D
 
AdvanSuper said:
Never really was a PC gamer I was raised on consoles and just enjoyed breaking, building and fixing PC's :D
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I think this is an interesting distinction to make.

While I played PC games ever since I more or less retired the 8bit NES in the early 90s, they weren't necessarily what drove my urge to upgrade and have a faster computer. I was geeky enough to appreciate computing power in and of itself.

The fact that I could run games better was more of a by-product (and not one I complained about either :p )
 
Long before people had PC's there was an arcade game called Breakout. Then when Asteroids hit it was all over for me.
 
I've been playing computer games since Star Raiders in 1982 on an 8-bit Atari 1200XL. That was the game that weaned me from the 2600 (and all consoles afterwards) once and for all.

But the game that got me firmly into PC gaming was X-Wing in 1993. That game was a culmination of a game feature wishlist I've had since playing the Atari vector graphics arcade Star Wars in 1983. Nascar Racing, Red Baron, Descent, Mechwarrior 2.... good times. I bought off-the-rack computers and upgraded components like CD-ROMs, sound cards and 3D cards for about seven years. It wasn't until a proprietary Dell power supply blew on me (and was stupid expensive to replace) that I decided to go with DIY builds. Pentium III 700Mhz on a crappy Supermicro MB was the first.
 
Duke Nukem started my interest in PC gaming. Half-Life DM started the hardware upgrades. I've spent a fortune since then.
 
Hmm... I've been gaming on PC since High School and it was Half-Life that got me hooked on PC gaming. Half-Life and games like Unreal and Deus Ex got me to buy a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI which was my first major upgrade but it wasn't until after I got out of college that I decided to build my first rig which I catered towards Half-Life 2. So for me Valve and the games/mods got me into building my own rigs.
 
Saturn_V said:
I've been playing computer games since Star Raiders in 1982 on an 8-bit Atari 1200XL. That was the game that weaned me from the 2600 (and all consoles afterwards) once and for all.

But the game that got me firmly into PC gaming was X-Wing in 1993. That game was a culmination of a game feature wishlist I've had since playing the Atari vector graphics arcade Star Wars in 1983. Nascar Racing, Red Baron, Descent, Mechwarrior 2.... good times. I bought off-the-rack computers and upgraded components like CD-ROMs, sound cards and 3D cards for about seven years. It wasn't until a proprietary Dell power supply blew on me (and was stupid expensive to replace) that I decided to go with DIY builds. Pentium III 700Mhz on a crappy Supermicro MB was the first.
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Star Raiders was a must buy for me when I had my Atari 400. I had that little beastie pimped out from 16k to 48k RAM so I could play Frogger on it as well as some Pac-Man ripoff that was out at that time.
 
Quake here as well. Heat.net is where i hang out all the time. hahaha
 
Like so many others here I used to play all the old games, even some text based games that may have been mentioned (or not) but what got me hooked was Counter Strike 1.6. I used to love downloading and using mods that changed the models. My favorite at the time was to turn the character models into Marvel characters and the M249 into a Vulcan Minigun.
 
Everquest 1 is what got me started on the upgrading and building process of computers. Prior to that I was always interested in them.
 
Shareware Doom made me upgrade from a 386-25 to a 486-33. Man things were expensive back then.
 
I played PC games like Doom and ROTT, but I was doing fine with those on an "off the shelf" Packard Bell back then.
I didn't really have to worry much about building my own until DN3D came out. Duke needed a fair amount of horespower and encouraged me to have a mom & pop shop build me a Pentium 133 system.
Quake was when I started doing it myself once the OpenGL patch came out.
The difference between Quake and GLQuake was just so astounding at the time. It was absolutely groundbreaking - like going from a VHS tape to a Blu-Ray.

I remember going from normal processors to the whole "slot" ones that looked like a Genesis cart, back to normal die processors again. Since the mid 90's I've probably built 6-7 PC's along with 4-5 for friends.
 
I've played numerous PC games since the mid-80's but the first one that got me to build my own system and buy a dedicated video card instead of just buying a computer was the original Unreal Tournament.
 
Domingo said:
I played PC games like Doom and ROTT, but I was doing fine with those on an "off the shelf" Packard Bell back then.
I didn't really have to worry much about building my own until DN3D came out. Duke needed a fair amount of horespower and encouraged me to have a mom & pop shop build me a Pentium 133 system.
Quake was when I started doing it myself once the OpenGL patch came out.
The difference between Quake and GLQuake was just so astounding at the time. It was absolutely groundbreaking - like going from a VHS tape to a Blu-Ray.

