Kids these days don’t know how good they have it!

Man, we had to work for our gaming fun back in the day.

Jo said:
I sometimes feel bad that my nephews’ first game was Fortnite. Makes me feel old. They also don’t get to experience reading the game booklets on the ride home from Walmart. That was a whole vibe.

Yeah, I’d feel bad too if their first game wasn’t something wholesome like Mario. How old were they when they started gaming?

@Kerr
Freddie Fish should be the default first game for everyone!

Sullivan said:
@Kerr
Freddie Fish should be the default first game for everyone!

Absolutely. Freddie Fish, Putt-Putt, and Pajama Sam taught me to click on everything. Those games were secretly hilarious too.

Jo said:
I sometimes feel bad that my nephews’ first game was Fortnite. Makes me feel old. They also don’t get to experience reading the game booklets on the ride home from Walmart. That was a whole vibe.

I remember when Baldur’s Gate 2 came with a manual that was like 200 pages long. It was basically a book!

@Ezri
Yeah, the manual was basically the AD&D 2nd edition player’s guide. Good times.

@Ezri
Falcon 4.0 had a hardcover manual written by an F-16 pilot. It was like 700 pages. I still have mine somewhere!

Nico said:
@Ezri
Falcon 4.0 had a hardcover manual written by an F-16 pilot. It was like 700 pages. I still have mine somewhere!

Spectrum Holobyte manuals were on another level. MicroProse manuals were great too, but Falcon 4.0 was the peak. Also, shoutout to Origin Systems—still have a cloth map from the Ultima series. They really went all out to immerse you before you even started playing.

I remember MPlayer. Played a ton of Quake back then.

Merritt said:
I remember MPlayer. Played a ton of Quake back then.

Ah, ‘Welcome to GameSpy’ memories!

Mullan said:

Merritt said:
I remember MPlayer. Played a ton of Quake back then.

Ah, ‘Welcome to GameSpy’ memories!

GameSpy came after MPlayer for me. Before both, it was DWANGO.

@Merritt
DWANGO was for Doom, right?

Merritt said:
I remember MPlayer. Played a ton of Quake back then.

Didn’t MPlayer have those weird paper bag face avatars?

C&C was everything back then. Can’t believe there was a time when we had to pay by the hour to play online.

Bela said:
C&C was everything back then. Can’t believe there was a time when we had to pay by the hour to play online.

Tiberian Sun and Firestorm were my favorites. There was something magical about those games’ aesthetic.

@Pat
They’re on Steam now, less buggy than the Origin versions. Just replayed them, and wow, those limited-unit missions are brutal.

Bela said:
C&C was everything back then. Can’t believe there was a time when we had to pay by the hour to play online.

I never paid by the hour. We just dialed up directly to a friend’s house. They even included two discs so you could lend one to a friend and play together!

Getting a PCGamer magazine with demo discs was the highlight of my month as a kid. Also, going to the store to pick up a big-box PC game was an event. Steam is great, but I miss physical copies.

I’ve been playing games since the '70s—my first console was Intellivision in 1981. It’s wild to think about how gaming has changed. Back then, the anticipation was real with physical copies, booklets, and manuals. Today, everything is just downloaded instantly. It feels like some of the excitement is missing.

I used to play NetMech (MechWarrior 2) on Kali back in '96. Those were the days.