What PC Games Did You Play as a Child?

[YoungBlade]

With all the talk of the PC gaming industry going downhill with the latest AAA releases, I've been thinking about old games. I played a ton of games when I was a child. Not all were amazing masterpieces - most I only remember fondly due to nostalgia googles. Here is as complete a list of the PC games I played as a kid as I can give - this is all that I can remember and I think it's everything:

 

Populous: The Beginning, Caesar III, Age of Empires II, Lego Island, Shockwave Assault, Battleship, Robert E. Lee's Civil War General, The Superman Activity Center, The Batman Activity Center, Fisher Price ABCs, Fisher Price 123s, Fisher Price Great Adventures Pirate Ship, Fisher Price Dream Dollhouse, Reader Rabbit's Kindergarten, Math Blaster in Search of Spot, Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo, Putt-Putt Dog-on-a-Stick, Pajama Sam There's No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside, Pajama Sam Sock Works, Backyard Baseball, Backyard Baseball 2000, The Sims, The Sims Livin' Large, Sim Tower, Sim Town, Sim City, Sim Coaster, Freddie Fish and The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds, Freddi Fish and Luther's Maze Madness, Spy Fox in Dry Cereal, Play-Doh Creations, Chessmaster, Star Wars Dark Forces, The Muppets Treasure Island, Chex Quest, and Hoyle Battling Ships and War

 

All of those are games that I sunk hours into as a child, some way more than others, but all of them I put at least enough time into to remember them distinctly 20+ years later.

 

Does anyone here have some of the more obscure games on this list in common? I'm sure plenty of folks here have played AoE II and The Sims, but what about Shockwave Assault or Play-Doh Creations?

[palisader225]

My first experiences with PC gaming were at an after-school place that had either a windows 2000 or XP PC. Played hours of Oregon Trail, Pajama Sam, Freddie Fish, Lego Island, Lego Racers, and Backyard Baseball.

 

Had a clunky HP Laptop w/ Vista that I wanted to play Spore on after seeing this whole Nat Geo Documentary about it "How To Build A Better Being". Played some Making History: The calm and the storm on that as well, probably my gateway game into Hearts of Iron and Paradox GS games in general.

 

I'm really envious of how easy it was for younger me to be impressed/engaged by games, definitely spoiled these days 

[aisle9]

Off the top of my head, from infancy through, I dunno, 12?

 

B-17 Flying Fortress

Silent Service II

Sim City 2000

Roller Coaster Tycoon

Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 (yup, I found my dad's folder)

Amnesia

Think Quick (this game is irritatingly hard as an adult)

Reader Rabbit

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Comanche 3

Fighters Anthology

F-19 Stealth Fighter

Sim Copter

and of course...Multi-Player Battletech: Solaris

[Inception9269]

[bezza...]

4 hours ago, Inception9269 said:

i acculy picked this game up on disk fr cheap a few months ago idk y i did im 15 and just had the urge to get it. probbably played it fr a few hours.

[John Reactor]

My first gaming experience was on Timex Sinclair TC 2048.
My favourite games from that era ware (not in any particular order):

Bomb Jack
Green Beret
Barbarian
Ms. Pac-Man
Commando
Space Invaders
H.E.R.O.

And many others.

 

Damn. I`m old

[GamerMoment]

Unreal Tournament (1999), Midtown Madness, Half-Life (for 30 seconds until it scared me shitless), Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit (GOATed game) Sims, and a whole bunch of DOS games that were loaded on a floppy disk. 

[emothxughts]

The Command & Conquer series, especially Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2 and Generals and their respective expansion packs. Come to think of it, do kids these days even know what an "expansion pack" is?

[nigelxxx]

you will laugh at this  i am 66 years old so no real games as a kid but i was a big kid when i hit 35 and got my 1st pc and had to install windows from 10 floppy disks it took ages and then a 56k modem was top draw lol 

 

the first proper game i played was Microsoft flight and that was 25 floppy disks (i still have them somewhere ) but now i am into COD all and yes i still play Microsoft flight but that was a 105 gig download  if that was able to download 1st time it would have taken over a month to download if no one used the phone in that time the times i was downloading and some one picked up the phone to use it i had to start over lol 

[DeerDK]

Best memories as a kid goes to Red Alert 1, also Crimson Skies, Settlers 2 and 3, Morrowind, Heroes of might and magic 1-3 and Warcraft 2.

Half life and CS are also grate but came a bit later 

[Montana One-Six]

Started with Age of Empires, Stronghold, Conflict Desert Strom, Counter Strike 1.5 and 1.6, Tactical Ops and some racing games in the early 2000s.

Around 2005 I got into Battlefield. First Vietnam and a bit later Battlefield 2. The best memories I have about gaming to this day still are from Battlefield Vietnam LAN sessions.

