Cyberdyne wrote:

Bitter end of the DOS era. Everyting old was old and cheap, not "retro" and expensive. But hard drives were bigger. CD-Burners w […]
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Bitter end of the DOS era. Everyting old was old and cheap, not "retro" and expensive.
But hard drives were bigger. CD-Burners were affordable.

And the last 15 years i have the same formula for retro.
ISA based motherboard.
CD/DVD burner.
Largest and most modern hard drive that the motherboard bios can detect and use.

But in reality the most ipressionable years were the 486/Pentium years. But if you have a 250MB hard drive, then you have to make a permanent choice, bunch on dos games, or windows 95 and really nothing more. So no multiboot, or no large game collections.

Yes there was definitely a point in early/mid 486 era where software bloat had exceeded cheap disk capacity, I think '92ish an 80MB drive was a "month's rent" kind of price. But not too many games came on more than 5 disks then, so you might have got 3 big games, windows 3.x, word, 123, crammed on there. Then everything just got bigger and I don't think it was until about 95 we were getting much of a break, then there was a lot of price movement, so that year a 500MB dropped below about half a months rent, and 1.5G was about that price by the following year.

Early 1990s 386 or 486 on the high end. Games were unique and developed by small teams and there was still a sense of a pioneering spirit in terms of all of the software and hardware available at the time. This was also the last era before the internet started taking over and "in person" computer clubs started going the way of the dinosaur.

I also miss the intense smell of egghead software stores, big box software, and sharing floppies with friends.

It was just an interesting time for me, fantasizing about how powerful the pc would eventually become.

Funny thing is that today in a budget PC we have more than I ever imagined, but it doesn't hit the heart the way it used to. Games are either made by gigantic corporations or "indy" devs using ready made engines.. no more writing your own pixel blaster that ended up unique. In the old days you could tell who made what game based on the look and feel. Also, people dont care about software at all anymore, the computer essentially is a terminal once again, connecting to remote mainframes with our browsers and nothing more.

I'm hoping for some kind of new computing renaissance like we had in the 80s and 90s one more time before I croak 😀

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Early 1990s 386 or 486 on the high end. Games were unique and developed by small teams and there was still a sense of a pioneeri […]
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Early 1990s 386 or 486 on the high end. Games were unique and developed by small teams and there was still a sense of a pioneering spirit in terms of all of the software and hardware available at the time. This was also the last era before the internet started taking over and "in person" computer clubs started going the way of the dinosaur.

I also miss the intense smell of egghead software stores, big box software, and sharing floppies with friends.

It was just an interesting time for me, fantasizing about how powerful the pc would eventually become.

Funny thing is that today in a budget PC we have more than I ever imagined, but it doesn't hit the heart the way it used to. Games are either made by gigantic corporations or "indy" devs using ready made engines.. no more writing your own pixel blaster that ended up unique. In the old days you could tell who made what game based on the look and feel. Also, people dont care about software at all anymore, the computer essentially is a terminal once again, connecting to remote mainframes with our browsers and nothing more.

I'm hoping for some kind of new computing renaissance like we had in the 80s and 90s one more time before I croak 😀

Well put. I remember in the mid-to-late 90s going every Friday evening to Egghead, Software Etc and CompUSA to browse and often buy new games with my paycheck. I do miss those days. Your comments about the uniqueness of games that were developed by small teams without prebuilt game engines was spot on!

I really don't miss going to stores to buy games. (Probably because my local one was usually full of sarcastic ST/Amiga kids, and I had a PC.)

Pre internet mid 90's when new genres like FPS (DOOM 1 and 2) and RTS (Dune 2, Warcraft, and C&C) came out. I liked dragging a PC over my friends house with a bunch of other people and laying out the coax configuring novel Netware lite and playing head to head. Game types were new and exciting and you needed to interact with live people. I even liked the late 1980's when we all had a C64 and came together in groups to trade and copy games.

These days the internet makes getting systems and games very easy to buy online or just download them but the social interaction is gone.

