I once hated the PC

[JeanLuc]

A self indulgent nostalgic thread but one I've wanted to do for ages.

Years and years ago back in the early 90's my Mum and Dad bought me an Atari ST and for a good couple of years I was really happy with until one Christmas Santa gave me nice surprise by leaving an Commodore Amiga 1200 in stocking, by this stage the Amiga 500 was already a hit and the 1200 was it's successor and was superior in every way. I loved the 1200 to bits even more so then my SNES, the games were really fun and it was the first computer I ever upgraded by adding an extra floppy drive (handy for playing Monkey Island 2) and a CD-Rom drive which was a bit of waste to honest. I spent hours on it playing Elite, Monkey Island and it's sequal, Wing Commander, Star Glider, North & South, The Settlers and Mid Winter 2 Flames of Freedom as well as learning about Workbench and how computers worked. Now I know technology has moved forward but the mouse back then was horrible, it's square and angular in design not to mention wide (smaller hands when your a kid) and very uncomfortable.

During this time I started reading magazines and ones that focused on the Amiga and I was shocked when I read about Commodore being bankrupt. Commentators basically said that one of the major courses of their demise was the rise of the PC which had forced the Amiga out the market. By this stage PC's were being equipped with fast Pentium processors, sound cards and CD-Rom drives as standard and games like Doom had elevated the PC into the stratosphere as a home entertainment device.

It was on that day I vowed I would never own a PC, I hated to the PC and I hated everything it stood for. It wasn't until about 1997 when my Dad bought his first ever PC I eventually began to change my views on the platform (games like Thief, Wing Commonader 3 and Quake helped not to mention all the other practical apps I could use it for) and over the years I warmed to it and have now built 3 PC's of my own. It's funny how your views on things change over the years.

 

[jzsang]

The relationship between time and change is interesting. Over the course of my life, I have by choice migrated from hardcore console gaming, to a mix of console and PC gaming, back to straight up console gaming and now to almost exclusive PC gaming.

As long as it is still OK for self reflection... I feel happier with my gaming habits than ever before. While I still can appreciate console gaming and admittingly spend a bit more on hardware and a little less on software (I do not have the time to game as much as I used to), I also earn a little bit more money and have developed a greater appreciation for 60 FPS, insane amounts of AA and high resolutions.

 

[akratos]

I started on consoles, gravitated towards the PC, and now that I can afford the newer consoles, I am right back in their embrace. Moral of the story: All Platforms win.

 

[JeanLuc]

I've only ever own two consoles in my life - SNES and the Sega Saturn. The SNES was really good fun lots of classics games like Mario 3 (via Mario All Stars), Mario World, Starfox, Mrio Kart, Street Fighter 2 but perhaps one of the best games I played was Sim City on SNES. It's kind of odd that a game like Sim City on the SNES would prove so popular but the whole idea of management and simulation was enjoyable and rewarding, I guess that should have been a sign that I was a PC gamer at heart and I just didn't know it yet.

The Sega Saturn I owned was really only purchased out of peer pressure, all my friends at school owned the Sega Master System or Mega Drive and I was constantly told about how good they were and in the end I made up my mind that Sony's PS1 would flop and Saturn was a sure bet................... talk about fail. After that I never owned another console, PC all the way.

 

[OvrClkr]

I remember back in the early 80's when I was around 5-6 years old and I looked under the christmas tree and saw a big box... From that moment on I knew that it contained an Atari 2600 and some games... Had it hooked up in less than 2 minutes without using any guidance and started to play pong and donkey king among other games....

http://www.atari2600.com/

Then came the Nintendo (NES) in 1985 and that was groundbreaking compared to the Atari... Got addicted to Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (2 games that came with the console). Started to charge my friends 25 cents an hour to play at my house cause I would supply the snacks and drinks =)

The first Zelda was a big deal for me, I was so into the game I actually made my own Zelda "day" meaning every Friday after school me and my friends would gather at my house and play till about 2-3am or till we fell asleep.... Those days....

After that I got me a Sega Saturn, SEGA CD, Super NES, PS1, PS2 and now a PS3 ....

I started to get into computers around 86-87 Horrible black screens with green letters only (APPLE II)... Was a very old PC that was SLOWWWWWW... But it was fun to tinker around with... Then in the mid 90's came my first DELL PC and a start of a vew ERA (playing FPS with a keyboard and mouse) ... From there on I got addicted to PC's and been using, building, fixing, gaming ever since

SoF2, QUAKE, Unreal Tournament were basically the games that I would play on a daily basis.... Countless hours and blisters from too much shooting....

Basically I never hated the PC, it was just the fact that the PC would not give me what I needed if I compared them to consoles between the mid 80's till the mid
90's ....

 

[JofaMang]

As a lover of games, I find my combination of Gaming PC and Ps3 gets me access to all the best titles. I have mostly been a console gamer my whole life, as I grew up in a poor farming household, and didn't own my first computer until I was 16 (Compaq Presario, 233mhz CPU, 8mb of ram, 512mb hdd).

When I was 20ish, Everquest was released, I was hooked, and I found a new passion in making my computer perform better. It was then that a tech savvy roommate taught me the basics on building my own computer, and I have carried that passion far beyond my quashing of MMO addictions, hah.

These days I have found myself leaning towards Console play, but still greatly enjoy gaming on the PC. That might have something to do with Demon's Souls, though. Damn game.