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Here goes. I'm gonna swallow my pride and say it: I'm jealous of PC gamers.
When I got my PC, I was assured it was top of the range stuff, and it darn well better have been seeing as it cost over a grand. To let you get a sense of how long ago this was, along with the PC I bought the brand new Fifa 97. Now I've been sat at this computer for what must be months, maybe even running into years, be it slaving over the evil program spawned by Satan that they call 'Microsoft Works', doodling in MS Paint or even playing Fifa game after Fifa game. Back then I was about 14, and didn't have any consoles. Eventually I got an N64, and now I have a PS2...but the PC was my only gaming outlet then. I was more than happy with Fifa 97, and then with Fifa 98, even Fifa 99. They all ran smoothly, although not as pretty as the magazine screenshots taken from a newer, faster, better equipped computer.
I also bought games like Tomb Raider and Theme Hospital along the way, but my favourite thing would have to be Championship Manager. Anyone who's played the game loves it (and those who haven't played it are obviously big pansies that like bunnies and knitting), and when I got my first installment around the start of the '98 season, I was ecstatic. I didn't mind the fact it took a few minutes to begin a new game or to generate a new season, it was a brilliant game! Then number 3 came out, and the performance dipped significantly. Using only one league, it still forced me to bring a good book with me if I wanted to play CM, reading a few pages at a time as the rest of the English league fixtures played themselves out.
By the time the last game was out, I'd pretty much given up on PC gaming. I only bothered with it because I knew it wouldn't have any graphics. It helped that Sports Interactive lets you only use one background screen instead of dozens, and a small database rather than the horrificly huge behemoth of names and numbers. I got through one season as Arsenal and uninstalled it in disgust. Nowadays I'm lucky to load up Minesweeper if I have an internet window. Bear in mind I only got connected about two years ago - before, all I could do was weep in depsair as the computer screen froze on the transfer status of Robbie Savage.
Think about it. I've had the PC for what, five, six years? It started out all in a rather fetching black, but now I've got a replacement screen, new floppy and compact disk drives, as well as a CD-RW and another hard drive. At a glance, my PC's stats are: Pentium II 150mhz processor (yes, 150, not 1500), 32MB RAM (which is why I'm experiencing slow down just typing this and chatting to a friend on MSN Messenger), a 2GB hard drive (explaining my frequent deletion of MP3s and BMPs) and no graphics card, unless somebody sneaked one in their. I can't fathom how I managed to start Fifa 2000 up, even if it looked worse than Fifa 97.
I've read about Half-Life with great interest but have never owned it, simply because seeing a demo of it run on my PC almost made me throw up. Choppy, grey, blocky, ugly...any number of negative superlatives could be used. CounterStrike is the greatest online shooter ever, so they say, but even though it's long since been deserted by the die-hards thanks to headshot hitboxes as big as watermelons, I still never got to play it. Firstly because I didn't get the net until so late and secondly, because by the time I DID get it my PC was outperformed several times over by most computers. I've looked wistfully at the back of boxes for The Sims, seeing all it needs is about 300mhz of juice...but I've only got 150. I couldn't even run South Park Rally, and we all know how old that is.
So, what did I do? I got consoles. The N64 gave me GoldenEye to combat Half-Life, and South Park Rally to...well, it gave me South Park Rally. With my PS2 I could have Half-Life, Unreal Tournament and a few others, not to mention forthcoming titles like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and even The Sims. I'm happy with my next gen selection...I've got Vice City, Ratchet and Clank and Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth to look forward to, as well as Pro Evolution Soccer 2, TimeSplitters 2 and ICO to play right now. Thing is...have I played them online? Theoretically I could do it with Tony Hawk's...but then, I could do it with Worms. But I want to be on a fragfest, or in a lightsaber battle. Rather than UT2003 and Jedi Knight 2 I get SOCOM and Twisted Metal in what Sony promises to be 'sometime in 2003, maybe'. It's just not right.
