What made you take the leap to PC?

My dad got me started in the 90s with DOS gaming, and I've never stopped PC gaming since. I prefer the type of games available to me on PC, I like gaming at my desk with a mouse and keyboard, and I also enjoy being able to use my computer for more than just gaming.

I remember always going to computer fairs with my dad to look at the new games (sorry dad, I know I never paid you back for the copy of Outlaws and Simpsons Virtual Springfield)
 
I had played various PC games here and there as a kid, mostly in school, but I think the first game that really opened my eyes to what PC could offer was the game TIE fighter. It blew my mind as to what was possible, having only played stuff like my NES before that. Then Diablo hit, and a guy my dad worked with lent me his CD so I could install the shareware version. Got into a modding community and haven't looked back. Diablo was the thing that really cemented me in the gaming world, it was my first introduction to online gaming in general and helped me discover my passion for it.
 
I took the dive with a ''gaming pc'' back in 2014 or so (gtx980 just came out i believe). The biggest reason for me was how games looked on GSYNC at 60 FPS, i saw it at a friends place and decided i wanted to play games that way.

My father had a gateway 2000 in the 90s which was capable of playing some games, ie Sierra Games and DOS games, another desktop with no pc gaming ability whatsoever for college up until 2010 before it burnt out from all the downloading of music and movies it was doing up until then lol, or so and spent the 4 years after that with a labtop (moved around a lot).

One big thing i heard being a console player for so long was that the graphics were better on pc, but being someone who didnt really care about graphics back then nor never had the money to build an expensive rig for gaming, i put it off.

Then i saw how great games were becoming, not only in a graphic sense, but how fast they would load on pc and how much bigger games were becoming. After reading about space and speed and how its so much faster and more room on a pc, i knew that the best way to get my gaming fix was from a powerful PC. So in 2014/2016 i built 2 high end rigs that are still used today. Haven't played on a console since, but i still use a controller for some games lol.
 
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I like to play all genres of video game on console or PC or anywhere. I just like playing games in general. Sports, pool, board games, whatever. In the 90's as a kid I used to do some play by mail games. one was called Monster Island. Thats play by snail mail. Turn turnaround was 8 days and it cost 2GBP a turn :p

It was a sort of MMORPG (without the 'O') where you played a monster shipwrecked on an island and had to explore, craft, fight and level up join a guild etc. You communicated with other players by mail too. At the time I used squared graph paper and different colour pencils and symbols to make maps of where I had explored on the island. There were ruins you could explore to find items and other landmarks it was good to chart. There was no in game map available to player at all, so it was all player created as far as I remember.

Someone had written a program called MIME, thats Monster Island Map Editor. It was available for PC and at the time I only had an Atari ST and an original Gameboy.

I started saving for a PC to make maps for a play by mail RPG :D By the time I had saved the money to buy a fairly modest one at the time I had gone off of Monster Island. I'd been playing a lot of Doom 2 at my mates house, and Command an Conquer had just been released.
 

Sarafan

Community Contributor
My journey with video games started on some weird clone of Atari 2600. It looked very similar, but didn't support cartridges. It had a few fixed games that you could run by restarting the console. :) Then it was famous in my part of the world Pegasus, which was a clone of NES. PC was a natural step forward. I played lots of PC games on my cousin's PC and couldn't imagine any other platform to jump on. I got my first PC in 2000 and after four major upgrades I stick to the platform since then. :)
 
I've always been a pc gamer. Started with an amstrad when i was 4, moved onto an amiga when i was 5 and had that till 1999 when i switched to a proper PC. i did do some gaming prior to that around 3 years before but those were dark days and games either worked or just didn't.

Later on in my life i would pick up handheld gaming and i did have an xbox. The main reason pc gamer? It was the only way i could do work and play on the same device. Initially my dad bought a PC expecting us to learn to use it for education. Well, didn't really happen until the proper PC days and we used it as an excuse to play games instead.
 
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When I took the leap, I had no choice as consoles such as Playstation and Nintendo weren't really available that much here in India in the late 90s. And even when they were, the games were ridiculously expensive compared to PC games. In 2018, my 2012-assembled PC was struggling to play latest games so I bought a PS4 with the aim of moving to consoles for the convenience of it all. But by 2020, I began missing the cutting edge and many conveniences of PC gaming and soon enough, went for a complete upgrade of my old kit and here I am.
 
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I don't remember what for, but my parents once promised my brother they would buy him either a PlayStation or a CD-reader if he did something. Then they slightly manipulated him into picking the CD-reader, as they weren't big fans of gaming and the CD-reader could be useful for other stuff too.

My brother became quite adept at working with the computer, so he eventually figured out how to pirate games. While we did eventually buy a GameCube together, we hardly got any games for it as they were quite expensive compared to pirating games on the PC. A few years later we also got a Wii that I managed to brick trying to get pirated games to run on it.

Somewhere in my late teens I developed a set of morals and stopped pirating games entirely, but by then I was so used to gaming on a PC that I never considered getting a console.

And now I have such a big collection of video games, and such a big backlog of games, that switching to a console doesn't make sense.
 
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Brian Boru

King of Munster
Moderator
Always a PC gamer since mid-80s. I've always needed a PC for work since then, so it never made sense to consider a console—I've worked from home since '90.

My first electronic game early 80s was that 4-in-a-row game. I got a dirt cheap Spectravideo to play around with this new programming thing, and of course what better program to play around with than a game? The machine was like a fat keyboard, plugged into the TV for output and input came from tapes in a cassette player.

Only source of software I knew of was programs printed in magazines. Imagine the joy of typing them into the machine. Imagine checking line by lie when the danged thing refused to run. Imagine then waiting a month for the errata in the next edition!

That lit enough of a fire to make me switch jobs to a hardware—and some software—manufacturer, where I learned a lot about the whole computer industry. The original Prince of Persia opened my eyes to the possibilities for gaming, and I was cemented into the PC world by Wolfenstein 3D and the great RTS franchises of the later 90s.

My main genres are strategy & open-world shooters, so again a console would make no sense. I also dabble in little indie games and also enjoy a good few casual games, neither of which would be available on console.
Got into a modding community
I suppose the biggest reason to play PC for me is the mods. Those guys do some incredible work, and for me have extended the playability of favorites, plus made at least one big fav playable at all. Thank you DP and all your colleagues!
 
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I've always been super into free PC games. Newgrounds and free games wherever I could find them.

But after I played a few games on Steam... well, now I have a giant Steam library. I really don't want any competitors. Sorry Ubisoft, Epic Games Store, and EA. Please disappear from the market lol.
 

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