I remember going from normal processors to the whole "slot" ones that looked like a Genesis cart, back to normal die processors again. Since the mid 90's I've probably built 6-7 PC's along with 4-5 for friends.
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I had an AMD k-6 processor as well :p. Used it in my first built PC. Nice passive 700 mhz beast :p.
 
Destonomos said:
I had an AMD k-6 processor as well :p. Used it in my first built PC. Nice passive 700 mhz beast :p.
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How did you get a k-6 to 700 MHZ?!?! I dont recall ever hearing of even a k6-II or III hitting that high, you sure you dont mean an original athlon? Theres no way you had a passive cooled k6 at 700 mhz.
 
For me, it was Half-Life. I bought a 3dfx Voodoo3 video card to play that game, and that was the start of it all...
 
Disposed said:
How did you get a k-6 to 700 MHZ?!?! I dont recall ever hearing of even a k6-II or III hitting that high, you sure you dont mean an original athlon? Theres no way you had a passive cooled k6 at 700 mhz.
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As I recall they topped out stock at 550Mhz, and the faster ones weren't that great for overclocking. I don't think I ever saw a 700mhz K6 of any kind regardless of cooling.
 
Zarathustra[H];1035791832 said:
As I recall they topped out stock at 550Mhz, and the faster ones weren't that great for overclocking. I don't think I ever saw a 700mhz K6 of any kind regardless of cooling.
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Thats why im asking because i remember them being poor overclockers and fairly warm.
 
I played a lot of PC games back in the day (A-10 Tank Killer, Red Baron, TIE Fighter, X-Wing, Thexder, etc...) but never really got interested in building PCs until I learned about overclocking. My parents always had something to play on.

Once I discovered I could BUILD a PC I bought what I could afford in 2004 (NF7-S and Athlon XP 2700+, 9600 Pro). Played Battlefield, Unreal Tournament, and Far Cry...). When I realized I couldn't overclock worth a damn I got better RAM, a better cooler, and finally a Athlon XP 2500+ M.....

Hooboy, i was hooked then. 2.5GHz stable all day! Haven't looked back since..
 
My first PC build was a 486 DX2 66 oced to 70. Had 4mb of ram, but doom 2 made me upgrade (240 bucks) 8mb of ram.

After that all I played was Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator and Heretic! :)
 
The sad thing is the hellish days of computer building are over. The technology curve has flattened out for PC games.
 
Tolyngee said:
Spare-Flair said:
The sad thing is the hellish days of computer building are over. The technology curve has flattened out for PC games.
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Oh?

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/30/powercolor-hd5970-eyefinity-12-makes-six-screens-yesterdays-new/
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Now that is just excessive!

I see what the poster means though. I certainly upgrade less frequently than I once did.

Back in college I had a new video card every 6 months to a year. More recently, my Athlon 64 and Geforce 6800 GT lasted from early 2005 to end of 2009, almost 5 years.

That being said, I have not been keeping up with the gaming community like I used to.
 
Zarathustra[H];1035800311 said:
More recently, my Athlon 64 and Geforce 6800 GT lasted from early 2005 to end of 2009, almost 5 years.
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Yow. I had an FX-60 from Jan 2006 'til May 2009. I finally upgraded (I hate starting over on a fresh installation...) because:

1) While going from 7800GTX SLI > 8800GTX SLI > 4870 > 4870x2 that that last new card was pointless as I now was forced to accept that I am CPU bottlenecked.

2) My 4870x2 could give decent framerates on Far Cry 2... "til something blew the F up (which happens often in FC2), and then my framerate instantly plunged into the single digits and was absolutely unplayable...

Don't play FC2, or finally upgrade? I chose the latter.

(Yes, I am very aware that most people would chose both.)
 
I'm surprised that its already been mentioned. But Maximum PC mag was part of it.
That and watching one of my guys in the barracks play Farcry and Team fortress on some crazy shuttle type rig, using a 20' Mitsubishi screen.

Ya I only became interested in the computer world recently.
 
I don't know why, but I remember on my first build, got everything together... MOMENT OF TRUTH. Click power button... nothing. FUCK. Oh hey mobo has a power button of its own wonder of that does anythiWHIRRRRRRR beep.

It took about a year before I actually bothered to fix the fact that I someone managed to fuck up connecting the case buttons. HURR.
 
My first build was a Pentium III 900mhz rig for Diablo 2. Shortly after that I built a 2500+ Barton rig for counterstrike as well as Diablo 2.
 
Rainbow Six. It just would only run in a 1'' square box on my 166mhz Pentium.

Previously I had played a ton of Warcraft2, Starcraft, Diablo, Doom. 2D sprite games. That first upgrade opened the door to HL1, Unreal1 and all the rest from there.
 
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