So, imagine my excitement when my parents decided to get the computer done up. My dad recently left for Peru on business, and when he comes back we're going to fix it up. I asked my mum how much she thought it would cost when I got the Special Reserve club magazine, and she guessed around £700. Well from my new favoourite people SR I can get 128MB of RAM and a 2000mhz Intel processor for £150, to make my PC run nice and quickly. Add another £150 on for a Creative 3D Blaster 4 TI 4200, and I've got a full gaming PC ready to run the newest stuff for £300 squid, not including installation costs. Of course, we happen to have a 20GB hard drive lying around (long-ish and boring story) so we'll finally get round to swapping that in and boom! My PC no longer sucks harder than a 15 year old heroin addict standing on the street corner in Soho!
Championship Manager 4 comes out in February. Rather than staring wistfully at the specs, I'll be watching it run like the clappers as I steer the Goon Army to title glory. I seem to recall a debate on the boards I had recently rubbishing PCs and promoting consoles. Really, I guess I was just jealous. I've never played an RPG, I've never played a FPS in multiplayer with more than eight players, and I've never played a new game that isn't made up of facts and figures for about three years. I don't hate PC gaming, I love it, and I'll love to be a part of it. It's the fact that the hardware needs constant updating that turns so many people away. It's an expensive habit, even more so than keeping a console stocked up with peripherals and games, but I'm sure that it'll be well worth it. With consoles, developers have to work to guidelines but on PCs, you can just be lazy and leave the players to pick up the bill for getting their machine up to speed. I guess by the end of November I'll cease to be one of us and start being one of them...but I think that really, everyone should save up and join me.
For the price of a couple of Playstation 2s, you can have a huge library of deep, complex and darn right fun games to play. For a couple of years, at least.
Thanks for reading.
-El Blokey
When I got my PC, I was assured it was top of the range stuff, and it darn well better have been seeing as it cost over a grand. To let you get a sense of how long ago this was, along with the PC I bought the brand new Fifa 97. Now I've been sat at this computer for what must be months, maybe even running into years, be it slaving over the evil program spawned by Satan that they call 'Microsoft Works', doodling in MS Paint or even playing Fifa game after Fifa game. Back then I was about 14, and didn't have any consoles. Eventually I got an N64, and now I have a PS2...but the PC was my only gaming outlet then. I was more than happy with Fifa 97, and then with Fifa 98, even Fifa 99. They all ran smoothly, although not as pretty as the magazine screenshots taken from a newer, faster, better equipped computer.
I also bought games like Tomb Raider and Theme Hospital along the way, but my favourite thing would have to be Championship Manager. Anyone who's played the game loves it (and those who haven't played it are obviously big pansies that like bunnies and knitting), and when I got my first installment around the start of the '98 season, I was ecstatic. I didn't mind the fact it took a few minutes to begin a new game or to generate a new season, it was a brilliant game! Then number 3 came out, and the performance dipped significantly. Using only one league, it still forced me to bring a good book with me if I wanted to play CM, reading a few pages at a time as the rest of the English league fixtures played themselves out.
By the time the last game was out, I'd pretty much given up on PC gaming. I only bothered with it because I knew it wouldn't have any graphics. It helped that Sports Interactive lets you only use one background screen instead of dozens, and a small database rather than the horrificly huge behemoth of names and numbers. I got through one season as Arsenal and uninstalled it in disgust. Nowadays I'm lucky to load up Minesweeper if I have an internet window. Bear in mind I only got connected about two years ago - before, all I could do was weep in depsair as the computer screen froze on the transfer status of Robbie Savage.
Think about it. I've had the PC for what, five, six years? It started out all in a rather fetching black, but now I've got a replacement screen, new floppy and compact disk drives, as well as a CD-RW and another hard drive. At a glance, my PC's stats are: Pentium II 150mhz processor (yes, 150, not 1500), 32MB RAM (which is why I'm experiencing slow down just typing this and chatting to a friend on MSN Messenger), a 2GB hard drive (explaining my frequent deletion of MP3s and BMPs) and no graphics card, unless somebody sneaked one in their. I can't fathom how I managed to start Fifa 2000 up, even if it looked worse than Fifa 97.
