1996 was some year.....

[Cobalt]

Back then I had no idea Quake was released, maybe I had seen Wolf3d being played once by someone at work, but that was about it. You would not believe it, but I had a mere XT with a 48MB scsi drive and mono monitor...was way behind in the PC technology, but I had a Sega Genesis that came with streets of rage II, and that gave me my fix , plus more. I was employed by Tandy corporation (aka Radio shack) as an electronic service tech and having a ball learning how to fix consumer electronics gear of all types. Previously I was employed in the Avionics field doing the same thing, and wanted to broaden my skillz. I remember when the manager announced the availability of one PC in the center of the shop with Win 95 on it, and internet access to all the other service centers in the USA, so we could troubleshoot our repairs by networking to other techs - we were all like - wow! Later that year I got into probably the best relationship in my life with a hot girl who had 2 kids from another marriage. She liked computers and video games too, too bad it had to end. That year was also the year of a couple of good batman movies..and one of my favorite movies , The Saint with Val kilmer.

What was 1996 like for you?

[LordHavoc]

For me 1996 was a cool year, I finally got a PC (a Compaq Presario with a P166 non-MMX CPU and 24MB ram, running Windows 95), was treated to a bizarrely hilarious intro video starring John de Lancie (aka Q in STNG) who clearly could only point at the Compaq "Q" logo and never say the word Q.

Then I proceeded to play the bundled games, one of which really stuck with me - Magic Carpet, a very fine game.

This was in the vicinity of my birthday, so it was a particularly memorable time, then I remembered "oh yeah, that game I read about!" and proceeded to download Quake demo, whose engine I had previously tried to clone (on my Amiga 3000 - not at all capable of running Quake even if it were ported, mind you) based on a WIRED article in 1995 where they talked a bit about renderer technology and showed the gorgeous graphics and talked about the realistic physics of a grenade bouncing in dm2 and fragging someone, that article also focused on the "rockstar" reputation of id Software at the time.

Good times.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I was a freshman in highschool. During the first year of Quake, I discovered recreational "stuff"...


I had so much fun with my newly found recreational "stuff" + Quake.

[Cobalt]

Ah Amiga. That was my leet dream back then. Too bad they dropped out of the PC game. Didnt even know there was a 3000, thought they stopped at the 2000. Actually theres some demos of Quake running on the Amiga on youtube.....guess they finally ported it? Lots of excellent games on that platform...never knew the Chaos engine was originally released for the Amiga, it was renamed soldiers of fortune for the Sega Genesis, kind of like a copy of Gauntlet in the arcades. All the developers really took advantage of the graphics available it seems for al those titles. Quake would be a perfect fit for it.

Quake demo, whose engine I had previously tried to clone (on my Amiga 3000 - not at all capable of running Quake even if it were ported, mind you)
Good times.

[inkub0]

In 1996...
i was a 12 Years old boy... i studied in my 1st year of "medium school" in italy (6th year of school) and i met who bully boys are. I was a thin, shy boy. My dog, Bobby, disappeared that year. He didn't came back. I asked to my uncle a copy of Quake1 as a Christmas gift. He bought it and made me happy. The previous year i had my second PC: an old 486DX2/66 with 4 MB or RAM. Quake worked barely on it. I rediscovered Quake two years later, with my new K6-2 processor.
I started to met often a great friend of mine, playing quake with him. Thanks to Quake, it gave me a friend!

[Bloodshot]

I think there was up to the 4000s for the amiga, I had an Amiga 500, played a lot of prince of persia and body blows and golden axe, got Quake when i was like 3 years old, don't remember much from back then but I know i played it a lot.

[Roy Batty]

Amiga, yeah 4000 then 1200 (amiga always the weird back and forth with the model numbers, 1000 was before 500 etc)...

1996... I was getting out of the 64 scene, got my first pc. I don't remember what it was now... some pentium I think, it had a tseng et4000 and a voodoo 2 card. I was 5 years out of high school then, working everyday, listening still to the big 4 of thrash and playing guitar in my band. I played with my old commodore 64 a lot still then as I just loved that machine and didn't pay much attention to pc, but I remember playing a lot of duke nukem on it. I also remember all my friends on IRC raving about Quake, but I didn't get it until later.

[Authentic]

96 i was only 4 years old. I didn't play quake untill 97-98, But when i did. I was pretty good at it.

[Shadowswift]

96? Lets see, I was between 5th and 6th grade, loved the shit out of DooM, Hexen, and Warcraft II. Had only heard rumors of Quake at that time. Didn't start playing until summer of 97.

[grave_digga]

Back in the summer of 96 *sing*

I remember i had a AMD 486DX2 100 (or 133) with 64MB Ram and a 2 MB S3 Trio 64 Video Card. HD was 1GB and a SB16 soundcard with Windows 95. But deleted that and installed Dos 6.22 instead. Runned Quake great, i got my hands on it as soon as it hit the shops. Played Wolf3D/Doom/Doom2/Heretic/Hexen/Hexen2 before Quake. I also met my best friend that still is in my life, he means a lot to me. I guess 95/96 was the years my life changed (to the good side).

[nahuel]

I only remember tomb raider in 96, i play quake the first time in 1998 with a pentium 133
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPMkpKbjgWw"]this album![/ame]

[Grim Warlock]

Ahh yes 1996 when I was 7 years old hehe. Oh and SONG FROM 1996!!!
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLNh71lZLes]Marilyn Manson: Apple of Sodom - YouTube[/ame]

[ImperiusDamian]

I wasn't even a gamer in 1996.

Nerding it up with programming and what-have-you. Wasn't until 1997 that I really 'discovered' gaming and that was the Almighty Q2. *nods*

At 320x240 software mode on a Cyrix 150 ("PR200+") w/16MB of RAM and a 1 gig hard drive and 1 meg graphics card. And Q2 was STILL the greatest thing I'd ever seen. *nods*

Wasn't long after that that I found the shareware episode of Q1 and from then on I was an unrepentant gamer. *nods*

[LordHavoc]

Long live Quake

[R00k]

In 1996 i had a 486dx2-80 and spent my time making a (igm) mod for Legend of the Red Dragon, (bbs door game). Then I got a demo of Quake (v1.0) from CDROMToday magazine. I still have the CD around here. It ran horribly slow on my machine, I didnt even have win95 yet, only Win3.xx, and im not even sure what kind of gfx card maybe a Diamond Stealth. But Quake would drop to about 5fps during the demo. I did end up trying it again a year later after I had upgraded my hardware. But it wasnt until around 1998 that i was playing Quake online.

I had played the shareware demos of wolf 3d, doom 1 and 2, heritic, hexen, and hexen2, so Quake was something i kept my eye on.