We are all over PC gaming this week, but what do we know about PC gaming? Each day, one Kotaku editor will reveal their PC gaming knowledge and share some memories. Yesterday you read about Ashcraft's experiences, now it's my turn.
Are you a PC gamer?
You bet your ass I am. While I own all major gaming platforms, both home console and handheld, I spend the most time - and play the most games - on my PC. Partly this is due to the fact that I prefer multiplatform releases on PC for the sharper graphics and mod potential, but the fact my PC is also my work computer has a little to do with it as well.
What was your first PC Game?
My parents bought a Commodore 64 when I was only four years old, so there's no way I can remember the very first game I played. The very first game I remember, though, was Ozark's Seven Cities of Gold. I had no idea how to play it, since I could barely read at the time, but my Dad would help me get through the menus so I could just run around outside doing...whatever it was you did in the game. Probably kill Indians :(
Did consoles ever get in the way of your PC gaming?
Only once. From the age of four to the age of 17, then from 19 to, well, now, I've always been a PC man first and foremost. But when I was 18, I lived in England for a year working as a sports coach in a boarding school, and part of the job was that I lived in one of the boarding houses. Obviously, I couldn't take my home PC with me, so I was stuck with whatever the kids had, which turned out to be a PlayStation and a SNES. Final Fantasy VII, Gran Turismo, WipeOut and Mario Kart took an absolute beating from me that year.
Best PC gaming memory?
I was so excited for Wing Commander 3 that I saved up my pocket money for months so I could get the thing when it came out. I was so excited, in fact, that I didn't bother checking the system requirements for the game until after I'd bought it, which is when I realised that my parent's computer couldn't cut it. Not even the minimum specs. From memory, it needed at least a 486DX50, while I was stuck with a 486SX33. At first attempt, the game wouldn't even load. But I persevered. After almost a week of system tinkering and crafting the finest boot disk I would ever put together, I got the game running. Sure, it took over thirty minutes for a mission to load (making retrys a living hell), but I could play it. So satisfying.
Worst PC gaming memory?
Don't laugh, but...around the time I got Batman: Arkham Asylum, my PC had been overheating, and I'd had a couple of times where my graphics card froze. A new fan and some better ventilation had seemingly fixed this, until I got to the second Scarecrow sequence in the game, which throws a fake display corruption into the game. Most people would have seen this coming, or laughed it off, but having only just overcome identical problems in other games, I figured my card had finally given up the ghost, so I went and bought a new one. When that one hit the same problem in the same spot, I hit Google, saw it was actually part of the game and...felt very stupid.
Which PC-based game series should they bring back?
The big guns like Syndicate and Wing Commander are too obvious, and nobody will ever do another Chuck Yeager, (proper) Warlords or TIE Fighter, so I'm going to go with EA's Crusader series. The Silencer may look like a walking mailbox, and that guy in the bar with the ferret used to creep me out, but that game combined action, atmosphere and (at the time) cutting-edge technology like few other PC games could ever manage.