I've read about Half-Life with great interest but have never owned it, simply because seeing a demo of it run on my PC almost made me throw up. Choppy, grey, blocky, ugly...any number of negative superlatives could be used. CounterStrike is the greatest online shooter ever, so they say, but even though it's long since been deserted by the die-hards thanks to headshot hitboxes as big as watermelons, I still never got to play it. Firstly because I didn't get the net until so late and secondly, because by the time I DID get it my PC was outperformed several times over by most computers. I've looked wistfully at the back of boxes for The Sims, seeing all it needs is about 300mhz of juice...but I've only got 150. I couldn't even run South Park Rally, and we all know how old that is.
So, what did I do? I got consoles. The N64 gave me GoldenEye to combat Half-Life, and South Park Rally to...well, it gave me South Park Rally. With my PS2 I could have Half-Life, Unreal Tournament and a few others, not to mention forthcoming titles like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and even The Sims. I'm happy with my next gen selection...I've got Vice City, Ratchet and Clank and Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth to look forward to, as well as Pro Evolution Soccer 2, TimeSplitters 2 and ICO to play right now. Thing is...have I played them online? Theoretically I could do it with Tony Hawk's...but then, I could do it with Worms. But I want to be on a fragfest, or in a lightsaber battle. Rather than UT2003 and Jedi Knight 2 I get SOCOM and Twisted Metal in what Sony promises to be 'sometime in 2003, maybe'. It's just not right.
So, imagine my excitement when my parents decided to get the computer done up. My dad recently left for Peru on business, and when he comes back we're going to fix it up. I asked my mum how much she thought it would cost when I got the Special Reserve club magazine, and she guessed around £700. Well from my new favoourite people SR I can get 128MB of RAM and a 2000mhz Intel processor for £150, to make my PC run nice and quickly. Add another £150 on for a Creative 3D Blaster 4 TI 4200, and I've got a full gaming PC ready to run the newest stuff for £300 squid, not including installation costs. Of course, we happen to have a 20GB hard drive lying around (long-ish and boring story) so we'll finally get round to swapping that in and boom! My PC no longer sucks harder than a 15 year old heroin addict standing on the street corner in Soho!
Championship Manager 4 comes out in February. Rather than staring wistfully at the specs, I'll be watching it run like the clappers as I steer the Goon Army to title glory. I seem to recall a debate on the boards I had recently rubbishing PCs and promoting consoles. Really, I guess I was just jealous. I've never played an RPG, I've never played a FPS in multiplayer with more than eight players, and I've never played a new game that isn't made up of facts and figures for about three years. I don't hate PC gaming, I love it, and I'll love to be a part of it. It's the fact that the hardware needs constant updating that turns so many people away. It's an expensive habit, even more so than keeping a console stocked up with peripherals and games, but I'm sure that it'll be well worth it. With consoles, developers have to work to guidelines but on PCs, you can just be lazy and leave the players to pick up the bill for getting their machine up to speed. I guess by the end of November I'll cease to be one of us and start being one of them...but I think that really, everyone should save up and join me.
For the price of a couple of Playstation 2s, you can have a huge library of deep, complex and darn right fun games to play. For a couple of years, at least.
Thanks for reading.
-El Blokey
BEARDS. wrote:
> You need a motherboard to go with that, and a nice large heatsink and
> fan, and 256MB more RAM at least (personally I always like to take the
> procesor speed and quarter it to find a nice RAM level.), and a
> soundcard, and a new version of windows as I doubt anything beyond 98
> will run on your current one. And possibly a new monitor, as your old
> one would probably struggle with high resolutions. And probably
> various other things.
Yeah, I found out about the motherboard later, £60 for the appropriate Intel one. The monitor is only a few months old, and it has far higher resolutions than I use now...another sound card would probably be about £40. I have no idea about the RAM though, I'll find out later in the week. How much is needed nowadays?
> You need a motherboard to go with that, and a nice large heatsink and
> fan, and 256MB more RAM at least (personally I always like to take the
> procesor speed and quarter it to find a nice RAM level.), and a
> soundcard, and a new version of windows as I doubt anything beyond 98
> will run on your current one. And possibly a new monitor, as your old
> one would probably struggle with high resolutions. And probably
> various other things.
