Ah, 2nd edition D&D. I really miss the TSR era artwork.

me too. :'(

Ever since seeing the movie The Last Starfighter, I considered 3D space combat games (sims) as some kind of Holy Grail of gaming. If we would ever have such games as depicted in the movie, then gaming would have reached its very pinnacle, or so I thought anyway.

Elite on Commodore 64 and such gave a first taste of that as I remember (I didn't play it until Amiga though), and Amiga had some more lie Starglider 1-2 etc. Later it seemed to be especially PC which delivered on that front, with the Wing Commander series, Descent Freespace etc. I think in the 90s 3D space combat games were one of the more important genres on PC.

That's probably one of the reasons gaming consoles didn't appeal that much to me on the NES/SNES era, as they didn't seem as well geared towards such 3D space combat games. Maybe I am mistaken but that's how I felt. Consoles seemed more about 2D platform jumping games and such. Even Playstation seemed to be behind the PC on that front, even if it had the Colony Wars series (which I found a bit lacking for some reason), ports of some Wing Commander games, Darklight Conflict. Either the culprit was the controller, or maybe Japanese gamers didn't care that much for 3D space combat games...

I am probably not the right person to answer this, since I got to play Computer games in '98, but I remember those last two years of the 90s very well when it comes to video games. I grew up in a small, peaceful town in Germany though, so maybe I got a different experience from everyone else here...

The end of the 90s that I was a part of was the time of Compilation Discs! Lots and lots of random games shoved together into one disc. Those could be games from a single series, kind of like the stuff you still see nowadays. For example, I remember going into a electronics store that had a small video game section, and my father saw (and then bought me) the Monkey Island CD compilation that came with the first three Monkey Island games ( The fourth one wasn't a thing yet ). The more interesting Compilation Discs, though, were the ones that were just full of randomly selected games! My mother used to have a membership at a store that mostly dealt in books but also a small assortment of video games, and every year they would sell a collection of games on one or two discs. My favorite one came with games like some random Game Dev simulator, crappy sports games, city builders and etc. It might sound like a rip-off, but my 6-7 year old self couldn't have been happier about getting 60-80 games in one collection!!

Besides that... Lots of Edutainment Games!! I would say Germany was the king of edutainment, as it had both the excellent American games, as well as a bunch of German-exclusive ones that were, sometimes, creepy as heck! I played some American games like Billi Banni Mathe ( Pretty sure it's called 'Reader Rabbit' in America ) and a few Micky Mouse games, but games like Addy Mathe (a game about an alien that teaches you math, but also allowed you to fly around in his spaceship and build your own room), Loewenzahn (based on a german TV series of the same name) and a bunch of Myst clones like Chemicus (which came much later and scared the heck out of me) were only sold in Germany, as far as I know. It was a great time to be a kid!!

Also, since the internet was still something novel, but advanced enough at that point that even 7 year old children could use it, there were a bunch of awesome websites related to edutainment that I used to visit. Also, in the early 2000s, game devs would start making free-to-download games and offer them on AOL, and it was a blast to play something new but generally low-budget every week/month.

The best part going into the early 2000s was that Computer games were still not all that scary to adults (in Germany at least... The scare began around the mid 2000s), so Elementary School teachers and stuff would let you play semi-educational games like Zoo Tycoon and stuff after you finished doing your school work. It was a greeeeeat time to grow up with a computer as a kid, at least where I grew up.

Really, my most memorable moments were definitely playing Monkey Island 3, edutainment games, Sims (later in 2000), city-builders like Caesar, Gothic (also 2001) and etc. For me, this whole period was defined by a lack of worry, since nobody was really all that scared of me playing Computer games like I mentioned above. Brutal games definitely started to become more prevalent after Doom's success, but for some reason, there was still more kid-friendly stuff to make it seem safe. Store clerks wouldn't look at you like you were a delinquent if you bought a PC game, and surfing the web was considered an educational experience (if you remained safe and used the school's designated search engine).

... As a side note, buying Computer Games in Germany now is a terrifying experience, man! It is harder to buy games than it was to buy cigarrettes or alcohol, I am pretty sure ( i have been living in the U.S for the past four years, but just as I left, it got really insane).

I hope children nowadays still enjoy Computer Games just as much as I did, but I fear that parents just don't seem to care enough to look for nice, kid-friendly games for their kids.

Oh, I forgot to mention... Lot's of cd burning was going on! If one of my friends got a cool new game, they would always be nice enough to make a copy for me. It was great.

Sorry for the long post!! I just have so many wonderful, nostalgic memories ~

Do you guys remember all those interactive multimedia CD's?

Like Encarta, and other encyclopedia.

At some point i was hooked on that.

Sure do. I remember getting Encarta 95 and watching a 20 second grainy video clip of a space shuttle taking off and being completely blown away by it. Now kids get bored waiting a few seconds to stream a 1080p HD video on youtube. How times have changed.

So you just couldn´t put off the joystick ;P

Yeah, but at least the backs of ad pages weren't covered with a special glue that would make you wait for 5 seconds before you could turn to the next page :)
Not a bad thing to get hooked on :) My first one was a Grolier Encyclopedia. For a long time it was my primary source for homework assignments :P

Some of my best memories wer PC gaming in the 90's. Like trying out a Doom WAD that skinned everythig to look like Star Wars. Awesome. Or with buddies and playing Red Alert.

Back in those days a cutscene was a reward for beating a level, it was a progress marker and we savored it.

We mostly hyped ourselves with console releases since PC gaming was and stil is very goddamn expensive.

Getting games to run was a hit miss thing most of the time. I had low standards considering I played games like Tresspasser at a measley 13FPS and thought that was tolerable.

One thing I definitely don't miss is using these damn things to try and set up a LAN network:

I thought video on PC at the time was the most tech ass thing ever. Grainy? Low Res? I didn't even think in those terms back then. Any clips that I could see on the computer were like gold to me.

Now I run HD shit on my big ass TV and use it for a monitor.
Fuck those fucking things! Burn them in shit and fire them into to the sun!

Yeah, at that time.. early 90s, most advance pc can run videos using Xing mpeg player.

Ive watched this sample video like hundred times xD

I start with educational games......

Must have been a lot of weed and wank sessions. Not that I was any different in high school. What? you didn't get a rise at that sniggering mutt? Whatever man.

Never played it but now I know not to pick up the gun...