Posted December 14, 2015
One thing about 90s PC gaming was that i as all kinda kludgy, at least before Windows 9x set it in order with DirectX. PC wasn't really intended for games, but somehow it became a patchwork of additional (sometimes very expensive) hardware items that filled the gaps.
Want sound from your games? Ok buy a Soundblaster sound card.
Not happy with the quality of the music on your Soundblaster? Ok buy a Roland MT-32 or LAPC-1 MIDI synthesizer which costs an arm and a leg and isn't really designed for gaming, yet gives you godly music in games because for some odd reason PC game developers liked to support it widely, even though only few PC gamers had them.
Then find out a way to hear both your Soundblaster and Roland at the same time, because for the best experience you were supposed to get the music from your Roland but digitized sound effects and speech from the Soundblaster, for those games that supported using them at the same time. E.g. own set of speakers for each sound card, or use an external mixer to mix the sound sources together, or maybe sometimes it was possible to redirect the Roland music to the Line In of your Soundblaster and use its mixer?
Want better 3D graphics with your games? Buy a 3Dfx Voodoo card that sits beside your normal graphics card, and connect them together with a loop cable which will redirect the video from your normal graphics card to the 3Dfx card, and the 3Dfx card will switch the video input based on what you are running.
Add to that the need to know how to edit config.sys and autoexec.bat for certain games, or creating separate boot diskettes... yeah it was all kinda messy, and it took some true dedication to be a PC gamer. Even though PC gaming is far for trouble-free nowadays either, it is much easier than back then.
On the other hand, somehow PC just kept proving the naysayers wrong over and over again, somehow PC was able to meet the new gaming requirements even if was sometimes quite messy and/or costly. Back when the rumors of the first good 3D accelerator cards came (Rendition Verite, 3DFx Voodoo, Matrox something something etc.), I recall some console enthusiast proclaiming that they will never really take off because each 3D card will have its own "standard", and also they proclaimed it would be technically impossible to come up with some kind of universal API standard which would allow a game to work with different graphics cards without direct support.
Yeah at first, on DOS games mostly, each 3D card had to be supported separately (e.g. to have Glide support, or support for Verite...). Yet, later Direct3D and OpenGL pretty much did what that naysayers claimed would be an impossible scenario and an unrealistic pipe dream for PC gamers.
Similarly while PC gamers were getting serious about online gaming with Doom, Duke3D and especially Quake, I recall certain console enthusiast proclaiming online gaming will remain as a niche for nerds, and it will never take off on consoles. His main argument was that e.g. fighting games would always be unplayable online because of the lag, as fighting games require microsecond reflexes and precision all the time. And that alone is the reason why online gaming will not take off, ever.
I wonder if that guy still feels similarly, online gaming isn't mainstream?
Want sound from your games? Ok buy a Soundblaster sound card.
Not happy with the quality of the music on your Soundblaster? Ok buy a Roland MT-32 or LAPC-1 MIDI synthesizer which costs an arm and a leg and isn't really designed for gaming, yet gives you godly music in games because for some odd reason PC game developers liked to support it widely, even though only few PC gamers had them.
Then find out a way to hear both your Soundblaster and Roland at the same time, because for the best experience you were supposed to get the music from your Roland but digitized sound effects and speech from the Soundblaster, for those games that supported using them at the same time. E.g. own set of speakers for each sound card, or use an external mixer to mix the sound sources together, or maybe sometimes it was possible to redirect the Roland music to the Line In of your Soundblaster and use its mixer?
Want better 3D graphics with your games? Buy a 3Dfx Voodoo card that sits beside your normal graphics card, and connect them together with a loop cable which will redirect the video from your normal graphics card to the 3Dfx card, and the 3Dfx card will switch the video input based on what you are running.
Add to that the need to know how to edit config.sys and autoexec.bat for certain games, or creating separate boot diskettes... yeah it was all kinda messy, and it took some true dedication to be a PC gamer. Even though PC gaming is far for trouble-free nowadays either, it is much easier than back then.
On the other hand, somehow PC just kept proving the naysayers wrong over and over again, somehow PC was able to meet the new gaming requirements even if was sometimes quite messy and/or costly. Back when the rumors of the first good 3D accelerator cards came (Rendition Verite, 3DFx Voodoo, Matrox something something etc.), I recall some console enthusiast proclaiming that they will never really take off because each 3D card will have its own "standard", and also they proclaimed it would be technically impossible to come up with some kind of universal API standard which would allow a game to work with different graphics cards without direct support.
Yeah at first, on DOS games mostly, each 3D card had to be supported separately (e.g. to have Glide support, or support for Verite...). Yet, later Direct3D and OpenGL pretty much did what that naysayers claimed would be an impossible scenario and an unrealistic pipe dream for PC gamers.
Similarly while PC gamers were getting serious about online gaming with Doom, Duke3D and especially Quake, I recall certain console enthusiast proclaiming online gaming will remain as a niche for nerds, and it will never take off on consoles. His main argument was that e.g. fighting games would always be unplayable online because of the lag, as fighting games require microsecond reflexes and precision all the time. And that alone is the reason why online gaming will not take off, ever.
I wonder if that guy still feels similarly, online gaming isn't mainstream?
Post edited December 14, 2015 by timppu