In the early 90's most people didn't have computers. The internet for the most part didn't exist and wasn't a part of our lives and home computers were absurdly expensive. Gaming at home was not something that most people even thought about and game companies were few and far between.
However, my father had a reasonably important job with a telecom company that would eventually become Sprint and while I was too young to really care, he was high enough up in the company that they believed that he needed to have his own computer at home. When this happened, my family was one of the only families I was aware of that even had a computer, let alone a reasonably good one.
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It was something like this gigantic bastard but it was manufactured by a company that left the home PC hardware industry a long time ago called Sysdyne. They still exist as a company to this day and I was quite surprised to find this out. Now they just work on software and components and they stay pretty quiet about all that. I never knew anyone else that had a Sysdyne home computer and I think this probably contributed to the reason why they were not in the market for very long.
It was massive, it weighed as much as a dad and his son can safely carry and it only had 2 floppy disk drives and in internal storage of less than 1GB. Since almost all programs could fit on a couple of 1.44MB disks, the idea that you were going to need more than a GB of overall storage was something no one could fathom. Obviously this quickly changed as the market exploded in the next 5 years but back in 1990 this machine we had in my Dad's office was a "beast" because we had nothing to compare it to.
Somehow I ended up getting my hands on a copy of Wing Commander back in those days and I went home and gruelingly installed it from a dozen 1.44 inch floppy disks and fired it up.
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If that graphic looks pixelated that is just because that was the only kind of graphics that existed at the time. Origin was one of the few PC game companies that existed on a semi-large scale at the time and for the most part their games were pretty epic, if you were one of the few people that had the benefit of actually owning a computer.
I played the hell out of this game on, in retrospect, was probably 5 FPS and I was none-the-wiser because I didn't know anyone else that even had a computer. Our school had a few computers but we were not allowed to put games on them so I didn't have anything co compare it to.
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I knew so little about computers that it never occurred to me that our hardware was not up to the task. This was entirely uncharted territory for me and my gaming friends and we would crowd around the computer and take turns at having a go at winning in gloriously slow fashion. If you got more than 2 enemies on the screen you could hear the hamsters inside the box getting their processing wheels up to maximum speed as the hard drive struggled to keep up with the data transfer.
I gotta hand it to the ol' Sysdyne, it never locked up on me or BSOD'd. It would just get really really slow and again, we didn't know any better so we thought that this was just how the game was for everyone.
We all stayed in the dark until my rather spoiled neighbor who got all the gaming toys from his parents ended up with a computer himself and unbeknownst to both of us, his computer would end up being MUCH more powerful than the Sysdyne back at my place. When he loaded up Wing Commander on his computer I was just blown away.
It seems silly to say it now, but the system requirements actually WERE on the box I bought but since none of us knew what any of that information actually meant, I didn't think anything of it. The sysreq's may as well have been written in Mandarin because none of use knew what CPU or RAM even was. I don't think GPU's were even a thing at that point - they may have been, but i doubt it.
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Seeing this run like it was a movie on my friend's computer was a completely different experience and it kind of ruined all the fun I had on my own family's computer for all that time.
I have to say that I was a little disappointed to see my teenage neighbor have a computer that was so much more powerful than my executive Dad's was, and from that point forward our computer didn't really see much action since my Dad wasn't playing the games and thought gaming was a waste of time (he still feels this way.)
It would be many years before I joined the PC gaming computer industry because home computers remained very expensive for quite some time after my family's initial purchase in 1990. I think it was probably around 96 before I ever had my own and at that point I made certain to get something powerful. It's funny to me to think that every single phone that we all have in our pockets right now are probably 10x as fast as my $1400 computer that I acquired in the mid-90's.
I am happy to say that I was an early adopter though and ignorance truly was bliss. Until my neighbor stepped up and got his computer I was content. Sometimes not knowing that what you have isn't very good is kind of a good thing.
Did this ever happen to you with computers? I don't even know what happened to that Sysdyne PC. The last I remember it was sitting in the storage room in my parents' basement after I had gone off to college. I presume we eventually donated it to Goodwill after realizing that there was no chance that tech was ever going to go in reverse.
As I recall, Wing Commander ran reasonably well on pretty much any 486 with at least 4 MB of RAM. The computer you were playing on must have been a 386. I remember seeing Doom on a 386 and it wasn't particularly pretty either. You could get playable, though not great, frame rates by shrinking the screen enough...
That very well could have been the case. It was a work computer for my Dad but it was touted as being "for the whole family." After thinking about it for a while I can pinpoint the year and it was 1991.
I think I did shrink the screen for most anything I tried to play and yeah, that would make a huge difference.
Maaan, seeing a CRT monitor after a very long time. Those space shooting games were so famous when I was a kid although I was not a fan.
Yeah, they were crazy especially if you ever transported them anywhere. I once had a more than 20 inch CRT monitor. It was the largest one I could find and it was $600, so probably $1000 in today's money. It was massive and so heavy that I couldn't find a monitor stand strong enough to hold it up safely.
Yeah finding monitor stand for those monitors (except the original one) was a tough job.
