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

[Megalomaniac]

Spun off from a discussion in another thread. Note that 'Europe' was several very distinct markets in those days, especially before 1992. Still, my impression is that, until well into the 1990s, PC gaming was nowhere near as big in any of them as it was in the US. Before that it doesn't feel like Europeans generally bought PCs purely for games, or even upgraded a work PC in order to play games.

In the US, PC games probably outsold all 'home computers' combined by the late 80s, so making PC games was profitable for a US company. However, I can't think of any major European games were the PC version was the lead version, or lead computer version, let alone the only computer version, until perhaps Alone In the Dark in 1992. Just about everything else released for the PC was either US-developed, or a later port of a game from another system.

Also, PC Magazines dedicated purely to home use (let alone games specifically) seemed rare until well into the 90s (PC Format launching in late 1991 the earliest UK one I can think of, for example) and the multi-format magazines gave the PC less coverage than certainly the Amiga in those days. I did have some examples here, but they were very dull - still, look up The One and Games-X in the UK for examples of how little PC content there was in among the Amiga and ST stuff (the latter had more 8-bit than PC even when it folded in early 1992).

People don't seem to have been buying PC games either - note that in a Games-X from early 1992 the PC chart number one (Monkey Island 2) doesn't even make the overall all-format top 20, which is pretty much wall-to-wall Amiga. I've even seen it claimed that Amiga games were still outselling PC ones in the UK into 1994. Letters in these issues seem to be mostly from Amiga owners too.

When did this start to change? When did you guys go from Amiga to PC? Which games (or life situations such as work or education or newfound wealth) were the reasons for that? Did you consider skipping the Amiga and going straight from 8-bit to PC (or do you wish you had)? Relatedly, why do people think it happened sooner in America than Europe (if it did)?

Or am I wrong?

[TCD]

'In Europe' is a concept that doesn't work very well. As I've learnt from a lot of other threads there were a lot of differences between countries in Europe. For example in 1992 the PC was gaining a lot of traction among gamers here in Germany and in 1994 PCs outsold Amigas for sure.

[pandy71]

Big titles made transition - Doom for sure (Wolfenstain 3D earlier was also important) - this triggered market transition. I think there was no significant difference between Europe - difference was in computing power - some people was forced to play on 386DX40 (AMD was big game changer) some on 486DX(SX) - 386 delivered lower framerate and/or poorer quality of course - that's all - but i have impression there was no significant difference between world in PC gaming beside of course HW configuration with all dependencies on this - PC was egalitarian platform.

[tero]

Starting somewhere in 92/93 iirc. Games simply looked better on x86 machines. Amiga versions of games often missed animations and intros. Compare Amiga and x86 versions of Colonization, this came out 94 but it shows the difference.
Some Football manager (forgot the name) had the same 'problem', not only did it look better, it had more features aswell.

[stx2199]

in 1994 the Amiga lost all the reputation as computer due the commodore bankrupt then PC gaming started to be the main one and monopolized all the attention of the magazines and the wealthiest gamers

[stx2199]

Originally Posted by tero

Starting somewhere in 92/93 iirc. Games simply looked better on x86 machines. Amiga versions of games often missed animations and intros. Compare Amiga and x86 versions of Colonization, this came out 94 but it shows the difference.
Some Football manager (forgot the name) had the same 'problem', not only did it look better, it had more features aswell.

rpg games /football managers and similar games,was a very small niche of Amiga gamers
The fact that those types of games looked better in the PC had no influence at all.

90% of Amiga gamers in the era played platform games, shooters , arcade ports and similar content

[Shoonay]

Originally Posted by TCD

'In Europe' is a concept that doesn't work very well.

This. Europe is pretty big and very diverse. It varies from one country to another.
For me it was around 1999 but only because my older brother got a good job as coalminer back then, and could buy a decent PC setup that was 2/3 of his sallaries worth (around ~5k PLN). If it wasn't for him my parents couldn't afford it.
I think it was another 2 or 3 years and almost everybody had one. For "school".

[grond]

I'm pretty sure that the German games magazine "Aktueller Softwaremarkt -ASM" had reviews of PC games mixed among the games for the various Commodores and Ataris. I believe those games were listed as "MSDOS". The screenshots never made me think a PC was of any interest but I was probably 13 years old. In any case I believe you could have quite some gaming fun on a PC in something like 1987 or 1988. You probably wouldn't have bought a PC just to play games but if you already had one anyway, you could also use it for games. Killing two birds with one stone...

[AestheticDebris]

In the UK, I really think it was Doom in 1993 that made the PC look like a viable choice. You still had to spend big money to have a PC capable of gaming, but suddenly it started to look like spending that would get you something better. You'd probably still lean more towards the consoles if you liked platformers more, but the age of 3D was definitely coming at that point.

But PC gaming continued to be quite expensive, even by the late 90s. You would definitely be putting down around £1500 for a suitable PC (regardless of year as that was pretty consistently the price for a good spec gaming PC). Once you were on the bandwagon, it was easier to upgrade bits and pieces at a time though.

[Karlos]

I think a case can be made that Doom was pivotal for PC gaming. As has been pointed out, it never started there and there were plenty of good PC games prior to that, but what it did was set a bar on the hardware. I know plenty of people that upgraded or replaced their PC to be able to play or acceptably. With 486 and (S)VGA becoming the norm, more ambitious games in every genre were possible.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by TCD

'In Europe' is a concept that doesn't work very well. As I've learnt from a lot of other threads there were a lot of differences between countries in Europe. For example in 1992 the PC was gaining a lot of traction among gamers here in Germany and in 1994 PCs outsold Amigas for sure.

