"Family Computer" Memories?

[diet_orange]

So growing up, we had a "Family Computer" that was almost always in my room. We started out with a cobbled together Windows 98 Pc that my dad made (he repaired computers for a living) that lasted us up until 2006 when we finally upgraded to a Dell XPS 400 or 410 (can't recall exactly). And I was in love with it. Yeah, we were still using dial-up, but that didn't matter because IT COULD PLAY DVDS!!. Suddenly I went to only being able to watch tv on something I'd had since I was a child to being able to smuggle as much as I could DVD wise away from the library to binge watch. (Not to mention later on being exposed to emulators for the first time and going to town on discovering "new to me" titles for the NES and Gameboy)

Any memories that you have of the old family tower?

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

My dad got us a Windows 98 machine when my sister started the all-too-important fourth grade, mostly as a reward for finishing at the top of her class the previous year bitch.

I remember it well because it was outdated pretty much since the very moment it arrived (it had the smallest hard drive it could possibly take, which made it a nightmare installing anything on it), but we loved it!

We traded diskettes and CDs with anything that cast a shadow and filled it to the brim with random crap, probably turning it into a walking virus in the process xD

To our credit, we didn't murder it until we got an internet connection xD

But, jokes aside, beautiful memories of crowding around it just to play stuff as a family. And also of the sheer excitement we had when dad would upgrade it with junk like USB Cards and scanners ^^!

 

[Isegrim]

I thought the topic was referring to Nintendo's Family Computer, a.k.a. The Famicom. But we'll give it a slight mention.

Out first family computer was An Apple 2.

I don't remember the exact reason how my brother cajoled my parents into buying one but after that, we went from Atari 2600 simple games to ones that took a lot more brainwork than reflexes. Graphic games which racked our little minds on the right verb noun combinations, the puzzles that forced us to think our way through void of internet. There were also arcade type games but they were harder than anything the 2600 threw at us.

Oh yes, stores that sold legitimate Apple 2 software in my country was non-existent. Instead, the store we bought it from had tons and tons of bootlegs they copied from their own files into empty floppies and sold to us at the price of a cheap burger. If you wanted a legit copy, you'd have to ask a relative who was going abroad to buy it for you. Naturally, we had a tough time experimenting and figuring out each game's rules since most of them came as is with no manual.

The Ultima series was the RPG series I adored as a kid and mostly played on the Apple 2. We even bought a Mockingboard, more like a cloned one really, to hear the amazing music of the series. Somehow, we managed to win through most of that series fair and square with no help whatsoever as kids and we were very proud of that. I'm just annoyed the last game was a real disappointment.

Then one day, the store we bought Apple 2 software from demonstrated an amazing machine called the Family Computer/Famicom by Nintendo running Super Mario Bros. It had amazing graphics and sound unlike anything we've seen before unless it was in an arcade.

But that's another story.

 

[Dr.Kisaragi Dr.Kisaragi]

To be honest when I read this thread I thought it was Japanese version of NES because that is our "Family Computer" my first console with Super Mario bros, Popeye, Duck Hunt, Bomberman, City Tank, Track snd Field, Jewelry Soccer Baseball and Donkey Kong.

Well still counts.

 

[Rocket2049]

had a windows 95 PC that i updated to win98
no graphics card (noo voodoo/glide/etc stuff worked) but every MS-DOS game worked on it
i had a BOATLOAD of games, both floppy discs and CDs
the games that stood out were Star wars Dark forces (even have the full BIG strategy guide for it!)
and Tyrian, still the best shoot em up i've ever played to this day
i had some 1000 games in 1 CD (it was mostly all DOS games and a few small win95/98 games)
i had AOL (America Online for you youngins) and yeah anyone who knows knows, the login sounds the iconic "you got mail!" sound, and man did I use it a LOT
and i used Limewire a CRAPTON, like man, i had dial-up internet like 20-30kb a second
imagine a full length 1hr 30min movie taking MORE THAN A DAY to download, sometimes into a whole week! and not even GOOD quality, like realmedia files or something else of poor quality.
but i still did it!
of course roms and emulators happened
i remember using ZSNES (ugh... such a bad emu but it was really FAST)

 

[Nocturnalrisen]

i'm kind of late to the thread but i distinctly remember playing that one colouring barbie game on girlsgogames so much that it broke the computer in a way we couldn't play games on it anymore. i wish i was joking.

