PC Gaming Looked A Lot Different In The Late ’90s

PC Gaming Looked A Lot Different In The Late ’90s

Flat widescreen monitors? Glowing keyboards and mice? Controllers with analogue thumbsticks? The late ’90s PC gamer needed not such things.

Or at least we didn’t know we needed them, as they either didn’t exist or weren’t widely available yet. No, as Redditor SuperBabyHix’s retro setup demonstrates, all we needed was a keyboard that worked, a basic mouse, a cheap-looking gamepad or bulky joystick (a sweet CH Flightstick Pro in this case) and a monitor that was at least 85 per cent internal components. The rest we spent on cutting-edge video cards, the best Sound Blaster we could afford and some speakers to match.

PC Gaming Looked A Lot Different In The Late ’90s

Now that’s a box with computer stuff inside it. Which computer stuff? From SuperBabyHix’s gallery:

Micron Millennia Pentium 2 350MHz, 256MB memory, 8GB Harddrive, 3Dfx Voodoo2 12MB, GeForce 2 MX400 64MB, Sound Blaster AWE 64

It’s not completely period accurate. As the OP points out the amplifier for his speakers is new (the old one was too big and bulky) and the GeForce MX400 card used is a 2000’s thing, but otherwise it’s perfect. Remember back when 3D cards were just 3D cards and you still needed a 2D card to handle 2D graphics? We were so stupid back then.

PC Gaming Looked A Lot Different In The Late ’90s

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