The age of Wolf3D, X-Wing and Doom, same here. Actually I still remember the shift in myself. I was so happy with my Amiga and didn't need anything else and then I walked in on a friend who was playing Doom for the first time, which was also the time I learned the game existed. I wanted a PC as of that moment and kind of forgot about the Amiga for a while.

Silly me of course, nostalgia hit like a dump truck. I spent a good number of years hunting down PC versions of Amiga games to get my old collection sort of back together. And then I found WinUAE and spent many years hunting down the ADF's instead

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by grond

In any case I believe you could have quite some gaming fun on a PC in something like 1987 or 1988. You probably wouldn't have bought a PC just to play games but if you already had one anyway, you could also use it for games. Killing two birds with one stone...

My perception too, depending on what hardware it had, though probably only if you liked the more serious genres such as flight sims. For action games you'd be better off with a much cheaper 8-bit computer or console at that time - EGA plus Ad Lib was relatively weak for action games, VGA plus Sound Blaster took time to be established, and there don't seem to have been that many big PC action game releases in that era. Was there much that you were jealous of from those screenshots in ASM in that slightly earlier era?

I did say that Europe was several different markets - which home computers and which consoles succeeded in different countries can be tough to explain - and perhaps east versus west was the biggest divide, with the west definitely able to afford PCs much sooner. I have a perception that Spain largely went straight from the 8-bits (mostly the Z80-based ones) to PCs without much time on Amiga or ST, hence the relative lack of major Spanish games on the 68000 systems, but that's relative rarity.

A bit off-topic, but Amiga owners may have played more action games, but it sometimes feels like they bought more RPGs, football management games and flight sims. At least in the UK, many of the action games we adore nowadays didn't chart as well as you'd expect, and a lot of games many would perceived as overly serious or overly complicated charted very well.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by gimbal

The age of Wolf3D, X-Wing and Doom, same here. Actually I still remember the shift in myself. I was so happy with my Amiga and didn't need anything else and then I walked in on a friend who was playing Doom for the first time, which was also the time I learned the game existed. I wanted a PC as of that moment and kind of forgot about the Amiga for a while.

For me it was a bit before Doom. I saw reviews of Ultima VII with day/night cycles for all beings and a friend got Ultima Underworld for his 386. The game didn't run great, but damn it was really immersive. Something that didn't happen the same way with Black Crypt or Eye of the Beholder for me. When Day of the Tentacle came out I had to get a machine that was able to run it. Wolfenstein 3D was a cool game, but I got a PC to play more nerdy titles

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I did say that Europe was several different markets - which home computers and which consoles succeeded in different countries can be tough to explain - and perhaps east versus west was the biggest divide, with the west definitely able to afford PCs much sooner.

I thought that as well, but when I learnt that pretty much nobody in the UK had a floppy drive for their C64 and in Germany over 90% of C64 users did (number found in a magazine) even the concept of 'Western Europe' as a homogeneous market doesn't work well.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Was there much that you were jealous of from those screenshots in ASM in that slightly earlier era?

Not at all! But that may have been because I was a teenager and as such leaned more towards colourful action games. Twice or triple that age and I might have been a guy walking into a shop and BUYING the latest Leisure Suit Larry or similar...

[Mick]

In my circle of friends at school I would say around 1995, it was usually their dads buying PC's for themselves or maybe seeing the value in having a family computer.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Mick

In my circle of friends at school I would say around 1995, it was usually their dads buying them for themselves.

This may also skew our perceptions because most of us were teenager or twens in the mid-90s and thus our parents also were of a certain age group. An age group that likely was a little late to accept the new reality of having to work with a computer. Now consider the generation right in the middle of us and our parents. Those thirty-somethings were likely to be more accepting of computers for work than our parents and would lean towards the "professional" choice, the PC, more than we did. On the other hand, this generation of thirty-somethings would be having a salary (to buy, not copy software) and also be interested in some gaming in addition to the professional uses of the PC. Due to their age they would not be interested so much in sidescrollers or jump'n'runs but rather in RPG, adventure and strategy games.

[Megalomaniac]

It seems like most of us, even in Europe where the Amiga lived longer than in the US, were attracted towards PCs (or had gone to them) before Commodore folded in mid-1994. The exact time depends on the economy of your country, your age, and your taste in games - a working-age flight sim fan in a wealthy country will have moved on before a school-age shoot 'em up fan in Eastern Europe (unless his dad had a computer and allowed it to be used for games, of course). Doom solidified things, but for serious games the PC already had enough that was more appealing than Amiga equivalents. I had wondered if Wing Commander from late 1990 might have been a tipping point, but seemingly not - did people see that when it was new, and what did you think?

Still, there is a conceptual bias here - everyone on this forum owned an Amiga, which by definition probably means we weren't PC gamers during the Amiga's initial heyday, so perhaps we were later to switch over than some people? Would the results be different if I posed this on Lemon64 or World of Spectrum, did some of them go straight from 8-bits to PCs? Even at a young age, I did know people who played games on PCs, albeit a small minority. It doesn't seem like PC games or magazines were big sellers in the UK, was that different on the continent? Did PC-only games chart highly in multi-format charts elsewhere, or were PC mags bigger sellers than Amiga ones elsewhere in Europe before 1994?

[TCD]

You have to take into account that a lot of people didn't play games on PC because they played games on consoles. The PlayStation in 1995 turned a lot of people into gamers and I would imagine a lot of people that were still 'hanging in there' after Commodore folded simply switched to consoles after it became clear that 'the Amiga' was done (as a main stream platform... in Europe).

Also there was the 'Intel outside' crew that would never consider to buy a PC. So maybe 30-50% of former 'home computer' gamers moved on to PC while the rest moved on to consoles.

[Mick]

My family just couldn't afford a PC as they cost a fortune in the 90s. I had a Playstation and Nintendo 64 after Amiga and I didn't get a PC until around 1998 (a second hand 486).