Reply 40 of 68, by ratfink
- Rank
- Oldbie
I was hooked on PCs around 1986 but because they opened various opportunities for me, not gaming. Programming, stats/OR analysis, economic/simulation models, cellula automata, Byte magazine and the computing column that used to be in Scientific American. All of which is still where my heart is in many ways.
I came to computer gaming (other than an amstrad cpc I learnt to program on that had Oh Mummy and a load of other stuff that was crap, and a 386 from work that had Oh No More Lemmings) thanks mainly to the quake 1 demo and a few other games that came on cover discs back in the day (along with a raw, early release of a new thing called linux which I faffed around with and which in many ways is why I always end up having a linux box somewhere), then buying a playstation thanks to my kids (we bought Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid that first day) and then a secondhand Mac 5200 that came with a pile of cover CDs (Mars Rising, Snood, Barrack became favourites). The children meanwhile started with Gameboys and Pokemon, and Fighting Fantasy (so dad had to join in, try stopping me). So it was very much a miasma of platforms and game types not really PC-centric at all. Warhammer became a thing in our household (the table top game, though most of the time was spent making the models...) and then that curiosity "Warcraft" hmm kinda similar but more fun less gore - and I always said to my kids "I dunno about all that dice-throwing and calculations, that's what computers are for".