[gray pierce]

Thanks guys, for sharing all these memories with me. Really appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Monolith

I was born in 1988 and by no means had a wealthy family. My experience began in DOS, which had a host of games from CRPG's to Adventures (Zork or the original Sierra adventures). Computers were indeed expernsive, but we were able to get one.

A lot of our experience came from my dad bring home shareware games from work (A paper manufacturing company), which they had a working computer there and a lot of employees played games on their free time.

My most fond memories came from a shareware game company that had Wiz in its name. Don't remember the full name lol. Duke Nukem 2, Doom, Wolf 3d, etc.

That makes a lot of sense and it sounds more like the 90s I remember. I vividly recall seeing Duke nukem for the first time (I think it was 3D though) and er well...unfortunately hating it. Same with Doom.

Originally Posted by fov

I started playing adventures at around age 9 or 10 (1988) and continued pretty steadily through my senior year of high school (1996), then a bit more sporadically in college. The only time I really remember getting games as gifts were KQ5 on my 14th birthday, and 7th Guest one year for Christmas. We did have a few pirated games that my dad brought home from work, and that my sister's boyfriend copied for me. But otherwise I bought them with my own money, maybe one or two a year.

I remember waiting for sales at Egghead Software and buying directly from Sierra, who sometimes had good deals (got the Quest for Glory VGA remake for free in a "buy one, get one" sale). Thinking back on it I can count maybe 18-20 adventure games that I owned by the time I graduated from college. (Some which were no longer playable, after we switched from an Apple IIGS to a Mac.) It sounds like a lot, but spread out over 12 years, not really. It usually took me months to finish a game, so it might have been "one game after another," but not necessarily tons of games in a row.

I can also remember flattening all the boxes at some point and throwing them away. Gahhh.

That explains a lot, obviously you could buy one or two games a year even if they were expensive. When I was in high school I bouht a lot more games, true they were cheaper and I had probably had more money to spare considering it was a different time but yeah teenagers have more money than kids, that's a fact. Thanks

Originally Posted by Collector

You just missed what most call the classic era of adventure games. most of the best known Infocom games were released in the 1980s. A list of some of the favorite Sierra and LA games with dates shows that few were released after you got your first PC.When you were looking the adventure games had already started to not be so common.

I completely see what you mean. It's because of classics like CoMI, BS2, Grim Fandango, GK3 and TLJ that I thaught that the late 90s were still golden age but looking at your list I guess those were more very pleasant aftershocks.

Originally Posted by TimovieMan

I’d always been interested in computers, an interest I luckily shared with my dad, so I got my first PC for my Catholic Confirmation (something which is usually celebrated with loads of gifts in Belgium) in 1993. We weren’t particularly wealthy, and neither was anyone in my entire family, maybe let’s say upper lower class / lower middle class, so the purchase of a PC was something that got a lot of preparation. Everyone in the family was instructed to give money for my Confirmation instead of gifts (money that of course went into the purchase), I had to take typing lessons in advance (on an old type writer that nearly broke my fingers) and my dad took some computer lessons (and in turn taught me what he had learned).

That's a great story. I also learned typing on a typewriter. In fact I used the thing throughout my entire elementary school period because due to a motorical disabillity I was unable to write by hand(my handwriting still is very bad, someone once compared it to runes) and you can't bring a pc to school and in my classroom there was only one pc that was to be used by all students. As a result I never learned how to type with more than two fingers and I type allmost as vigorously on my laptop as you do on a typewriter. (my poor poor laptop)

my love for adventure games really kickstarted in 1995 when I got a CD-player for my PC. With the rise of CDs, a lot more games were starting to become available in stores,

Wow, you were early. I didn't see the first CD-rom untill 1999. The computers in my school didn't even have CD-rom drives.

Between 1995 and 1998 a lot of games were also lent out among my friends in school. There were a couple of other adventure game enthousiasts, and we each owned different games, so I got the first two Simon the Sorcerer games from this friend, the first two Monkey Islands from that one, Zork Nemesis from a cousin of mine (I actually still have his copy – don’t tell him ), The 7th Guest, Phantasmagoria and KQ7: The Princeless Bride from my nieces boyfriend, etc. You get my drift here…

Basically, with the right friends, you could experience nearly all of the 90s classic adventures while only having to own a couple of them…

Lucky guy, all I ever played thanks to my friends in school was Tomb Raider, which admittedly is not a bad game but no AG, and a platformer about a guy with a banana on his head.