25 Years?

Back then I only cared to pass a mission on WC wishing I had a SoundCard and a QuickShot joystick... Today I am a family man.
I guess it's been 25 years after all!
 
Back then I was struggling with config.sys and autoexec.bat and boot disks. Some things about the old days I'm glad are bygone.

Still, it was the pursuit of better PC gaming that got my career launched. Thanks to WC and the Xwing games, I now get paid to do what I do best.

Got to wait till September technically but it's really been so long since we first heard this:

Here's to another 25!
 
Did I need a math co-processor to run this thing? I think I needed to upgrade my pc after I bought it. The good ole days
 
I know my Dad needed to upgrade his...when we first got Wing Commander, we will still running an 8086. Barely ran at all. Then came the 80286 - ran at the insanely fast speed of 16 MHz, with a 10 MB harddrive stacked to give us 20 MB. Oh yeah, we were hot shit on a stick then.

The one I remember more is the day Dad installed the Sound Blaster. Wing Commander was one of the games we tried out with the new sounds. So was Wolfenstein 3D. Dad was wearing headphones at the time and he about blew out his eardrums the first time he opened a door in that game...
 
Back then I was struggling with config.sys and autoexec.bat and boot disks. Some things about the old days I'm glad are bygone.

I used to think I was so smart when as a 7 year old I could format a boot disk and set up lines in the autoexec.bat file :) Took me a long time to figure out about himem.sys, then one day, that glorious moment when:

Expanded Memory Detected...
Expanded Memory Fully used...

I'd had the game on the Amiga too, but to get the PC version running with all of its full palette was fantastic. Didn't have a sound card though, my first few full playthroughs were with PC speaker.

Anyway, I'm actually pleased to have had the game in my life for a quarter of century. I'd say it's had a very positive effect on all of us.

We should definitely do a community playthrough again this year to mark the anniversary.
 
The one I remember more is the day Dad installed the Sound Blaster. Wing Commander was one of the games we tried out with the new sounds. So was Wolfenstein 3D. Dad was wearing headphones at the time and he about blew out his eardrums the first time he opened a door in that game...

Wolfenstein was great! Again I didn't have the soundcard, only PC speaker (I can't remember if Wolf utilised onboard SFX) but I can remember playing it and being genuinely blown away by the graphics at the time. I was running it on a 386-SX with 16mhz under the bonnet.
 
Man... my conventional memory is below 590kb got to do memmaker and luckily I might get 615kb. Privateer might play! :rolleyes:
I remember how ecstatic I was when I learned I could run Privateer CD from the HDD without needing MSCDEX. Not loading the CD-ROM driver saved me enough conventional memory to get it completly functional.;)
 
Geez, you're making me feel old, I was in high school when I first played WC. I didn't have too much trouble working boot disks and autoexecs, although I did kind of enjoy creating them, but then again my early computer days were marked with Vic 20s and Commodore 64s, where more often than not you had write the programming in for your games and then save it to a disk.
I kind of miss DOS and Windows 3.11.
 
My first time getting Expanded Memory running for was Academy. My mom gave me some config.sys magic code on a piece of paper, and we typed it in, and it worked. I don't even recall how much different Academy actually was with EMS, but it was amazing at the time.
 
My first time getting Expanded Memory running for was Academy. My mom gave me some config.sys magic code on a piece of paper, and we typed it in, and it worked. I don't even recall how much different Academy actually was with EMS, but it was amazing at the time.

Well, if it's anything like the experience I had with getting EMS working with WC1 - you'd have finally experienced the moving hand in the cockpit, and the explosions would be improved from the tiny 'spark' explosion to the full scale fireball.
 
Geez, you're making me feel old,.. Vic 20s and Commodore 64s...I kind of miss DOS and Windows 3.11.
I really can't describe how lucky I feel that I actually grew up with computer evolution. My father was in technology business back then. My brother and I are trying to prepare a museum with our computer staff. We have an extended arsenal of hardware and software. Starting with Singler ZX81 and off-course the myth Commodore 64 to allmost every x86 architecture cpu you might guess. Software from IBM OS/2 and DRDOS 6 to the more exotic BeOS. And tones of original packaged games. But the day my father bought us WC, is the day I will never forget in my life!
Thanks dad! We owe you a lot!
 
Bloody greenhorns. You haven't optimized your dos config enough until a game complains that you do have too much conventional memory :-P
 
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