Very interesting thread 😀

When I was spend almost of all my free time playing games in my Sinclair ZX Spectrum. (1985 - ...)
Talking about PC era, the times of Pentium MMX was very nice too. I remember games that MDK, Oddworld Odyssey, MotoRacer, Ignition, Pandemonium... (1996 - ... )

And now. I can play any of my favorites retro-games without the pain of hardware requirements!!!

But I only had have 5 "main" computers along my life.

- Sinclair ZX Spectrum
- PC-XT
- 486
- Pentium MMX
- Pentium 4

I say this to be understood that my computers are not corresponding too much with "computing eras".
For example, the Pentium 4 was replaced as main computer only 2 year ago.

The era of FPS 3D mastery with the games such as Half Life and Unreal (Tournament) with their scenery, atmosphere and engines who sparked development of new and exciting games.
Nothing beat the amount of high specs those games presented back then. Up till now it was mostly either graphics or game mechanics. Those games combined it all, graphics, game mechanics (the feel of the game, the way it handles), multiplatform, a whole lot of innovations.

In my opinion games don't need any more graphical complexity than those games were. Needless hyper realistic terrain and scenery. Leave something for the players imagination.

For me the most exciting and fun times were when me and my brother bought the first PC 286 and till the time I started working full time. This was from 1991 to 1999. I mostly collect between these years although I have most stuff till 2012. Why till 2012... since then I mostly use my spare time tinkering with the old stuff - no time for new stuff anymore 🤣

Fun times were even before 1991 since I had Atari 800XL from 1986 but it was mostly playing games... with PC era I begun exploring new stuff... upgrading, hacking, overclocking... reading every PC magazine I could... optimizing DOS, Windows 3.11... installing Windows NT 3.51... this were high school times - yeah fun memories 😁

University times were even more fun... Windows NT 4, Linux, networking... Quake2... LAN parties... and no time for studying 🤣 This ended in 1999 leaving Uni and getting my 1st real full time job. Times change... 😲

Late 90's. I was in my late teen's had a PC for 5 years now so knew what was what rather then been completely lost in all the technical terms.
It was still in that transitional period between DOS/Windows gaming
Most people now had the internet but it was still new and exciting and not always on so still special.
There was a lot of media attention reaching 1GHZ, Y2k, but still for the most part it was geek territory so bit of a sub culture. The "Cool kids" had consoles after all, or did actual physical activities like surf!

clueless1 wrote:

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Early 1990s 386 or 486 on the high end. Games were unique and developed by small teams and there was still a sense of a pioneeri […]
Show full quote

Early 1990s 386 or 486 on the high end. Games were unique and developed by small teams and there was still a sense of a pioneering spirit in terms of all of the software and hardware available at the time. This was also the last era before the internet started taking over and "in person" computer clubs started going the way of the dinosaur.

I also miss the intense smell of egghead software stores, big box software, and sharing floppies with friends.

It was just an interesting time for me, fantasizing about how powerful the pc would eventually become.

Funny thing is that today in a budget PC we have more than I ever imagined, but it doesn't hit the heart the way it used to. Games are either made by gigantic corporations or "indy" devs using ready made engines.. no more writing your own pixel blaster that ended up unique. In the old days you could tell who made what game based on the look and feel. Also, people dont care about software at all anymore, the computer essentially is a terminal once again, connecting to remote mainframes with our browsers and nothing more.

I'm hoping for some kind of new computing renaissance like we had in the 80s and 90s one more time before I croak 😀

Well put. I remember in the mid-to-late 90s going every Friday evening to Egghead, Software Etc and CompUSA to browse and often buy new games with my paycheck. I do miss those days. Your comments about the uniqueness of games that were developed by small teams without prebuilt game engines was spot on!

I was lucky growing up, I lived less then 50 miles form a microcenter. but yes BeginnerGuy's post is well put and is very insightful for the younger folks here that missed out on computers in the 90's. So much has changed.

