SEGA console trying to play intoxicated couldn't win i think i had sonic and a few others but computer games nah only windows shareware because potato
computer sucked think it was a 486 with windows 98FE aussie dialup stinkernet
Nothings changed with internet in aussie land still stinks and costs too much

At that time, I still had a Pentium 133 with an S3 Trio video card. No 3D acceleration for me yet, so I stuck with games that still worked reasonably well on that setup.

I remember playing StarCraft a lot that year, as well as the first two Fallout games. I did try some of the 3D stuff, including Quake 2 and Unreal, but those ran terribly on that system. A year later I got a new PC, so I could finally experience the 3D revolution first hand. In particular, I remember how much better Quake 2 looked with 3D acceleration. The colored lighting was quite impressive, since I hadn't seen anything like that before.

I was probably playing various editions of DOOM (Doom1, Doom2, PLutonia, TNT etc.) under DOS around that time (I played it a LOG) - I probably had a Pentium1 as my main system but would have still had some 386/486s where I might have run DOS (and hence played DOOM) more - it really has been a long time!

Had an AMD K6-2 with a Riva TNT

Played a lot of Half Life from what I remember.

Mainly C&C (and RA with Aftermath) on a Highscreen 200 MMX, 32MB RAM, Cirrus Logic 2MB VGA and Quantum Bigfoot 2.1 GB.

I almost got my parents convinced to buy a Voodoo 2 add-on card. But fl. 500.- was a lot of money.

Cyrix P-200, 48mb ram, Diamond Stealth S220 4mb PCI, Win95

A smart budget build. Because the Cyrix FPU was weak on Quake and the Rendition Verite was weak in mode X DOS games, this is when I heavily transitioned away from DOS games. Basically, the only holdouts were DOS games that supported the Rendition Verite like Descent2, Tomb Raider, and Nascar. I did play a few other non-mode X DOS games like Duke3D , Blood, and Shadow Warrior. This system did play most 3D Windows titles great, games like Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2, Half-Life, Unreal, Outlaws, and Outwars. Quake2 ran ok but I didnt enjoy it.

Red Alert, Quake, NFS (2 or 3?), Grim Fandango if I recall correct. Also Blood, Duke Nukem, Doom 2.

I got my cable broadband connection (A2000 in Amsterdam with a LANcity 1500kbs down/256kbs up connection) in late 97 so I was all in on playing Quake2 on many, many different servers in the Netherlands where I lived back then. I had a lot of hobbies back then, so I maxed out my mainboard with a Pentium MMX 233 and 64MB RAM with a Voodoo 2 plus a GUS PnP. I could play for hours and hours, it was such a great time with so many developments coming after another.

A 233MMX + QDI mobo (that I still have).
32MB of ram
S3

Played Fallout a lot 😀

Total Annihilation, Startrek Academy (multiplayer), command and conquer.
Also, Duke3d, Doom II, Warcraft II, Quake

K6-III 133
64mb ram

I had a Matrox Mystique 220 + Diamond 3D Monster (Voodoo 1) with a Zoltrix sound card on a 233mmx or 200mmx (can't remember). However, I vividly remember playing Moto Racer, Quake 2, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and a gazillion hours on NFS III.

** I just remembered that I replaced my 16bit Zoltrix sound card with a Creative PCI128 later that year... The word "PCI" with the number "128" beside, how bad can it be, right!?! Well, pretty bad... "post-purchase rationalization" didn't kick in for this one.

1998 was the year I discovered ZX Spectrum emulation, so I wasn't playing many PC games at all, but instead playing (and finally completing) Spectrum games I hadn't touched for a decade.

I bought a parallel port adapter that enabled me to connect a tape deck directly to the PC. (However, there was no way of loading 3" disks into the computer, which is a real shame, because it meant I lost all the programs I wrote as a kid.)

I was quite young and there wasn't much extra money in the household at the time, so an Am5x86 machine (incidentally, with an MB-8433UUD inside) with a 1MB Cirrus 5446 SVGA, and one of those ESS 1 something-something 8 sound cards. Pretty boring stuff then, but "ultimate 486" territory now.

I knew my way around DOS because I had picked up the book, Running MS-DOS at a yard sale. That was what made command line make sense. I heard about Commander Keen on the school bus, later ran into it on ftp.cdrom.com, liked it, got parents to buy the full versions around that time, maybe a year before. It was downloadable from DigitalRiver. Steam before Steam. Via that I discovered the other apogee shareware games, the main one being Wacky Wheels.

