Dark Light
I got my first computer in 1996 (I think) from a family friend when he got a new one from work. It had an Intel 386 processor with a whopping 33 MHz clock speed. It had Windows 3.1 and yes, it was seriously out-dated already. I had two games for it “Digger” and “Bond”.

I had been gaming on consoles for years at this point, more about that in an earlier post How I got started with gaming and My history with Playstation, but let’s get back to PC.

I think the Bond game must have been 007: Licence to Kill, but I’m not sure. I was 11 okay. For years I was sure that “Digger” wasn’t the real name of the other game… well, it was, and as it turns out it still has a community and remakes digger.org

Both of the games had colors… but I had a 13″ black&white CRT-monitor, so I actually saw these games in color for the first time just a couple years ago.

I knew how to start the games, but I didn’t really know how to use it. And at that time we were playing with PlayStation and I had no motivation to learn it. But I had gotten Command & Conquer: Red Alert on PlayStation, that I knew would be better with keyboard and mouse.

Also, a friend had a DOS game Detroit, that we played a lot. If I say it’s a “car manufacturing tycoon”, I think you get the idea what it’s like. We actually played it few times years later with DOSBox emulator on WinXP.

Detroit / 1993 / Impressions Games / Sierra On-Line, Inc.
Funny story, this is a screenshot from a wiki… that I contributed \o/ https://gamicus.gamepedia.com/File:Pc_dos_detroit_by_snakedrone.jpg

A year later I had gotten my hands on a better computer with an Intel 486 processor and Windows 95 … and a color 13″ CRT-monitor, which meant I could play Command & Conquer.

That year we had computer science in middle school where I learned the basics of making websites and I fell in love with coding. I’m not a native English speaker and honestly my motivation to learn English before this wasn’t great. Games and coding are the reason I learned English.

After that, it honestly a blur, there are so many games. I went through Wikipedia’s lists of yearly game releases and here are some of my favorites over the years. (PC only)

1995

  • Command & Conquer
  • Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
  • NHL95
  • Descent
  • Worms

1996

  • Duke Nukem 3D
  • Quake
  • Death Rally
  • Die Hard Trilogy

1997

  • Need for Speed
  • Carmageddon
  • GTA
  • Worms

1998

  • Unreal
  • Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
  • Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six
  • Delta Force
  • Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit
  • Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome
  • Railroad Tycoon II
  • SiN (I played the demo through so many times, never bought the full game)
  • Half-Life
  • Starsiege: Tribes
  • Trespasser

1999

  • Team Fortress
  • Midtown Madness
  • Weird mod called Counter-Strike
  • C&C: Tiberian Sun
  • Homeworld
  • Age of Empires II
  • GTA 2
  • Unreal Tournament
  • SWAT 3

2000

  • Soldier of Fortune
  • MDK2
  • Deus Ex
  • C&C: Red Alert 2
  • Hitman: Codename 47
  • Driver
  • 1nsane

2001

  • Tribes 2
  • Serious Sam
  • Operation Flashpoint
  • Max Payne
  • Civilization III
  • Empire Earth
  • Return to Castle Wolfenstein
  • Red Faction

2002

  • Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
  • GTA III
  • Warcraft III
  • No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy In H.A.R.M.’s Way
  • Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
  • Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
  • Mafia
  • Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
  • Red Faction II

2003

  • SimCity 4
  • Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
  • I.G.I.-2: Covert Strike
  • Freelancer
  • Rise of Nations
  • Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
  • Homeworld 2
  • Command & Conquer: Generals. I never got to play it online, because a friend activated his online account with my key, without asking :/
  • Max Payne 2
  • Call of Duty
  • Need for Speed: Underground
  • GTA: Vice City
  • Bunny hopper, (CS full release)
  • There were some rumors that “Deus Ex: Invisible War” would be released, but never happened. So we don’t talk about that.

2004 the D-Day publisher held a fansite making competition as a part of their release marketing. The game tanked… but I won that fansite competition. I had had few sites before that, but it was the push I needed to start making websites for a living. A path that I’m still on.

  • Delta Force: Black Hawk Down – Team Sabre
  • Unreal Tournament 2004
  • Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
  • Far Cry
  • Painkiller
  • TOCA Race Driver 2
  • Hitman: Contracts
  • Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising
  • Counter-Strike: Source
  • Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault
  • Bejeweled 2
  • Half-Life 2
  • The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
  • Tribes: Vengeance
  • FlatOut
  • GTA: San Andreas

2005 Guild Wars released and for about 5 years every other game is just a fraction of time I played GW… seriously

  • Battlefield 2
  • SWAT 4
  • Worms 4
  • Serious Sam II
  • Quake 4
  • Civilization IV
SnakeDrone Guild Wars
One of my GW characters, commissioned 2011 from the awesome @sabrebash

2006

  • Empire Earth II: The Art of Supremacy
  • The Godfather
  • Hitman: Blood Money
  • Half-Life 2: Episode One
  • Flatout 2
  • Joint Task Force
  • Battlefield 2142. My computer couldn’t handle it well, if it had this might have been the game to draw me out of GW …but it didn’t.

2007

  • Peggle
  • Empire Earth III
  • Unreal Tournament 3
  • Osu!
  • CoD4: Modern Warfare
  • Medal of Honor: Airborne
  • Overlord
  • Half-Life 2: Episode Two. My first Steam game
  • Portal
  • Team Fortress 2

2008

  • World of Goo
  • FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage
  • D.I.P.R.I.P. (standalone Half-life 2 MP mod)

2009

  • The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
  • Overlord II
  • Wolfenstein
  • Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising
  • The Godfather Part II
  • Mirror’s Edge
  • Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box
  • Fuel
  • Trine
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum
  • GTA IV

2010

  • Civilization V
  • Worms Reloaded
  • Dead Rising 2
  • Metro 2033
  • Battlefield: Bad Company 2
  • Just Cause 2
  • Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

I think I’ll end the list here this time. Around 2010, I started to get bored/burned out of Guild Wars and started playing more other games. My brain is already a mush after going through lists of releases for 15 years and the lists get longer and longer. I’m sure I have missed some games and there are many games after this too that I love. Maybe I’ll do another one at some point… 10 years from now 😀

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