For me, the entire 1990s era. Everything computers and computer related felt fresh and appealing during that time, with an ever present sense of awe and wonder. I truly believed that things would only get better as time went on; unfortunately, I was proven wrong by the very industry I openly embraced 😒 🙁

I also used to enjoy building PCs, but not anymore - those days are now behind me as well. Retro gaming and reminiscing is what I do for the most part now 😐

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Early 1990s 386 or 486 on the high end. Games were unique and developed by small teams and there was still a sense of a pioneeri […]
Show full quote

Early 1990s 386 or 486 on the high end. Games were unique and developed by small teams and there was still a sense of a pioneering spirit in terms of all of the software and hardware available at the time. This was also the last era before the internet started taking over and "in person" computer clubs started going the way of the dinosaur.

I also miss the intense smell of egghead software stores, big box software, and sharing floppies with friends.

It was just an interesting time for me, fantasizing about how powerful the pc would eventually become.

Funny thing is that today in a budget PC we have more than I ever imagined, but it doesn't hit the heart the way it used to. Games are either made by gigantic corporations or "indy" devs using ready made engines.. no more writing your own pixel blaster that ended up unique. In the old days you could tell who made what game based on the look and feel. Also, people dont care about software at all anymore, the computer essentially is a terminal once again, connecting to remote mainframes with our browsers and nothing more.

I'm hoping for some kind of new computing renaissance like we had in the 80s and 90s one more time before I croak 😀

I was going to write something but your post pretty much said all I wanted to say. I especially agree about personal computers becoming terminals... it seems like such a waste of processing power!

Can't decide between 320x200, 256 color era, or 3dfx era. The former has Ultima, Wing Commander, Gunship 2000, and Falcon 3.0, while the latter has Jane's Longbow 2, F-22 Total Air War, Hostile Waters, and Jane's Fighters Anthology.

My favorite era would have to be the 90's. The availability of different architectures (x86, Motorola 68000, MIPS, PowerPC, PA-RISC, Alpha, SPARC/UltraSPARC), more graphics chips manufacturers and now defunct OSes still were being supported made it a fun time.

Stojke wrote:

The era of FPS 3D mastery with the games such as Half Life and Unreal (Tournament) with their scenery, atmosphere and engines who sparked development of new and exciting games.
Nothing beat the amount of high specs those games presented back then. Up till now it was mostly either graphics or game mechanics. Those games combined it all, graphics, game mechanics (the feel of the game, the way it handles), multiplatform, a whole lot of innovations.

In my opinion games don't need any more graphical complexity than those games were. Needless hyper realistic terrain and scenery. Leave something for the players imagination.

Ever play the original Tribes (pre UT)?

Really any time prior to '96. Once the internet took over things got a lot less interesting for computers. During '95 the internet was still somewhat new and uncommon and exciting of itself, but any further than that and the less interesting it gets.

I just don't like how the internet took away all surprises, everyone knows the date everything comes out and orders online, how it took away owning something, everything is disposable now as we crash head forward into an increasingly terrible subscription world.

Pretty soon as was pointed out you will rent cycles on a remote computer connecting with nothing more than a simple terminal to stream. I'm going to hate that a lot. I'll be the old man with the basement full of old computers just like the rest of you.

That's easy: 1985 to 1995. An amazing decade of innovation right there.

I dont have a specific favorite era as such.
To me, it is the years between the early 80's (83/84) and up to around 2002. That's like two decades in total.

Errius wrote:

I really don't miss going to stores to buy games. (Probably because my local one was usually full of sarcastic ST/Amiga kids, and I had a PC.)

That is actually one of the things I miss most. This was pre-internet, so the only way to learn about games was to buy magazines or visit a software store and browse. And because magazines were only published monthly, you could get the "scoop" on some games by regularly stopping into game stores. Being able to hold and read over a big box game was pretty amazing too. I'd immediately go to the System Requirements label before reading the rest of the box. 😊

Yep, I miss stepping into a computer software store and pick up that new big box from the shelf, and look at the promotional words... even if I'm not buying, it's nice to just read them.

Also loved heavier boxes... usually they come with thick manuals, and other paraphernalia.

The flight sim boxes by Microprose... or even the Falcon 3.0 box with a manual that looks like a mini phone directory.