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.
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
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 😀