 

[DeerDK]

On 5/14/2023 at 7:41 PM, emothxughts said:

The Command & Conquer series, especially Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2 and Generals and their respective expansion packs. Come to think of it, do kids these days even know what an "expansion pack" is?

It morphed into DLC

[steelfoxy]

Age of Mythology and Diablo II when i was 4, nope there was no adult to supervise me

[Stahlmann]

I'm still playing most of my favourite childhood games every now and then. Some of which are:

 

- Battle Realms

- Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth

- Empire Earth

- Age of Empires 2

- America - No peace beyond the Line

- Siege of Avalon

- Clonk Planet

[BetteBalterZen]

My favourite childhood games was: 

Motorcross Madness 2 on PC
Halo 1, 2, 3 on Xbox

GTA Vice City, San Andreas and IV on Xbox, PC

[xAcid9]

It's the DOS/W3.11 era for me. 

Desert Strike

Prince Of Persia 

Sensible Soccer

Battle Chess
Doom
Lemming
 

[Lenovich]

I joined PC gaming in best possible era. In mid 90s.

 

Favorite ones:

Dungeon keeper

Quake

Diablo

Fallout

Age of empires

StarCraft

Heroes of Might and Magic II

Screamer 2

Microsoft Flight Simulator 98

F-117

G-nome

 

What a time. Yes in this specific time, in my country we do not have licensed games(almost) only pirated versions for $2 or $1.5 for CD

[cretsiah]

on an Apple iic (2c) 5-1/4 inch floppy disc

- Moon Patrol

- sailing ( cant remember the exact name )

- driving game ( cant remember the exact name )

- space invaders

[cretsiah]

On 5/15/2023 at 3:41 AM, emothxughts said:

The Command & Conquer series, especially Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2 and Generals and their respective expansion packs. Come to think of it, do kids these days even know what an "expansion pack" is?

think they would equate that too DLC now 

[cretsiah]

On 5/15/2023 at 7:13 AM, nigelxxx said:

you will laugh at this  i am 66 years old so no real games as a kid but i was a big kid when i hit 35 and got my 1st pc and had to install windows from 10 floppy disks it took ages and then a 56k modem was top draw lol 

 

the first proper game i played was Microsoft flight and that was 25 floppy disks (i still have them somewhere ) but now i am into COD all and yes i still play Microsoft flight but that was a 105 gig download  if that was able to download 1st time it would have taken over a month to download if no one used the phone in that time the times i was downloading and some one picked up the phone to use it i had to start over lol 

aahhh the days where pausable download managers were a god send

[OU812]

Doom

Quake

X Wing

Tie Fighter

Mech warrior 2

MW2:merc

MW2:GBL

Air Warrior 2

Dark Forces

Dark Forces 2 Jedi Knight

C&C

C&C Red alert

 

[Lingwendil]

Terminal Velocity

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom menace

Deadlock: Planetary Conquest

Emulation for SNES, GB (a bunch, really)

American McGee's Alice

Half Life

Doom

Pirahna Panic

Day of the Tentacle

Taco Bell: Tasty Temple Challenge

 

[QuantumSingularity]

My first touch with PC gaming was with NFS 3 and Quake 2. After that came Age of Empires, StarCraft, Half-Life, Delta Force, Carmageddon 2, Unreal Tournament, SiN, Legacy of Kain, Soul Reaver, NFS4, NFS5, C&C Red Alert and C&C Generals. To this day we do Quake 2 matches and it's by far the best fun we have in a multiplayer game.

[Mark Kaine]

I was always a console gamer so, uh, donkey kong, pacman, pong (on the actual original hardware) Sonic, Fzero, Another world...  my first pc game was probably 4d stunts car and various demos like midtown madness,  some really old flight sim... in irak and you had to land the fighter jet yourself and stuff, that was kinda fun and more involving as Ace Combat for sure even though the graphics sucked...

 

ps: my friends even managed to snag a Silicone Graphics "PC"... we tried to get any games running over the weekend but no dice, no idea what happened afterwards with it , but it did actually have cool (demo) graphics lol...

 

We thought we were gonna play real life Jurassic Park on it or something,  but yeah, no...   

[gen_angry]

A lot of 'Legend of the Red Dragon' on the local BBSes . I've been meaning to re-make my own telnet BBS but it's an awful lot of work and well... I'm lazy. For single player games, I spent some real time with 'Wizard's Castle', '4D Stunts', a buttload of Tetris, and some of the EGA platformers like Commander Keen and Duke Nukum.

 

Later on in high school, I got into Command and Conquer Red Alert, Quake III Arena, Diablo 1 and 2, and went from there.