Yeah, I found out about the motherboard later, £60 for the appropriate Intel one. The monitor is only a few months old, and it has far higher resolutions than I use now...another sound card would probably be about £40. I have no idea about the RAM though, I'll find out later in the week. How much is needed nowadays?
You need a motherboard to go with that, and a nice large heatsink and fan, and 256MB more RAM at least (personally I always like to take the procesor speed and quarter it to find a nice RAM level.), and a soundcard, and a new version of windows as I doubt anything beyond 98 will run on your current one. And possibly a new monitor, as your old one would probably struggle with high resolutions. And probably various other things.
Bump
I didn't read it but err... I'm watching T.V. which more exciting by tenfold even when it's on Cartoon Network ( *shivers*)
My girlfriend's little brother watches it 24/7 and he's 11!
My girlfriend's little brother watches it 24/7 and he's 11!
Here goes. I'm gonna swallow my pride and say it: I'm jealous of PC gamers.
When I got my PC, I was assured it was top of the range stuff, and it darn well better have been seeing as it cost over a grand. To let you get a sense of how long ago this was, along with the PC I bought the brand new Fifa 97. Now I've been sat at this computer for what must be months, maybe even running into years, be it slaving over the evil program spawned by Satan that they call 'Microsoft Works', doodling in MS Paint or even playing Fifa game after Fifa game. Back then I was about 14, and didn't have any consoles. Eventually I got an N64, and now I have a PS2...but the PC was my only gaming outlet then. I was more than happy with Fifa 97, and then with Fifa 98, even Fifa 99. They all ran smoothly, although not as pretty as the magazine screenshots taken from a newer, faster, better equipped computer.
I also bought games like Tomb Raider and Theme Hospital along the way, but my favourite thing would have to be Championship Manager. Anyone who's played the game loves it (and those who haven't played it are obviously big pansies that like bunnies and knitting), and when I got my first installment around the start of the '98 season, I was ecstatic. I didn't mind the fact it took a few minutes to begin a new game or to generate a new season, it was a brilliant game! Then number 3 came out, and the performance dipped significantly. Using only one league, it still forced me to bring a good book with me if I wanted to play CM, reading a few pages at a time as the rest of the English league fixtures played themselves out.
By the time the last game was out, I'd pretty much given up on PC gaming. I only bothered with it because I knew it wouldn't have any graphics. It helped that Sports Interactive lets you only use one background screen instead of dozens, and a small database rather than the horrificly huge behemoth of names and numbers. I got through one season as Arsenal and uninstalled it in disgust. Nowadays I'm lucky to load up Minesweeper if I have an internet window. Bear in mind I only got connected about two years ago - before, all I could do was weep in depsair as the computer screen froze on the transfer status of Robbie Savage.
Think about it. I've had the PC for what, five, six years? It started out all in a rather fetching black, but now I've got a replacement screen, new floppy and compact disk drives, as well as a CD-RW and another hard drive. At a glance, my PC's stats are: Pentium II 150mhz processor (yes, 150, not 1500), 32MB RAM (which is why I'm experiencing slow down just typing this and chatting to a friend on MSN Messenger), a 2GB hard drive (explaining my frequent deletion of MP3s and BMPs) and no graphics card, unless somebody sneaked one in their. I can't fathom how I managed to start Fifa 2000 up, even if it looked worse than Fifa 97.
I've read about Half-Life with great interest but have never owned it, simply because seeing a demo of it run on my PC almost made me throw up. Choppy, grey, blocky, ugly...any number of negative superlatives could be used. CounterStrike is the greatest online shooter ever, so they say, but even though it's long since been deserted by the die-hards thanks to headshot hitboxes as big as watermelons, I still never got to play it. Firstly because I didn't get the net until so late and secondly, because by the time I DID get it my PC was outperformed several times over by most computers. I've looked wistfully at the back of boxes for The Sims, seeing all it needs is about 300mhz of juice...but I've only got 150. I couldn't even run South Park Rally, and we all know how old that is.
