Finally, my first PC!

You might want to read my previous post before this one, because this is a direct follow-up to that post (although the focus is different).

I was really disappointed and heartbroken about being unable to play Half-life anymore. And I knew it wouldn't be right for me to ask my cousin to buy another CD of the same game. To tackle this issue, I began pestering, or rather requesting my parents to buy a PC for me. I told them that a PC would be immensely helpful for my education (although my primary goal at that point was to just play and beat Half-Life). Being educated themselves, my parents didn't need much convincing with respect to the usefulness of a PC. So I was fortunate enough to get a spanking new PC on October 20th 1999. Yeah, I still remember the date!

My PC was rather 'special' compared to those of my cousins and friends, in several ways. The specifications of my cousins' PC was something like a 333Mhz processor, 14-inch monitor, 3GB hard disk and 32 MB RAM, which was more or less similar to the specifications of my friends' PCs too. In contrast, my PC had a 733 Mhz Pentium 3 processor,  64 MB RAM, 20 GB hard disk and a 15-inch monitor (other components like keyboard, mouse, speakers etc. were almost similar). This was considered a high end PC at that time. Now for the 'goodies'. My PC also had a dedicated graphics card (which was unusual in 1999) with 8MB memory, a color printer (the others didn't have a printer) and a 56kbps modem for dial-up internet connection (the actual internet connection was set up after a few days).

The PC made my parents poorer by ₹65,000 but it instantly made me a hero among my friends (due to it being high-end)! As expected, I purchased the original boxed copy of Half-Life within a few days (because playing it was my main objective). It cost me a whopping ₹2000, but the exhilarating game experience was well worth it. Took me around a month to beat it. I did play other games as well. At that point, even though my primary usage of the PC was for gaming, I was careful enough not to let it adversely affect my studies. As expected, I was fascinated by the internet but unlike most adolescents my age, I didn't use it as an an easy gateway to porn (which was a rage among my peers). Instead, I made use of the internet for game-related information and also my school-related work. I'll describe my initial gaming experiences in a different post.

My PC didn't remain 'special' for too long, due to rapid advancements in hardware. After several minor and major upgrades, I had to finally sell my beloved first PC in August 2004, when it became impossible to upgrade beyond a certain point and the PC couldn't run the latest games. But it did serve me well for almost 6 years, with no major repairs.

The game which got me hooked to gaming!

Its only fair that my initial gaming-related post is the one describing my humble beginning as a gamer. I first had access to a home PC in 1998. Wasn't my own, though. As a 12 year old, I was fascinated by home PCs at my cousins' residence (my cousins were kind enough to let me use it as much as I wanted) and a few of my friends' houses. During that time, DOS-based games were most popular and also more easily available, compared to Windows games. Also, since internet was either unavailable or too slow (dial-up), we could only obtain games through friends or by direct purchase. The first few PC games I played include The Lost Vikings, Prince of Persia, Hocus Pocus, Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D (which were all DOS games) and Road Rash (the sole Windows game).

Then I happened to come across a terrifying and exciting game being played by my cousin on his PC. There was something really different and captivating about this game, something I couldn't quite put my finger on, which was lacking in all the previous games I played. To say that this game totally mesmerized me, would be an understatement. This real gem was none other than Half-Life, which was responsible for catapulting Valve (the developer) to super stardom and also making me treat gaming as a passion rather than a pastime. I could initially play only the game demo (titled Half-life Uplink) because my cousin's friend had borrowed his Half-life CD at that point. The demo had a cliff-hanger ending (although I later realized that the entire demo was totally unrelated to the main game) which made me want to play the full game.

Of course, I could only play it on my cousin's PC, since we didn't have a PC at our house. I kept pestering him to get his CD back from his friend, which he did after a month. That's when the REAL fun started, and I lost myself in a world of alternate reality. The actual game surpassed the demo in every way (I won't go into the details, because I'm planning to post a full Half-Life review soon). I stopped playing all other games, and only played this one whenever I visited their house (maybe once or twice in a week). Then something really unfortunate happened, which shattered my heart. My cousin's hard disk crashed, and along with it, the game as well (including its save files). I didn't mind starting the game from the beginning again (after all, I had only completed around 25%), but for some reason, the game just refused to install from the CD. I still remember that when the installation reached 97%, it used to display 'Engine.dll error' and abort the installation. At that point, me and my cousins were computer novices. This, combined with the fact that we had no internet access, meant that we couldn't troubleshoot this error, so we had to just give up. This happened sometime during mid-1990. It was a really gut wrenching feeling, and I felt my fantasy world had come crashing down. Little did I realize that this disappointment would actually act as a catalyst in transforming me into an ardent, hardcore gamer for a lifetime.

Of course, I did manage to beat this game eventually (as of today, I have beaten it innumerable times and it still remains my all time favorite game), but that will part of my next post. I want to end this post now, before I make it too long. Hope you enjoyed reading it. Lost more to come. All kinds of comments, appreciation or constructive criticism are most welcome. Signing off!

Oh yeah! Here's the box-image of the very first version of the game, which my cousin owned!