The largest CRT I had back in the day was 17 inches and that was heavy enough. Several years ago I took an old 19-inch CRT home. The largest CRT TV I ever had (still have it in fact though it isn't used currently) was either 27-inch or 32-inch and that thing really isn't safe for one person to lift. Meanwhile, 52-inch LCD...no problem! :)
yeah they really were ridiculous. This was the price we paid for a large screen back in the day though. I remember being able to feel the static electricity emanating from those things and if you touched it the "wrong" way you would get quite the jolt!
I just saw an old picture posted somewhere that showed the inside of some electronics store circa 1988 and there was a color 19-inch Panasonic TV for the low price of something like $389. That's pretty close to $1000 in today's dollars once you factor in inflation. I'm sure it was cable ready though.
It's crazy what we were paying for add on stuff like this but I kind of feel the same way about some things today. I think in the future people will say "in 2022 people were paying $1200 for a smartphone and that's $2500 in today's money" and we will think it is just as insane that anyone would do that. :)
Ha. I already thing paying $1200 for a smartphone is crazy. It wasn't too long ago that they gave them away for free (with contract).
I can remember those days and mine ended up being tossed away as it was like a boat anchor. Back then having a computer was rather special and how quickly technology moved on. If we even look at the gaming industry with cartridges and then CD's you were left behind so fast. I remember investing in stuff for my kids and it was obsolete within 2-3 years.
I'd like to believe that the market has stabilized a bit these days as far as computers are concerned but then again, I don't try to stay on top of the cutting edge as far as a gaming rig is concerned.
I have often struggled with obsolescent hardware on the family PC, but I at least ha dthe foresight to consider the system specs, and I tended to play RTS game like Lords of the Realm II, Command & Conquer, and Age of Empires that weren't too hardware-intensive. Speaking of which, have you seen the re-released C&C/RA on Steam?
I didn't know there was a re-released C&C. This is great news and I am going to go check it out now. Thanks for the heads up!
"Being totally unaware that my computer was seriously underpowered"
I can't imagine how using the internet must have been for people back then, either; knowing how people nowadays have connections ranging from 10 to 50MB of download (or at least in my case, a max of 500KB of download)...the mere idea of "56K modems" makes me think about just how much of a hassle waiting for websites, programs and even playing online must have been like, let alone downloading games 🤠
56k modem? Try 28.8, haha. When we got this computer there was no widespread internet and I don't think we ever even tried to hook this particular machine up to it. I'm sure there WAS internet, but nobody had it and very few websites existed at the time.
Honestly I always find interesting to hear stories like this; as a 20 year old that also has a bit of an interest in how old technology and such used to be (since its like, imagining a totally different world even though it has been just two to three decades ago and physically in the same world as today). That and stuff like this always has piqued my attention just to see them work now as a marvel of their time back then.
Its the things that do sound mundane to the people that are adults now (as they lived those times, either as kids or as adults), but for me who I could only remember to live the leap from the N64 and Gamecube stuff to Wii and Xbox 360 (or in the case of computers, from a Windows Vista laptop to Windows 7 computers, as well as Windows 8 and so on), I can't help but wonder about those times from MS-DOS and Windows 95 along with having those chunky CRTs that weren't too crisp yet were the bread and butter developers took advantage of to make the pixeled sprites look like something more vibrant, and of course how the console wars and such were around that time.
Guess its from a place of imagination about wanting to picture simpler times with simpler days, and also to try picturing how people from back then have been watching unfold the gigantic leaps in technology that have been from there to now.
In any case, big thanks for posting about this super neat story; I had this thought in mind when I first read the post, but my brain overrided that thought in the moment with "I wonder how internet was for you with that PC back in the day" lol
what a well thought out response! It's good that you are interested in these things, I know I really was when it was going on and it was 30 years ago for me! It was a pretty amazing time really because everything that came out was "the next big thing" and of course most of it fizzled out and died.
I remember when PC's were first introduced to the home market and big players like IBM passed on the notion thinking there was no way that home computers would ever be a thing.
It's funny to think of a time without internet these days but we got by. In many ways I feel like life was a lot simpler then but then again, I was a kid so of course life was simpler!
the computer my family had in the 90s was mid tiered and my Brother and I would take turns playing RTS games from the mid-late 90s (Command and Conquer, Starcraft, Warcraft orcs and humans, Age of Empires,). those RTS games were pretty simple though so I don't think the computer suffered too much. I still use a mid tier computer and am often shocked at how amazing the same game looks whenever my friends come over with their beefy computers and we play but whats displayed on their monitor looks far superior. Thank you for sharing your post!
You and your brother chose what I consider to be some of the best games ever made! I love all of those games and wish that devs would make more of them.
As far as having a mid-tier computer is concerned, that is probably what I will do the rest of my life. I feel like trying to keep up with the latest trends is way too expensive but one should also stay away from the rock-bottom machines that cost only 4 or 5 hundred dollars. I think I'll probably end up spending $1000 to $1500 on a machine every 5 years or so. That'll do me.
I know that feeling. It kinda sucks that your hardware can't play the latest games.