So, what did I do? I got consoles. The N64 gave me GoldenEye to combat Half-Life, and South Park Rally to...well, it gave me South Park Rally. With my PS2 I could have Half-Life, Unreal Tournament and a few others, not to mention forthcoming titles like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and even The Sims. I'm happy with my next gen selection...I've got Vice City, Ratchet and Clank and Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth to look forward to, as well as Pro Evolution Soccer 2, TimeSplitters 2 and ICO to play right now. Thing is...have I played them online? Theoretically I could do it with Tony Hawk's...but then, I could do it with Worms. But I want to be on a fragfest, or in a lightsaber battle. Rather than UT2003 and Jedi Knight 2 I get SOCOM and Twisted Metal in what Sony promises to be 'sometime in 2003, maybe'. It's just not right.
So, imagine my excitement when my parents decided to get the computer done up. My dad recently left for Peru on business, and when he comes back we're going to fix it up. I asked my mum how much she thought it would cost when I got the Special Reserve club magazine, and she guessed around £700. Well from my new favoourite people SR I can get 128MB of RAM and a 2000mhz Intel processor for £150, to make my PC run nice and quickly. Add another £150 on for a Creative 3D Blaster 4 TI 4200, and I've got a full gaming PC ready to run the newest stuff for £300 squid, not including installation costs. Of course, we happen to have a 20GB hard drive lying around (long-ish and boring story) so we'll finally get round to swapping that in and boom! My PC no longer sucks harder than a 15 year old heroin addict standing on the street corner in Soho!
Championship Manager 4 comes out in February. Rather than staring wistfully at the specs, I'll be watching it run like the clappers as I steer the Goon Army to title glory. I seem to recall a debate on the boards I had recently rubbishing PCs and promoting consoles. Really, I guess I was just jealous. I've never played an RPG, I've never played a FPS in multiplayer with more than eight players, and I've never played a new game that isn't made up of facts and figures for about three years. I don't hate PC gaming, I love it, and I'll love to be a part of it. It's the fact that the hardware needs constant updating that turns so many people away. It's an expensive habit, even more so than keeping a console stocked up with peripherals and games, but I'm sure that it'll be well worth it. With consoles, developers have to work to guidelines but on PCs, you can just be lazy and leave the players to pick up the bill for getting their machine up to speed. I guess by the end of November I'll cease to be one of us and start being one of them...but I think that really, everyone should save up and join me.
For the price of a couple of Playstation 2s, you can have a huge library of deep, complex and darn right fun games to play. For a couple of years, at least.
Thanks for reading.
-El Blokey
When I got my PC, I was assured it was top of the range stuff, and it darn well better have been seeing as it cost over a grand. To let you get a sense of how long ago this was, along with the PC I bought the brand new Fifa 97. Now I've been sat at this computer for what must be months, maybe even running into years, be it slaving over the evil program spawned by Satan that they call 'Microsoft Works', doodling in MS Paint or even playing Fifa game after Fifa game. Back then I was about 14, and didn't have any consoles. Eventually I got an N64, and now I have a PS2...but the PC was my only gaming outlet then. I was more than happy with Fifa 97, and then with Fifa 98, even Fifa 99. They all ran smoothly, although not as pretty as the magazine screenshots taken from a newer, faster, better equipped computer.
I also bought games like Tomb Raider and Theme Hospital along the way, but my favourite thing would have to be Championship Manager. Anyone who's played the game loves it (and those who haven't played it are obviously big pansies that like bunnies and knitting), and when I got my first installment around the start of the '98 season, I was ecstatic. I didn't mind the fact it took a few minutes to begin a new game or to generate a new season, it was a brilliant game! Then number 3 came out, and the performance dipped significantly. Using only one league, it still forced me to bring a good book with me if I wanted to play CM, reading a few pages at a time as the rest of the English league fixtures played themselves out.
