When did PC gaming start to make an impact in Europe?

[Aladin]

The PC games market has always existed. I had an Amstrad PC1512 before changing to an Amiga 500. The PC gaming department already existed.
(And piracy was also very developed in 1989 on PC)

[gimbal]

True enough, I saw quite a lot of ancient machines while I was enjoying my Amiga at relatives and friends. For the longest time the die hards who were playing video games on their PCs with CGA graphics and PC speaker bleeps all had some kind of Sierra adventure, Prince of Persia, Test Drive and California Games It was like a minimum PC survival kit.

[lmimmfn]

The thread is related to PC and Europe but it was the PS1 that largely moved Europeans from computers to consoles.

Even if PCs saw a spike in sales for gaming after the Amiga, it would drop significantly after the release of the PS1. A PC with similar graphical ability would cist a fortune at the time. Parents needing a OC for accounts wouldn't pay the crazy prices to turn it into a gaming PC and would opt for a PS1 instead.

Another pro for the PS1 was the platinum series of games, I.e. Once a game reached X million sales it was sold for 20quid. Consoles had a hard time taking off in Europe due to 50quid game priced, the PS1 and platinum series games made it a no brainer.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

T
Even if PCs saw a spike in sales for gaming after the Amiga, it would drop significantly after the release of the PS1.

You have some sources for these claims?

[Dunny]

I remember visiting a friend - would have been 1992 I guess? - and for the next year or two we would regularly play games on his PC.

X-Wing, Ultima Underworld etc etc. They were great games and I got kinda jealous even if the framerates on his 386 were pretty poor. But they were the standouts - I also worked in a place with PCs (286 and 386s) which had games like keen, zool etc on them and they were terrible.

I was glad I had an Amiga. It wasn't until very much later - 1998 or so I think - that I moved up to a PC for Doom, Quake, Terminal Velocity etc etc that I felt the PC was a viable gaming platform. And even then the Amiga still had it beat for sound with so many games still using MIDI on crappy wavetable synths.

[grond]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

Even if PCs saw a spike in sales for gaming after the Amiga, it would drop significantly after the release of the PS1.

I think the PS1 at most slowed down the exponential growth of the number of sold PCs per year.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by grond

I think the PS1 at most slowed down the exponential growth of the number of sold PCs per year.

It wasn't exponential, but it clearly picked up between 1993 and 1995: https://www.bomberbot.com/computers/...-in-the-1990s/

[gimbal]

The PS1 was certainly the console where I played the same games on both platforms, it was more of a hybrid. I can see how the PS1 would make some people migrate away but only those which were using PCs ONLY for gaming.

Because let's face it, people gamed on their PC even with those CGA and PC speaker sounds because they needed it for other things too, word processing most likely. You're not going to let a machine just sit there doing nothing, if a human being can play a game on something... they will.

[PortuguesePilot]

I've talked about this elsewhere. I can't speak for the whole of Europe, because if it's still a somewhat heterogeneous place, back then it was MUCH more so.

In Portugal the first household PCs to really stand out in gaming (386DX with VGA) started to become somewhat prevalent by mid 1993 and the 486DX2 SVGA SB16 only became ubiquitous about a year later. Apparently Portugal had a lag of about a year compared to the bigger European economies of the time (Germany, France and England).

The Playstation was a different story. People around here started buying the Saturn as soon as it came out but when the Playstation hit the shelves in 1995, it started to sell like hotcakes and became the de facto gaming standard in about a year. Even people who had gaming PCs and had earlier bought a Saturn ended up buying a Playstation because they were very capable, had huge support, was very widespread (making game trading easier) and was relatively cheap. The Playstation remained the top-gaming device up until the 3dfx-equipped Pentium II PCs became the norm in about 1999/2000.

[Megalomaniac]

Having never owned a PC of CGA / beeper vintage, I can only get an idea of performance via YouTube, and most footage there seems to come from DOSBox, which can be unrepresentatively fast compared to the real PCs of the day. Still, I think that if you had no other computer or console, you could derive some fun playing most types of games in CGA and beeper, certainly. Prince of Persia is better in 320x200 4 colour mode than I imagined it could be, though still behind every other version except maybe the Game Boy. The Epyx games are tolerable. Beeper sound is usually pre-128k Spectrum-level, but I guess it was something. On balance though, having a NES / Master System or an 8-bit computer as well as probably still a worthwhile investment for most people, given that even an Amstrad PC1512 cost far more than most 8-bits in 1987.

For 'serious' genres, that era's PCs fare better, obviously beating consoles, and generally beating 8-bit computers. Point and click adventures for example weren't practical on consoles, or on most 8-bits (C64 if you had a disk drive which cost as much as an Amstrad PC1512, or an Amstrad CPC with disk drive, though most of the adventures there were only in French) and you could just about play them in CYMK graphics (or those tweaked 160x200 16 colour modes sometimes). For flight sims (the PC's first strong-suit for games) the normal CYMK combination means no green grass, but something like Chuck Yeager's (version 1) still looks adequate. Again, the tweaked modes can look better.

