My first PC game I bought was probably Car & Driver, F-14 Fleet Defender or Privateer (I got all of theses in more or less the same time frame) back when i got my first PC in 1995, after ditching my beloved Amiga 500. Technically the first games I got with this PC were a bundle CD that included A-10 Tank Killer 1.5 and Red Baron which came with the sound card or CD-ROM IIRC.
But the first game that I bought with my own earned money was Jane’s Fighters Anthology - that big box still sits proudly on my shelf in mint condition.
Yeah, I realized that after seeing Jet Fighter 3 in late 90s. The HUD and flight model feeled familiar, so I dug up Jet Fighter 1 and it clicked - it looked exaclty like Interceptor on the Amiga with some additional features like LA area, the ability to drop bombs and added F-14.
I then remembered some dude I met at my friends house in early 90s talking about dodging flak and dropping bombs in Interceptor - I was like “are we talking about the same game even?”, later I realized he was talking about JetFighter on PC and not Interceptor on the Amiga.
The first simulator that I bought for my own money was Jane’s USNF 97 (1000 CZK). I remember that I played it on a friend’s AMD K5 133 PC without the joystick. But everything was difficult, fully English manual (I didn’t know the language at the time well), without any experience with PC flying simulators.
Later in 1998 when I bought my first owned PC: AMD K6 233MMX, some VIA chipset with an onboard sound card, 16 or 32 MB SDRAM, S3 Virge DX/GX 4MB, I bought the second-hand big box EF 2000 for a reasonable price (the PC games in CSFR were expensive like a hell)
At those times the huge EF 2000 manual and hardcore simulation was a big challenge for me. I was lucky, my sister translated a lot of text but despite that, I remember how difficult was for me a hit for the first time by LGB the building in one of those training missions ever! I had a feeling that was a really good pilot and was so proud of myself, and of course happy as could be!
It was a memorable moment in my whole PC combat simulator career.
and finally my first joystick ever: Quitshot Super Warrior without HAT and twist pedals.
Later, I bought my first owned civil simulator for a high price (2000 CZK) but I had to have it!
My first computer was a Radio Shack Trash 80, and the first game I bought for it was a cassette tape with a few games on it, most notably Lunar Lander.
The first game I bought for my actual DOS PC was Starflight.
Damn, I’m showing my age here but technically my first PC game I bought, well I had a Radio Shack TRS-80 with a tape recorder drive. I bought it with money at a summer job.
THEN I bought the magazine PC Gamer or something like that, that had like 4 pages of code I had to type in without error, it took days, and to load it took hours from the cassette tape. it was called F1 RACE DRIVER, and you were one little F1 car block driving through 2 lines that ran down screen and moved. You used the arrow keys to drive. lol
Other than that, would be one of the Microprose flight sims I bought for my Commadore 64, think it was F-15 Eagle. It came on floppy disks, so didn’t have to type in the code.
I still have the original manual. I loved how they showed the LSO in a small window during landing to make up for the lack of clarity (due to lack of resolution).
I had to get the X-Wing and TIE Fighter Collecter’s CD’s when they came out.
My biggest PC regret was after upgrading to Win 98. Whenever I tried to install the drivers for the AWE32 it killed the Win98 install.
This was before I found out about the internet and driver downloads.
I ended up getting a Sound Blaster Live instead and giving away the AWE32.
Wish that I had kept that AWE32 as I couldn’t find any at the time I tried to build a retro PC.
Lol, I remember my parents getting on me for wasting way too much time on the computer during my teenage years and into my 20’s. Ironically, flight sims kept my dream of being a pilot alive when it seemed implausible and years later, I was given an amazing opportunity that led directly to my present position (I have now been with the same company for 14 years) by someone I met playing iEN’s Warbirds. Most significantly, I met my wife of almost 27 years on a pilot’s news group back when it was considered weird to meet someone on the newfangled interweb thing. I’m pretty happy that I ‘wasted’ so much time playing sims on the computer back then!