By the time the last game was out, I'd pretty much given up on PC gaming. I only bothered with it because I knew it wouldn't have any graphics. It helped that Sports Interactive lets you only use one background screen instead of dozens, and a small database rather than the horrificly huge behemoth of names and numbers. I got through one season as Arsenal and uninstalled it in disgust. Nowadays I'm lucky to load up Minesweeper if I have an internet window. Bear in mind I only got connected about two years ago - before, all I could do was weep in depsair as the computer screen froze on the transfer status of Robbie Savage.
Think about it. I've had the PC for what, five, six years? It started out all in a rather fetching black, but now I've got a replacement screen, new floppy and compact disk drives, as well as a CD-RW and another hard drive. At a glance, my PC's stats are: Pentium II 150mhz processor (yes, 150, not 1500), 32MB RAM (which is why I'm experiencing slow down just typing this and chatting to a friend on MSN Messenger), a 2GB hard drive (explaining my frequent deletion of MP3s and BMPs) and no graphics card, unless somebody sneaked one in their. I can't fathom how I managed to start Fifa 2000 up, even if it looked worse than Fifa 97.
I've read about Half-Life with great interest but have never owned it, simply because seeing a demo of it run on my PC almost made me throw up. Choppy, grey, blocky, ugly...any number of negative superlatives could be used. CounterStrike is the greatest online shooter ever, so they say, but even though it's long since been deserted by the die-hards thanks to headshot hitboxes as big as watermelons, I still never got to play it. Firstly because I didn't get the net until so late and secondly, because by the time I DID get it my PC was outperformed several times over by most computers. I've looked wistfully at the back of boxes for The Sims, seeing all it needs is about 300mhz of juice...but I've only got 150. I couldn't even run South Park Rally, and we all know how old that is.
So, what did I do? I got consoles. The N64 gave me GoldenEye to combat Half-Life, and South Park Rally to...well, it gave me South Park Rally. With my PS2 I could have Half-Life, Unreal Tournament and a few others, not to mention forthcoming titles like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and even The Sims. I'm happy with my next gen selection...I've got Vice City, Ratchet and Clank and Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth to look forward to, as well as Pro Evolution Soccer 2, TimeSplitters 2 and ICO to play right now. Thing is...have I played them online? Theoretically I could do it with Tony Hawk's...but then, I could do it with Worms. But I want to be on a fragfest, or in a lightsaber battle. Rather than UT2003 and Jedi Knight 2 I get SOCOM and Twisted Metal in what Sony promises to be 'sometime in 2003, maybe'. It's just not right.
So, imagine my excitement when my parents decided to get the computer done up. My dad recently left for Peru on business, and when he comes back we're going to fix it up. I asked my mum how much she thought it would cost when I got the Special Reserve club magazine, and she guessed around £700. Well from my new favoourite people SR I can get 128MB of RAM and a 2000mhz Intel processor for £150, to make my PC run nice and quickly. Add another £150 on for a Creative 3D Blaster 4 TI 4200, and I've got a full gaming PC ready to run the newest stuff for £300 squid, not including installation costs. Of course, we happen to have a 20GB hard drive lying around (long-ish and boring story) so we'll finally get round to swapping that in and boom! My PC no longer sucks harder than a 15 year old heroin addict standing on the street corner in Soho!
Championship Manager 4 comes out in February. Rather than staring wistfully at the specs, I'll be watching it run like the clappers as I steer the Goon Army to title glory. I seem to recall a debate on the boards I had recently rubbishing PCs and promoting consoles. Really, I guess I was just jealous. I've never played an RPG, I've never played a FPS in multiplayer with more than eight players, and I've never played a new game that isn't made up of facts and figures for about three years. I don't hate PC gaming, I love it, and I'll love to be a part of it. It's the fact that the hardware needs constant updating that turns so many people away. It's an expensive habit, even more so than keeping a console stocked up with peripherals and games, but I'm sure that it'll be well worth it. With consoles, developers have to work to guidelines but on PCs, you can just be lazy and leave the players to pick up the bill for getting their machine up to speed. I guess by the end of November I'll cease to be one of us and start being one of them...but I think that really, everyone should save up and join me.
For the price of a couple of Playstation 2s, you can have a huge library of deep, complex and darn right fun games to play. For a couple of years, at least.
Thanks for reading.
-El Blokey