I was in the habit of getting games via shareware, through one of the common catalogs then - yep, an actual paper catalog of shareware games you could order for price of shipping, or close enough. They were cheap and I was entertained by them - Commander Keen, Prince of Persia, Pharoh's Tomb, etc. My friends and I all played some awesome games of the day, but I remember loading up W3D and just being blown away - it really was the first fps I ever played.
Many of the other first-person perspective games I had experience with were the D&D games which were largely still-frame, turn-based games like Eye of the Beholder from SSI[0]. Also played Falcon 3.0 over modem, which was super cool; Gunship 2000 where I first started using a hex editor, diff'ing pre-and post-mission save game files via stare-and-compare to understand how to give myself more medals. But W3D was a whole different level, game-wise.
I called all my friends and told them, basically, "holy sh*t, you're not going to believe how flipping awesome this is! It's like nothing you've ever seen before, come over. It's better than anything you've ever played." To a man (teen boy) they were all dismissive - like, whatever dude. Until they came over to my house and I loaded it up. I think I got it on a bunch of 3.5" floppies, and quickly handed it out, made copies, etc.
I played that game so much I would go to bed, close my eyes, and still be running down the hallways, so burned into my retinas were the graphics. Truly the first game I was completely and unapologetically addicted to.
Then some time later a kid at school who wasn't into computers handed me an unopened game box he had gotten as a present from his folks. He didn't care about it, knew I liked computer games, asked me if I wanted it. I had no idea what was in that box, but said sure, why the heck not? The thing was like a black monolith. It was Ultima VII - The Black Gate. It had a cloth world map, a book to translate runes. I pretty much forgot all about Wolfenstein after that, mostly. A friend and I would play it "together" while talking over the landline for hours (local call).
Doom was cool, so was Descent, played the heck out of them. Was also the time I started taking programming classes in school, including a semester of Pascal. It was always in the back of my mind that Pharoh's Tomb was programmed in Pascal.
Was first for me too. I was amazed and immediately hooked. Managed to cobble together my first 386 machine trading code and CAD / CNC programming work for parts.
Had 5 Mb of RAM. Just enough to run a browser and Winsock. Bo sound card.
I had an amazing experience on that machine playing W3D:
Got whomped on a level, and I forget which one, but the gist of it was having a couple health points, no ammo and ended up in a long, narrow hall, at the dead end.
I turned the other way, knife ready, determined to finish the level and proceeded to knife a nice string of baddies with god line speed and precision! It was three or four and I just had to knife them all, right at the end of the hall, poking each of them often enough to keep their shots at bay!
Truth is my 386 was a bit pokey, and that gave me just the little edge I needed to take them down and score that ammo! From there, and a couple more quick pop out and shoot kills later, med pack! Home free, gonna make it...
This was in the middle of the week, me up super late, tired at work the next day, no regrets.
I love how raw, simple, maybe pure is the right word, the game is. Twitchy as hell. Distilled down to the elements needed for fun.
Many of the other first-person perspective games I had experience with were the D&D games which were largely still-frame, turn-based games like Eye of the Beholder from SSI[0]. Also played Falcon 3.0 over modem, which was super cool; Gunship 2000 where I first started using a hex editor, diff'ing pre-and post-mission save game files via stare-and-compare to understand how to give myself more medals. But W3D was a whole different level, game-wise.
I called all my friends and told them, basically, "holy sh*t, you're not going to believe how flipping awesome this is! It's like nothing you've ever seen before, come over. It's better than anything you've ever played." To a man (teen boy) they were all dismissive - like, whatever dude. Until they came over to my house and I loaded it up. I think I got it on a bunch of 3.5" floppies, and quickly handed it out, made copies, etc.
I played that game so much I would go to bed, close my eyes, and still be running down the hallways, so burned into my retinas were the graphics. Truly the first game I was completely and unapologetically addicted to.
Then some time later a kid at school who wasn't into computers handed me an unopened game box he had gotten as a present from his folks. He didn't care about it, knew I liked computer games, asked me if I wanted it. I had no idea what was in that box, but said sure, why the heck not? The thing was like a black monolith. It was Ultima VII - The Black Gate. It had a cloth world map, a book to translate runes. I pretty much forgot all about Wolfenstein after that, mostly. A friend and I would play it "together" while talking over the landline for hours (local call).
Doom was cool, so was Descent, played the heck out of them. Was also the time I started taking programming classes in school, including a semester of Pascal. It was always in the back of my mind that Pharoh's Tomb was programmed in Pascal.
It was a fine time to be a young nerdling. :D
[0] https://playclassic.games/games/role-playing-dos-games-onlin...