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

I thoughr that you was refering to the Famicom but my brother and me used to have a PC in which we mostly played

 

[Bakuma1997]

I expected this was a Famiclone thread, sorry

Now being real, my very first PC came to us when i was beginning Secundaria (Middle School more or less), circa 2009, it was a potato so it still couldn't handle 7, so it spent the next 6 years as a XP machine, it was a gift of a techwiz uncle who came every sunday to teach my big brother, also a techwiz, some lessons and to run manteinnance on it, was a newbie with PCs myself so i never knew what it was in terms of name or specs, all i knew it was my Emulation's floodgate and that we needed to sneak Internet from our neighbor (Don't judge, i am Mexican)

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

I expected this was a Famiclone thread, sorry

We all, the name is pretty confusing

 

[sandogma sandogma]

Some of my early childhood memories include sitting around the family computer with my parents playing Wheel of Fortune. The computer we were using had an Intel 386 CPU. I only know this because I recall my Dad always saying he wanted to upgrade to a 486, which I learned meant something with our computer.
I don't think I ever won against them, obviously, but I remember just enjoying playing something together.

 

[Majora Fi]

How I miss my favorite NES game

 

[bombatomba77]

The closest I had was a Compaq my Mom bought in 1998 to replace the terrible WebTV appliance my stepdad had previously bought. Unfortunately I had already moved out, but I got to play with it on the weekends when I popped over to do my laundry (that I would drag on for six or seven hours). Good times. Played a ton of Ultima Online and started messing about with emulators

 

[diet_orange]

Some of my early childhood memories include sitting around the family computer with my parents playing Wheel of Fortune. The computer we were using had an Intel 386 CPU. I only know this because I recall my Dad always saying he wanted to upgrade to a 486, which I learned meant something with our computer.
I don't think I ever won against them, obviously, but I remember just enjoying playing something together.

Oh, that's incredibly funny! I found the exact same game tucked away in our hallway closet at my old house. Was wonderful to find anything to play on our old Windows 98 PC. My mom (long before she got remarried) was friendly with this guy named Bob. Well Bob liked to rip games and put them on CDRs and that's how I ended up with Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries, one of my favorite games of all time

 

[sandogma sandogma]

Oh, that's incredibly funny! I found the exact same game tucked away in our hallway closet at my old house. Was wonderful to find anything to play on our old Windows 98 PC. My mom (long before she got remarried) was friendly with this guy named Bob. Well Bob liked to rip games and put them on CDRs and that's how I ended up with Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries, one of my favorite games of all time

I remember when my cousins parents bought their first DELL computer, and one of the CD's that came with it included a demo of this game. I remember watching the intro to this game so many times. It was the first game I saw that used the words "damn" and "hell", which made it that much more cooler to young me lol

 

[J.B’s rabbit den]

Almost every night before bed and every morning before school I’d see my mom playing FarmVille on our old Windows Vista laptop and wait for it to be my turn so I can go on Cartoon Network.com and play a bunch of flash games or go on the guest player version of Wizard 101 :)

 

[ShadowBadger]

We had a Windows 98 PC at home for awhile. I can’t remember what brand, probably a Dell but maybe something from Gateway. Not sure when my mom got it. We didn’t have internet consistently. I remember that it only had integrated graphics because I bought Toy Story 2 at a book fair and it wouldn’t run at all on our hardware. Or at least that’s what I am assuming happened from memory. I didn’t know anything about PC gaming then so maybe it had a software mode I could have used.