I played with a lot of other DOS shareware from ftp.cdrom.com, wuarchive.wustl.edu, ftp.simtel.net, ftp.tucows.com and the like. I recall a murder mystery game, not that was interesting in itself, but that came with something called VIEWER.EXE that could display .gif and other formats from DOS. Another game, ThePackRat, had corrupted text on that 486 but correct text on the older DX2-66. It was just an interesting curiosity back then, later I heard that the video BIOS (or maybe system BIOS) reused the space for some old CGA era font for other data, and the game was reading it from that hardcoded location and interpreting whatever was there as those characters. I believe there may be a TSR that fixes this on the 5446. When people ask, what do you do with this old hardware, sometimes it's solve old mysteries like that.

Now... if we were talking "1978" ... I would have been playing the original Crowther and Woods "Adventure" on an IBM 360 mainframe!

My system underwent some upgrades that year, ending up with a QDI PX486P3 with a DX2-80, Trident 9440 VLB, Opti 931 sound card, 20MB RAM, and Western Digital 2635 + 21500 HDDs. (I still have these parts today but the mobo died from battery leakage.) Also had a 14.4 modem. Was playing Warcraft 2, Master of Magic, and some emulated games like Phantasy Star 2 and SMS Ys

'98 I think saw me straining my BEK-439 at 60 Mhz, to run my Cyrix 5x86 at 120, and it was still probably struggling to play Hexen II. NFS SE was somewhat better if it didn't crash out on CD access. Then Colin McRae's Rally, and on the Amiga 1200, probably Worms Directors Cut F1GP and Frontier:EliteII

98 I was driving a pentium 90, IIRC, and it was something cobbled together at a computer show. I loved that stupid computer, I wish I never threw it away! If only I could go back a few decades...🤣.

My favorite games back in those days were doom, quake, descent, and terminal velocity. Yeah, obscure titles, I know 😉

what were you playing

On PC? Mainly shareware and freeware games (shareware CDs); Commercial games on SNES/NES.
DOS: Commander Keen 4, Chess88, Digger, Mission Supernova, Larry, Wing Commander, Monuments of Mars, Packman, Prince of Persia etc.
Plus various German advertisement games; Telekommando 1+2, Helicopter Mission, Abenteuer Europa, Bi-Fi Roll: Action in Hollywood, Die goldene Mähne des Samson etc. more information
Win 3.10 (in Standard Mode): Adventures of MicroMan, WinTrek (all versions), Solar Explorer, Comet Busters, Space Exploration Mission Alpha, Graditor, Fortress, EmPipe, Lander 3 etc.
Win 2.03 (in Real-Mode): Klotz!

what PC spec

Main PC on my wooden desk: 12 MHz 80286, 4 MB RAM, 80 MB Conner HDD (AT-Bus), PAS16 with SCSI CD-ROM drive (double-speed), 1, 44 MB floppy, ATI VGA Wonder with DE9 bus mouse port (on-board)
Peripherals: Creatix 14k4 modem, Mustek handy scanner, HP LaserJet Plus with font cartridge,
Genius Easy Mouse, Commodore mouse pad, CH Joystick, IBM PS/2 monitor (8513 or 5814)

what resolution, settings?

Windows games in 640x480 mainly (Standard VGA)
Some DOS shareware games in 640x480, too: Asteroid, Digger
Some DOS games in EGA 640x350: EgaTrek, CD Man
Other DOS games in 320x200 res

what a great read 😀 Some of you were really up to date, others more 1988 than 1998 but all great memories 😀

Myself i was relatively up to date in 1998 - the PC was a P1 166mmx, 32mb edo ram, windows 95osr2, 2.1gb hdd, and i think a PCI soundcard plus some 1 or maybe 2mb graphics card. I still have it the same, only with 64mb ram now, kinda stored away largely unused though

Back then i would play Duke3d a lot, some doom, rise of the triad and quake and lots of RTS - C&C, red alert, Total Annihilation, Age of Empires, Dark Reign. many of the 3d games that emerged around this time we're beyond my spec and i experienced them all 2-3 years later (on a celeron 500 with glorious tnt2 card )

Then by 2008 i wasn't really playing much new, i was very much into Empire Earth, GTA 3/VC/SA and Unreal Tournament. I never really kept up after the early 2000's and now certainly don't keep up with new things