As Dunny says, for 'serious' genres PCs overtook Amigas sooner than for action games, an EGA & Ad-Lib 286 would probably beat an ST in those genres, and a VGA 286 or 386 probably better than an Amiga (except for sound), but until VGA and Soundblaster they couldn't compete with far cheaper home computers or consoles for action games - but again they were fine as an only option. My instinctual negative prejudice against them as overpriced, clunky and characterless may or may not have been merited.

Do we know how well PC games actually sold in Europe in those eras though? The lack of attention to PC game development outside the US until well into the 90s makes me think they weren't huge sellers here.

Jumping forward, I did consider the 'Playstation plus upgraded A1200 instead of a PC' option around the time of Windows 95 launching and Escom relaunching the Amiga. Hindsight says I was right to move on to a PC, despite my instinctual dislike of them as overpriced, clunky and characterless (was that still true in 1995? Indeed, was it true in 1992 or 1989 or 1986?). Maybe Playstation plus second-hand PC would have been a better approach? I suspect people put off replacing or upgrading their PC in order to buy a Playstation - it was the first console to have any strength in the PC's stronger areas, in an era where 3D was replacing 2D as the main form for action games. Still, for serious games it lacked (using a few from the early Playstation era as examples) Warcraft 2, Command and Conquer (though it had Red Alert), Grand Prix 2, Dungeon Keeper and more, and an older PC couldn't run those well, so a PC (or Mac?) was still needed for many gamers.

[Lilura]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Having never owned a PC of CGA / beeper vintage, I can only get an idea of performance via YouTube, and most footage there seems to come from DOSBox, which can be unrepresentatively fast compared to the real PCs of the day.

Too high or too LOW cycles, wrong settings etc. Youtube vidslop cannot be trusted unless it cites such. It is better to trust your own DOSBox settings or better still original hardware.

Still, I think that if you had no other computer or console, you could derive some fun playing most types of games in CGA and beeper, certainly.

I played CGA shoot 'em ups for a month before writing my History of Shoot 'em ups. I played one CGA shoot 'em up of 1982 for three hours straight. So yes, I would say that "fun can be derived" from CGA games.

Point and click adventures for example weren't practical on ... most 8-bits

C64 originated LucasFilm Game SCUMM and also the engine's precursor-game. It is also arguable as to whether Sierra's subsequent scribble-slop was superior. Yes, Sierra games were distributed on more disks. And were hard disk installable. And yes, they employed hardware cursors as well as the VGA chipset by 1988 (in 16 colors, not 256). But they were not necessarily objectively superior adventure games. The quantity was there but not the quality. For example, they didn't run in full-screen, some of the graphics were not centered, the graphics were colorful but crude, and the writing amounted to twaddlings.

Sierra On-Line basically sucked at coding, design and writing. LucasFilm Games were far superior.

For flight sims (the PC's first strong-suit for games)

The IBM PC was strong in several genre even before the advent of ST/Amiga, not just in flight sims.

As Dunny says, for 'serious' genres PCs overtook Amigas sooner than for action games,

IBM PC did not overtake ST/Amiga in serious genre: IBM PC was always ahead of ST/Amiga in serious genre. Or does a serious game only count if it has 16 or more colors?

an EGA & Ad-Lib 286 would probably beat an ST in those genres,

Probably? In serious genre EGA 286 wrecked ST.

and a VGA 286 or 386 probably better than an Amiga

In serious genre VGA 386 wrecked Amiga.

My instinctual negative prejudice against them as overpriced, clunky and characterless may or may not have been merited.

Gee willikers. It may not have been merited indeed.

[Megalomaniac]

It seems like 1992-1993 is the most common time range people have mentioned, though maybe later once the realities of actually affording a PC come into it. By 1992 they were into the 'save up, beg dad, or dream' aspirational range, especially if you liked serious genres.

Regarding the Lucasfilm adventures originating on C64, they're a big part of why I said "MOST 8-bits", while mentioning that C64+1541 wasn't necessarily cheap. I didn't mention Sierra versus Lucasfilm, so I don't know where that argument came from.

What would you say are the best non-flight-sim PC games from 1985 (Amiga and ST launch dates, albeit only the A1000 which was too expensive to compete as a 'home computer') or earlier. Is there anything that beats the best later Amiga or ST games in those genres? What about PC action games from that era which match the best of the (orders of magnitude cheaper) C64 or Spectrum?

I did say PCs of those specs were 'probably better' than Amigas and STs respectively (for 'serious' games), though a hard drive and accelerator closes the gap a bit, for Amiga at least (most games of those kinds, especially if originating on the PC, can make use of both), though the PC will still win on either colour depth or resolution, and often on speed compared to a like-for-like clock-speed Amiga.

Which great PC 'serious' games that use less than 16 colours are you thinking of?